“Budgets, Institutions, and Change: Criminal Justice Policy in America” Revisited

Abstract

Calderia and Cowart published an article that theorized that presidents are responsive in their budgetary responsibilities to increases in official crime rates. The scope of their study was the years 1935 to 1975, and their findings supported their theory that presidents were engaged in substantive policy making. The current study replicates and updates the original research to determine if presidents continue this pattern of increasing budgets to fight increases in reported crime, as originally theorized. The authors theorize that in more recent years, criminal justice policy became more symbolic and is often a gesture used by presidents to gain political and popular support. This study finds that in the time frame after the original study, the same patterns do not hold true, and budgetary allocations are no longer responsive to the rise and fall in official crime rates, thus demonstrating support for the theory of symbolics.