To the Editor:

Isidore Silver’s analysis of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice [“Crime and Punishment,” March] is correct in pointing out that fact-finding commissions are often substitutes for concrete action. . . .

I disagree, however, with Mr. Silver’s proposal that criminal sanctions be used to coerce desirable conduct without the authority of law. Power without authority is tyrannical. Inherent in our democratic form of government is the concept that the institutions of government are in the service of the citizens and not the other way around. Thus the institutions of government cannot arbitrarily decide . . . what is desirable conduct.

Ginger K. Wiley
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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To the Editor:

. . . Mr. Silver erred when he stated that the report does not recognize general lawlessness as a major problem. On the contrary, the document revolves around the fact that crime is not limited to a handful of people. Indeed, it is stated in the section of the report called The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society that “an independent survey of seventeen hundred persons found that 91 per cent of the sample admitted they had committed acts for which they might have received jail or prison sentences.”

Mr. Silver goes on to say that “the recommendations spew forth, undeterred by the severe probems of cost and cost allocations.” The truth of the matter is that the problems of money and money sources were discussed in depth by the Commission. But even if this were not the case, how could Mr. Silver make that ridiculous statement? If the Commission devoted its complete . . . attention to problems of cost, it would not have been capable of making any recommendations at all—the costs would have been prohibitive!

Considered as a whole, Mr. Silver’s article is extremely overcritical and hence does a great injustice to the Commission’s members, their staff, consultants, and advisors. . . .

Revis O. Robinson
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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To the Editor:

. . . The Report of the President’s Crime Commission, which Mr. Silver so severely criticizes, served as a textbook in one of my criminology courses. While he apparently considers it an uninspiring, relatively worthless endeavor, our class found much of the material contained in the report capable of producing stimulating, if sometimes heated, discussions.

The author attacks the Commission for not showing courage in dealing with controversial issues. . . . For example, he claims the report is, “marred by the absence of a sustained inquiry into the nature of ‘crime,’ the nature of the ‘criminal,’ or the nature of the society that fosters them.” Just what does Mr. Silver consider sustained? There are at least three chapters which deal extensively with these very problems. The section relating to juvenile delinquency, in fact, is devoted primarily to those conditions in society which lead to deviant behavior.

Referring to crimes without victims, Mr. Silver charges that the Commission “does very little to challenge the tendency of Americans to label as ‘criminal’ what they find to be socially undesirable.” However, realizing the complexities involved in the problems of immoral or undesirable behavior, the Commission quite objectively and honestly admits it is in no position to resolve these issues. Mr. Silver was less interested in objectivity than in finding statements which would reinforce his own beliefs. . . .

Douglas Ell
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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To the Editor:

. . . Mr. Silver is grossly mistaken in assuming that the President’s Commission believes there could be an ultimate victory over crime. . . . In its summary report, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, the Commission says, “Controlling crime in America is an endeavor that will be slow and hard and costly. But America can control crime if it will.” Thus it is effective control, not ultimate victory that the Commission stresses.

While it is true that the report is deficient in many respects, if each agency directly connected with any aspect of crime (i.e., law enforcement, the courts, corrections, etc.) would study the Commission’s recommendations and then act on as many of them as it deemed possible or practical to its own individual area, then the value of the report would be obvious.

As for Mr. Silver’s assertion that “The police mentality exists even before recruitment” . . . : If such statements are true, then, Sir, I have wasted almost four years of college education.

Raymond D. Fox
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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To the Editor:

. . . I can see little point in Mr. Silver’s comparison of the Wickersham Report—made thirty-six years ago—with the report of the President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice made last year. The conditions of the “roaring 20’s” and the old-line police setup do not seem related to the complexities of 1968.

There are several points on which I agree completely with Mr. Silver’s position but one about which I find myself in violent disagreement with him. That is the statement, “professionalization of the police is not the panacea. The police mentality exists even before recruitment.” I would like to ask Mr. Silver a question: if professionalization of the police, which basically involves raising training standards, educational requirements, changing attitudes toward the law and improving public relations, will not change the police mentality, what will? I am striving for a broad liberal education before entering the career of law enforcement. If this does not change my mentality, I wonder what Mr. Silver would suggest. Policemen are not gods. They are human beings and as such are capable of error, blundering, corruption, and incompetence, but by raising the police service to the level of a profession, many dedicated police people hope to eliminate these detrimental characteristics.

