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3 Pol'y Stud. J. 5 (1974-1975)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl3 and id is 1 raw text is: II. SYMPOSIUM ON CRIME AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY A. INTRODUCTION BY THE SYMPOSIUM EDITORS John A. Gardiner, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Michael A. Mulkey, National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justicel Since the mid-1960s, one of the most widely debated areas of American public policy has concerned crime and the adminis- tration of criminal justice. After many years of inaction by criminal justice agencies (the criticisms expressed by the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice in 1967 differed little from those of the Wickersham Commission in 1931) and lack of interest on the part of the research community, the field of crime control has become one of rapid change and extensive discussion and analysis by social scientists. A major Federal effort began in 1968 to fund state and local police, court, and correctional programs, and more than $50 million is being made available each year through governmental and foundation grants for the support of criminal justice research and evaluation.2 It is the goal of this symposium to describe the major policy issues emerging in this field and to provide a basic introduction to the relevant lit- erature of interest to the political science profession. Historically, crime and criminal justice have not been major topics for teaching or research by political scientists. Apart from long-standing traditions of constitutional history, judicial biography, court voting pattern analysis, and studies of judicial recruitment, political scientists' interest in the policy issues presented by crime and the criminal justice system generally dates only from the late 1960s. Even today, it is safe to say that most of the work being done on these issues is the product of sociologists, lawyers, psychologists, historians, anthropologists, and systems analysts. Any discus- sion of the issues of crime and criminal justice must of necessity, therefore, borrow heavily from the contributions of many disciplines. In selecting articles for inclusion in this symposium, it has been necessary to exclude several major areas. First, we have chosen to restrict the scope of the symposium to American criminal justice. (For a brief discussion of related issues in European nations, see the Spring, 1973, issue of the Policy Studies Journal.) Second, since the vast majority of crime and criminal justice issues are handled at the state and local levels, we have excluded any analysis of the Federal level except insofar as it affects state and local decision-making. Third, the symposium is limited to the analysis of programs directly dealing with crime problems, although the ultimate level of crime in any society is as much dictated by the suc- cess or failure of educational, health, welfare, and housing programs as it is of specifically crime-related programs. Finally, we have omitted a specific concentration on issues of civil rights and civil liberties which, although they permeate any consideration of American criminal justice, will be dealt with separately in a forthcoming issue of this Journal. 5