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What, If Anything, Can the Federal Government Do About Crime?

NCJ Number
164375
Author(s)
J Q Wilson
Date Published
1996
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This paper argues that the Federal role in crime control should focus on research and development through the mechanism of demonstration programs rather than through an expansion of Federal criminal laws and Federal law enforcement efforts.
Abstract
The Federal Government does have an important duty to investigate real interstate crimes, both blue collar and white collar, all crimes that involve interstate conspiracies and all international crimes that touch our borders, and there are Federal reservations and buildings it must guard. Still, the key Federal role ought to be to do the one thing local authorities cannot and will not do on their own. This is to design and test new crime-control strategies. Cities and States will not do this, not only because it is expensive, but because it serves to provide a free benefit to other jurisdictions that have not taken the risk of funding the research. Some priorities for research are the impact of community policing on crime rates and the cost- effectiveness of various strategies for dealing with juvenile offenders. Identification of the causes of crime should also be researched. The core problem of mounting a significant Federal research-and-development effort is to persuade members of Congress and their constituents that they are doing something about crime by spending money on research-and-development evaluation.