Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [171]
Alcatraz is “history,” but the federal prison system is far from quaint and historical. It shows no signs of turning into Disneyland, or a theme park of yesterday’s crime. The number of federal prisoners has grown steadily over the years. In 1890, there were fewer than 2,000 federal prisoners ; in 1915, there were about 3,000;37 by 1930, the numbers had reached 26,000 (half of these, however, were military prisoners);38 on January 1, 1940, there were 20,000 nonmilitary prisoners; in 1980, slightly under 25,000; the drug wars boosted the figures so that by the mid-1980s the number of prisoners ranged between 35,000 and 40,000.39 On December 31, 1989, the system housed 53,347 men and women—86.6 percent of them sentenced, 13.4 percent awaiting sentence.40 The Bureau of Prisons controlled some forty-seven institutions in various parts of the country.41
Of course, there are vastly more state than federal prisoners, in 1992 as in 1900. But the federal system is slowly catching up. In 1910, there were 66,831 prisoners in state institutions as compared to 1,904 in federal prisons—thirty—five times more. In 1940, the figures were 146,325 and 19,260, respectively; by then the state totals were only seven and a half times as great. In 1980, 261,292 men and women were in state prisons, 41;085 in federal prisons, a ratio of about six to one.42 But there are still, today, about twice as many prisoners in California’s prisons (about 100,000) as in the whole federal system. It remains to be seen what the future will bring.
As the federal law of crimes has grown, so, too, has federal law enforcement, which did not amount to much before 1900. In 1908, a Bureau of Investigation was created inside the Justice Department. This was the rather Napoleonic brainchild of Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte (who was, in fact, a relative of Napoleon). Bonaparte had asked for authority to hire investigators. When Congress failed to give him what he wanted, he struck out on his own. He issued an order organizing a small investigating staff. The president, Theodore Roosevelt, who had Napoleonic tendencies of his own, transferred eight agents from the Secret Service to this brand-new bureau.43 President Taft’s attorney general, George W. Wickersham, ratified the action.44
Out of this bureau, and these modest beginnings, grew the famous (and sometimes notorious) Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In 1921, J. Edgar Hoover became assistant director of the agency, and in 1924 he took over as director. Hoover dominated the agency from then until his death in 1972, a period of some forty-eight years. During that time, presidents came and went, but Hoover stayed. He exercised immense power, surviving the gyrations and perturbations of politics. He became, in the words of one critic, “the greatest untouchable in American history.”45
Franklin Roosevelt’s administration must shoulder some of the responsibility for boosting the FBI’s power. When Congress created a flock of new federal offenses in 1934, the FBI was given the job of enforcement. 46 Hoover, a master of publicity, made full use of his authority; he “skillfully manipulated the media,” turning a number of “otherwise ordinary criminals” into “public enemies.”47 When, in the thirties, the FBI caught dangerous crooks on the order of John Dillinger (or took credit for catching them), its reputation and mystique grew to heroic size. The FBI was fearless, incorruptible, efficient, bold—a magnificent army in the war against crime. Or so it seemed.
Hoover ran a tight ship. His own views were xenophobic and reactionary. The FBI was a most reluctant ally, if it was an ally at all, in the battle for civil rights. It is true that Hoover was an early opponent of the Nazi regime,