Enforcement of the Criminal Law

Abstract

F EATURED by angry criticisms from press and public, lax enforcement of the criminal law goes on year after year as one of our major national problems. There are times when it becomes the one outstanding issue in the popular mind. But even when economic problems forge to the front, or the menace of impending war stirs the imagination and arouses the concern of all our people, criminal justice still holds a place in their thoughts and causes them uneasy moments. Why should this be so? Why should this one aspect of the management of public affairs attract so much attention from thoughtful men? Are our failures in criminal law enforcement due to our democratic way of life or to some inherent fault in our free institutions of government? If such as these be accepted as hypotheses, it is difficult to explain away the highly satisfactory performance of criminal justice agencies in the British Isles and in Canada, Australia, and some of the continental democracies. Are our failures due to a certain immaturity in our administrative patterns that will be corrected by mere lapse of time? Perhaps so, though here again parallel cases spring up on every hand wherein it is apparent that youthful countries have achieved greater successes in law enforcement than we have commonly known. Are our diversity of ethnic strains and a confusion of tongues responsible? This is a view that is widely held, though many and varied are the conclusions drawn from it. Usually some one national or racial stock is singled out to bear the burden of responsibility for high crime rates and unsatisfactory enforcement standards. Yet when tested against the body of available facts, there is precious little of support or confirmation that emerges. It is most likely that there is no single cause, and that a large number of factors interplay with varying intensity, thus confusing even the general outlines of the problem, and obstructing the path to its solution. What factors in the American situation can be described as wholly or nearly unique?