Crime and Punishment in American History - Lawrence M. Friedman [175]
When all is said and done, despite all the hoopla, the federal role in criminal justice is limited, and will stay limited in the foreseeable future. The irony is that recent conservative presidents, who have long mouthed slogans about states’ rights and local government, have been more zealous than the liberals in denouncing crime, drug use, and the like. They have thus helped keep alive the myth that the federal government can actually do something about the problem. In fact, there is not much the federal government can do, at least under present laws and jurisdictional arrangements. Of course, the federal government could pay state and local governments-could support criminal justice systems, police systems, prisons, and the like. But the federal government is loath to put its money where its mouth is.
Very few national politicians dare to say this out loud. Most of them seem anxious to make political hay out of criminal justice. In his State of the Union Address on January 28, 1992, President George Bush declared in ringing terms that “we must do something about crime,” especially “violent street crime.” A “tired woman on her way to work at six in the morning on a subway deserves the right to get there safely,” he said. “Congress,” he begged, “pass my comprehensive crime bill.... Help your country.”65
But the comprehensive crime bill he referred to, which was then languishing in Congress, was anything but comprehensive, as the president must have known. It would do nothing much for the woman on the subway. It would have, at best, microscopic influence on crime. The national government was not and is not in control of criminal justice. At best, it has been a kind of Broadway angel, handing out money but never running the show. And even here it has mostly been a tightwad.
The truth is, national politicians never wanted to be in charge. They wanted no part of the real system of criminal justice. The real system is complicated, dirty, and a mess. Whoever touches pitch, gets defiled, or at least entrapped, and criminal justice is a tarpit of colossal proportions.
13
CRIME ON THE STREETS; CRIME IN THE SUITES
MOST CITIZEN—CERTAINLY MOST MEMBERS OF THE MIDDLE CLASS—WILL probably go through life without running afoul of the more serious parts of the criminal justice system. Many will be victims of crime—robbed, burglarized, assaulted. A great many will be called up for jury service; some will wriggle out of this duty, but a fair number will actually serve, though perhaps not at a criminal trial. Only a minority will ever be tried for a felony or spend time in prison or jail. Yet there is one part of the system that almost everybody will have to deal with, and probably more than once. That part is traffic law.
Traffic Law
This vast system is almost entirely a development of the twentieth century. Traffic law existed in the nineteenth century, in the horse-and-buggy era, but only in a rudimentary way (see chapter 5). Today, in the age of the automobile, traffic law processes an incredible volume of petty offenses and transgressions, and a good sprinkling of more serious offenses.
Almost everybody who drives—and that means, by now, almost every healthy adult—is bound to be “guilty” of some traffic or auto sin; even the best drivers. In cities, it is hard to avoid getting a parking ticket every once in a while. The smaller traffic offenses, on the whole, carry very little moral intensity or bite. People who would immediately call the police to report a thief or a shoplifter would never do the same for a speeder, or someone they saw making an illegal U-turn. Spumed lovers expose some “victimless crimes”; irate ex-employees turn in tax evaders; but almost nobody snitches on people who violate traffic laws. Enforcement depends on the traffic police, and on them alone. And, to be sure, the police car, prowling up and down the streets, or roaring down the highway with sirens blasting and lights flashing, is a familiar