Michael J. Fiorentino
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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To the Editor:

Isidore Silver’s article raises the important point of who is really going to control the police. This question has been placed in the lap of the courts and they have been forced to answer. Through a number of decisions, including Miranda vs. Arizona, Mapps vs. Ohio, etc., certain limitations have been placed on procedure, and certain guarantees established about the rights of the private citizen. But this is not enough. The courts do not have the necessary means for carrying out their “opinions.” It is going to be up to the individual law-enforcement agencies to do their own housecleaning, to be more selective in their recruiting, to be stricter in the performance of their duties, to educate their personnel to a higher level. . . .

Trevor H. Reisz
Department of Criminology
California State College
Long Beach, California

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Mr. Silver writes:

Ginger Wiley’s comment baffles me, for I thought that the thrust of my analysis of the Crime Commission Report was an attack on the over-use of the criminal sanction per se; my recognition that law enforcement agencies often use that sanction to “coerce desirable conduct” cannot be construed as advocacy of this practice.

Mr. Robinson’s polemic about the cost problem is misplaced. The Riot Commission Report also did not specify costs, nor, in context, did it have to. I was more worried about priorities in crime fighting (and their costs) than about cost per se. Surely, we could have had something more than the morass of suggestions without even an attempt broadly to classify such priorities. As for the “value” of the document, I think that my last three paragraphs state my position, and it would be futile to restate it now. . . .

Mr. Ell and I obviously have differing concepts of just what “sustained” treatment of a problem involves; the fundamental bias of the Report (although some of the Task Force papers on Juvenile Delinquency differ) is toward an acceptance of the social structure and an attempt to integrate deviant groups into it. Perhaps the Commission’s reluctance to deal with the issues of overcriminalization is due to their complexity, but, more likely, should be attributed to a desire not to offend various constituencies. Statements such as, “The time is overdue for realistic examination of the abortion laws,” followed by “Undoubtedly a great deal of research is needed,” do not inspire confidence in the Commission’s commitment to asking (much less answering) fundamental questions. The same could be said for its reticence about homosexuality, birth control, and other painful subjects. Just how the “system” can be intelligently discussed without an analysis of its relation to “immoral or undesirable behavior” is a mystery to me (though not to the Commission) since about one-half of all annual arrests in America are for crimes (?) involving precisely and only such behavior.

The Commission may have spoken in terms of “effective control,” as Mr. Fox states, but the orientation of the Report is toward elimination of this alien phenomenon (arbitrarily) termed “crime.” If control is the problem, then a different set of questions must of necessity be asked. Rather than determining just what an “acceptable” level of crime (of what sort) should be our social goal, the Commission clearly opted for Manichean destruction—a not un-American phenomenon.

My use of the Wickersham studies was not prompted by any desire to make direct comparisons, as implied by Mr. Fiorentino, but merely to demonstrate just how the new rhetoric about crime reflects our new way of thinking. Had the Commission been as blunt in its criticisms as was the Wickersham group, perhaps there would have been less “scientism,” less caution, less feeling of déjà vu about the Report. Indeed, the ability of the letter writers to find quotes supporting their positions is symptomatic of the very problem inherent in the Report—its intellectual eclecticism. A morsel for everybody (at times, as I tried to point out, some of the morsels were indigestible in combination).

Mr. Reisz’s letter specifically and directly raises the point of “police professionalism” as a panacea for what is admittedly undesirable police conduct, and quite evidently, the other letters are concerned with this problem too. I am not a police sociologist, but my conclusion that better entrance standards, better training, etc., is not the answer is supported by experts such as Arthur Niederhoffer (a cop) who concludes that “If the law enforcement occupation is successful in obtaining the status of a profession, it will be a Horatio Alger story” (Behind the Shield, Doubleday). After reading the aforementioned letters, I can only hope that Niederhoffer’s pessimism about the effect of the police system upon (often uncynical) recruits is misplaced. . . .