Evidence, Ideology, and Politics in the Making of American Criminal Justice Policy

Abstract

Criminal justice policy and research in the United States have mostly marched in different directions since the mid-1970s. Sizable bodies of high-quality research have accumulated on many subjects on which policy making in a rational world would be evidence based, but only on a few have they had substantial influence. Policy making on some subjects has occurred mostly in an evidence-free zone. The comparatively slight influence of scientific research findings is a modest payoff from 50 years of public investment. The report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, observed that “what has been found to be the greatest need is the need to know” (1967, p. 273) and that “we need to know much more about crime. A national strategy against crime must be in large part a strategy of research” (p. 270). “Accurate data are the beginning of wisdom,” likewise observed America’s first national crime commission, the Wickersham Commission (National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement 1931, p. 3), in recommending a plan for creating a body of knowledge “covering crime, criminals, criminal justice, and penal treatment” at federal, state, and local levels and proposing to entrust this task to a single federal agency. The 1967 President’s Commission proposed the establishment of an independent national institute on criminal justice research equivalent to the National Science Foundation or the National Institutes of Health. The US Congress in the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 established the Law Enforcement Assistance Ad