Criminal Justice, Crime Control, and the Rehabilitative Ideal

The prevention, detection, and punishment of crime, like developments in the legal profession and substantive law, were influenced by changes in postwar U.S. culture. Two models of criminal justice were in a tense relationship: "crime control" and "due process," both of which Herbert Packer, the period's most important writer on criminal law, described in an influential essay, "Two Models of the Criminal Process," published in 1968. ⁴⁴ The crime control model emphasized the efficient suppression of crime through a swift and certain criminal process. The due-process model, however,

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stressed procedural regularity as a limit on the discretionary powers of criminal justice officials, as a protection for individual liberties, and as a guide to social justice. The assumptions behind the crime control model surfaced in the response of police and penal officials to public demands for tougher treatment of criminals.

The Crime Control Model, the Police, and Community Relations

The connection between crime control and police professionalization was typified in the Los Angeles Police Department. Under Chief William Parker during the 1950s and 1960s, it became the paragon of police efficiency, held up to public acclaim in the popular television program, Dragnet. Parker was influenced by J. Edgar Hoover, who, by the 1950s, had become the most revered figure in criminal justice. The Los Angeles police force carried the notions of scientific crime detection and a military style of police organization to their limits. Parker was a severe disciplinarian, and corruption in the department was rare. According to Parker, the purpose of the police was to wage a war on crime, and, in the sprawling city of Los Angeles, he developed the most effective motorized patrols and the most sophisticated radio communications network in the nation.

The impersonal and militaristic style adopted by the Los Angeles police met increasing resistance in the urban ghettos, like Watts, especially as the civil rights revolution and Great Society programs raised expectations. Big-city police departments were predominately white, and enforcement efforts in black communities were greeted with charges of police brutality and insensitivity. The problem became shockingly apparent between 1964 and 1968 when a wave of urban violence swept the nation. Both the plight of ghetto dwellers and the role of the police became the focus of national attention. President Johnson appointed the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate the rioting, and it reported, only a month before the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1968, that "our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." ⁴⁵

A new police-community relations effort began amid the rubble of the rioting. Denounced by antiwar protesters as "pigs" and condemned as well by many well- intentioned white middle-class liberals, the police bore the brunt of criticism for precipitating the rioting, Major urban departments gradually changed their policies by establishing liaisons with black community leaders, decentralizing police administration into the neighborhoods, and instituting sensitivity training for officers. The hiring of black officers in large numbers was the most enduring of these reforms. By the 1980s, blacks had risen to positions of police leadership in such major cities as Detroit and New York. But efforts to accelerate the promotion of black officers (and later women) over white males with greater seniority, and sometimes higher scores on qualification tests, stirred controversy.

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 635