Tiffany, Lawrence P.

English

University of Denver

Denver Law Review Volume 48 Issue 1 Article 10 March 2021 Book Review: Crime in America Lawrence P. Tiffany Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/dlr Recommended Citation Lawrence P. Tiffany, Book Review: Crime in America, 48 Denv. L.J. 155 (1971). This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Denver Law Review at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Denver Law Review by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact jennifer.cox@du.edu,dig-commons@du.edu. BOOK REVIEWSCRIME IN AMERICABY RAMSEY CLARKNew York: Simon and Schuster, 1970. Pp. 346$6.95W HAT Ramsey Clark has to say about the empirical dimen-sions of crime seldom extends beyond the factfinding ac-complished by President Johnson's crime commission in 1967.Indeed, it is not unfair to characterize Crime in America as apopularized and personalized critique of The Challenge ofCrime in a Free Society, the basic report of that commission.'Mr. Clark reiterates the conventional (liberal) tenets:"crime" is a complex and varied phenomenon; we do not knowhow much crime really occurs, as opposed to how much is re-ported to and by police departments; crime rates seem to belinked to social change; "organized crime" may be largely aproduct of our own paternalistic proscriptions (and would youprefer that narcotics distribution be unorganzed?); marijuanause should be legalized; the number of guns in society should bereduced; police departments are the dumping ground for everysocial problem that political "leaders" cannot face up to; policeperformance during riots can be improved by prior training;the Chicago convention police riot was caused by intemperateremarks of the city administration; police spokesmen greatlyoverstate the need to rely on confessions to obtain convictions;wiretapping does not produce an adequate return to offset itssocial and economic costs; the bail-or-jail system needs drasticoverhaul; the office of the prosecutor should be taken out ofthe political spoils system; courts would benefit from updatedadministrative techniques; judicial insistence on due process forcriminal suspects does not handcuff the police; prisons do notrehabilitate; the death penalty should be abolished-and so on.The popularization of facts and traditional analyses is welldone, and that is probably the chief value of the book.Mr. Clark can, at times, be poignantly persuasive, as heis, for example, in making his point that the bail systemactually needs reform:1 THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON LAW ENFORCEMENT AND ADMINISTRA-TION OF JUSTICE, THE CHALLENGE OF CRIME IN A FREE SOCIETY (1967).DENVER LAW JOURNALRonnie Brown was five years old when his mother broughthim north to Brooklyn from rural South Carolina. Before hewas arrested on July 25, 1969, for robbery at the age of seventeen,police had taken him into custody twice-once for assault, laterfor car theft. He had never been convicted of a crime. On August14, 1969, at 5:20 A.M., he was discovered dead, hanging from alight fixture in his Rikers Island prison cell-a belt loopedaround his neck. He had been in jail nineteen days, though nogrand jury had indicted him and no lawyer had advised him ofhis rights, when his aunt heard of his death on the radio. Shetold his mother, a nurse in a VA Hospital, twelve hours beforethe police found time to advise her.Ronnie had written his mother, "Dear Mom, This is not thelife I want. I am not really bad .... I want to get out and workand do something good." He didn't explain why he was "afraidto go to the bathroom." To persons familiar with American jails,it was not necessary. He did not want to be raped by homo-sexuals.2Soporific Colorado is not without its own Ronnie Browns.Several years ago in a Denver District Ccurt, a young defend-ant who had been convicted for possession of marijuana awaitedsentencing. He evidently hoped for probation but feared im-prisonment. When the prison sentence was announced, he shothimself to death in the court room. The official response wasto institute procedures to make sure that those facing sentenc-ing are not armed. Today, that sentence would probably havebeen probation. Tomorrow, one would hope, we will turn ourefforts from criminalization of our youth for their petty vicesand turn to important problems. But a decade of irrational useof power must have lasting effects on parents, their children,and anyone else concerned with the ability of the state toadminister justice.The basic flaw in Mr. Clark's view of the crime problemis not his acceptance of the thesis that crime is an evitableconcomitant of our cultural components. It is, instead, thatcrime eradication should be the objective. By hypothesis,then, our culture must change.On the causes of crime:If we are to deal meaningfully with crime, what must be seenis the dehumanizing effect on the individual of slums, racism,ignorance and violence, of corruption and impotence to fulfillrights, of poverty and unemployment and idleness, of genera-tions of malnutrition, of congenital brain damage and prenatalneglect, of sickness and disease, of pollution, of decrepit, dirty,ugly, unsafe, overcrowded housing, of alcoholism and narcoticsaddiction, of avarice, anxiety, fear, hatred, hopelessness and in-justice. These are the fountainheads of crime. They can be con-trolled.' (original in italics)2R. CLARK, CRIME IN AMERICA 298 (1970) [hereinafter cited as CLARK].3 Id. at 17-18.VOL. 48BOOK REVIEWHaving identified the causes of crime, his solutions follow:To insist on the dignity of the individual, to assure him healthand education, meaningful employment, decent living conditions,to protect his privacy and the integrity of his personality, toenforce his rights though he may be the least among us, to givehim power to affect his own destiny-only thus can we hopeto instill in him a concern for others, for their well-being, theirsafety and the security of their property. Only thus can we bringto him a regard for our society, our institutions and our purposesas a people that will render him incapable of committing crime.'