President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice: The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society, February 1967; Annals Vol. 18, p. 442
“The underlying problems are ones that the criminal justice system can do little about. The unruliness of young people, widespread drug addiction, the existence of much poverty in a wealthy society, the pursuit of the dollar by any available means are phenomena the police, the courts, and the correctional apparatus, which must deal with crimes and criminals one by one, cannot confront directly. They are strands that can be disentangled from the fabric of American life only by the concerted action of all of our society.”
“Unless society does take concerted action to change the general conditions and attitudes that are associated with crime, no improvement in law enforcement and administration of justice will be of much avail.”
“What appears to be happening throughout the country is that parental control, and especially paternal [father’s] authority over young people is becoming weaker. The community is accustomed to rely upon this force as one guarantee that children will learn to fit themselves into society in an orderly and peaceable manner, that the natural and valuable rebelliousness of young people will not express itself in the form of warring violently on society or any of its members. The programs and activities of almost every kind of social institution with which children come in contact – schools, churches, social service agencies, youth organizations, – are predicated on the assumption that children acquire their fundamental attitudes toward life, their moral standards, in their homes. The social institutions provide children with many opportunities: to learn, to worship, to play, to socialize, to secure expert help in solving a variety of problems. However, offering opportunities is not the same thing as providing moral standards.”
“The community’s social institutions have so far not found ways to give young people the motivation to live moral lives; some of them have not even recognized their duty to seek such ways. Young people who have not received strong and loving parental guidance, or whose experience leads them to believe that all of society is callous at best, or a racket at worst, tend to be unmotivated people, and therefore people with whom the community is most unprepared to cope. Much more to the point, they are people who are unprepared to cope with the many ambiguities and lacks that they find in the community. Boredom corrodes ambition and cynicism corrupts those with ethical sensitivity.”
“Society has not devised ways for ensuring that all its members have the ability to assume responsibility. It has let too many of them grow up untaught, unmotivated, unwanted. The criminal justice system has a great potential for dealing with individual instances of crime, but it was not designed to eliminate the conditions in which most crime breeds. It needs help. A community’s most enduring protection against crime is to right the wrongs and cure the illnesses that tempt men to harm their neighbors.”
“No system, however well staffed or organized, no level of material well-being for all, will rid society of crime if there is not a widespread ethical motivation and a widespread belief that the government and the social order deserve credence, respect and loyalty.”
“Each time a citizen fails to report an offense, declines to take the commonsense precautions against crime his police department tells him to, is disrespectful to an officer of the law, shirks his duty as a juror or performs it with a biased mind or a hate-filled heart, he contributes his mite to crime.”
“A further duty of every citizen is to familiarize himself with the problems of crime and the criminal justice system so that when legislators are considering criminal laws or appropriations for the system, he can express informed views; and when politicians make crime an election issue, he will not be panicked or deceived. Controlling crime depends to a great degree on interaction between the community and the criminal justice system.”
“Until the public becomes fully aware of what the [criminal justice]system can do and what it cannot do, it cannot give [society] the help it needs.”