(original in italics)Public ignorance of the problems of crime and crime con-trol may not be as critical or detrimental as the recrudescenceof utopianism in an influential political liberal. Nor is it asunexpected. The view that crime will cease to be a major prob-lem only when America undergoes a metamorphosis of nationalcharacter results from identifying the task as the eliminationof crime. Eradication of crime is a pretentious political goal.It is depressing, as well, to believe that improvement is condi-tioned on a national denial of avarice.It would be happier to believe that change in crime controlmethods is possible in the name of self-interest. Does our self-interest compel a national economic policy that depends upona twenty percent unemployment rate among young blackmales? Is it really necessary to insist upon public monopoliza-tion of education which permits the educational bureaucracyto perform at substandard levels? Do we really need a changein national character to reduce killing by police? (The actualnumber of deaths is interestingly unascertainable.) Do wereally need massive research projects to tell us that a kid's bestchance for rehabilitation after committing a crime is when heis not caught?The problem is not "national character." The problem isinadequate political leadership. Local examples, again, are notwanting. Suburban Thornton's police department managed towreck their entire fleet of cars trying to run down a pettyviolator. The Denver City Council, during the tense summerof 1968, debated for weeks the merits of legislation requiringtopless dancers to wear pasties. Colorado State Senator HughChance in 1971 strongly urged that the state legislature notpass the proposed updating of the Colorado criminal code be-cause penalties for fornication had been left out. These are4 Id. at 20.DENVER LAW JOURNALtrivial concerns compared to the death of Ronnie Brown. Butthey are all symptoms of the same dearth of leadership. We arenot facing a crime crisis; we are facing a crisis in government.Both crime and contemporary notions of criminal justice aresymptoms.A pervasive and lasting sense of outrage on the part ofthe public may not solve all of the problems of the criminalprocess, but it appears unlikely that significant change willoccur in its absence. And it is difficult to escape a cynicalsense of deja vu if that observation is true. Given the squalidconditions of our policy-making machinery-especially statelegislatures-it will take loud and lasting pressure for anychange to be made, especially any change requiring money.Perhaps Crime in America will help to inform the uninformed.One hopes, however, that even the uninformed will recognizeexcessive idealism when they see it.Mr. Clark feels that spending much more money on crimecontrol would be beneficial. There is reason to suppose thecontrary to be true. Given the present ambitions of criminaljustice systems, it may be well that most systems are rela-tively powerless compared to what they could be. The zeal ofreformers to build better prisons without better "correctional"leadership may well result in larger-and architecturallymore pleasing-but equally crowded, inept and brutal ware-houses of social problems. Right now the most important re-straining influence on governmental use of coercion to solvethe crime problem is the lack of sufficient resources to becomemore efficient. It is an old argument: Sir Robert Peel madethe same objection to modernization of the English system inthe last century. His point went unheeded. It still is."Without either a massive infusion of funds or an unfore-seeable change in "national character," improvements can bemade. We cannot solve the bail problem, but we certainlyhave the requisite knowledge to ameliorate greatly its deleteri-ous impact."' We cannot eliminate feuding between spouses, butwe know how to reduce significantly its frequency and deadli-ness.7 We cannot get handguns out of society, but we do knowhow to reduce their number. We cannot eliminate bad-checkwriting, but it may be fair to assume that removal of counterH. PACKER, THE LIMITS OF THE CRIMINAL SANCTION 365-66 (1968)."See e.g., AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION PROJECT ON MINIMUM STANDARDSFOR CRIMINAL JUSTICE, STANDARDS RELATING TO PRETRIAL RELEASE App.Draft, 1968.T CLARK, supra note 2, at 140-43.VOL. 48BOOK REVIEWchecks from bars has helped. We cannot eliminate theft andforgery of government checks, but again it may be fair toassume that access to them might be significantly reduced bystaggering mailing dates.There are obviously many other things that can be done-many with no costs at all. A close "cost-benefit" analysis ofsome present practices might even indicate areas of possiblesavings in money and lives. What benefits are perceived in thepractice of engaging in high-speed chases of traffic violators incongested urban areas? What costs do we incur through thatpractice?At times, Mr. Clark reveals a tendency to overlook off-setting costs that are implicit in his proposals for reform. Con-sider, for example, his suggestion for prevention of crime byanticipatory intervention: "Professionals could find 90 percentof the children likely to become delinquent. We may have tolive with the rest; we do not have to live with most."' Pro-posals for pervasive testing programs of our youth to predictprobable future criminality and proposals for initiating pro-grams to defeat our predictions are no longer rare. Ultimately,one would suppose that force must be involved either againstthe child or parent who disagrees with a diagnosis of probablefuture criminality and refuses voluntary treatment or removal.,Immoderate zeal for-reform is no less dangerous today thanit was 70 years ago when we launched our largely disastrousexperiment with creation of juvenile control systems. ProfessorNorval Morris has put the matter well:Whenever by state authority we limit a citizen's physical free-dom, we are disposing of the greatest powers (capital punish-ment apart) that the collective exercises over its members.When this is done for the citizen's own good, or to protect othersfrom predicted harm at his hands, a decent respect for our ownignorance should give us pause.' 0Unsupportable faith in the ability of social scientists to predictfuture human behavior could cause more misery than all ofour present practices combined.What we need at this point is neither a hopeless and dis-tracting campaign to change the American scene nor a heavy-handed, counterproductive insistence on higher levels of en-8 Id. at 242.1' And, of course, the broader the criteria of inclusion in the program, thehigher will be the apparent rate of "cures."V) N. Morris, Foreword to R. ROCK WITH M. JACOBSON AND R. JANOPAUL,HOSPITALIZATION AND DISCHARGE OF THE MENTALLY ILL at xv (1968).DENVER LAW JOURNALforcement power. If we use what we do know, significant im-provements are currently possible, provided that we recognizethe limits of our knowledge.The introduction to Crime in America characterizes Mr.Clark as a dreamer, unafraid of the rebukes of "practical"men." Publication of the book is some evidence of both points.So is his conclusion: "Guided by reason, America will soar onwings of humane concern.' '12Lawrence P. Tiffany*11 CLARK, supra note 2, at 9.12 Id. at 346.* Professor of Law, University of Denver College of Law.VOL. 48

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