Crime commissions can fit a variety of different descriptions. Some are privately funded and provide citizens, especially the civic-minded business and political elites, opportunities to participate in criminal justice. Others are affiliated with the government and perform a variety of functions. Some are instruments of criminal justice reform. Others thwart progressive change, deflect blame, and delay action. The main types of crime commissions are citizens’ crime commissions, survey commissions, state crime commissions, truth commissions, and presidential crime commissions.
Citizens’ Crime Commissions
Citizens’ crime commissions are independent, privately funded agencies that serve as public watchdogs—they observe judges in courtrooms, investigate public corruption, and conduct research on the administration of justice. In contrast to state crime commissions and presidential crime commissions, citizens’ crime commissions have neither governmental status nor official power. Instead, they serve as pressure groups, attempting to alter the practices and policies of criminal justice agencies and to articulate the public interest. A citizens’ crime commission’s importance in any community cannot be measured simply by the results obtained in the particular problems it addresses. Its very presence in a community serves as a potentially powerful force for good government and accountability.
The first citizens’ crime commission in America was the Chicago Crime Commission (CCC). Formed in 1919 by the Chicago Association of Commerce, the CCC is the oldest, most active, and most respected citizens’ crime commission in the United States. Influential businessmen and civic leaders established the organization to prevent crime and to wage war against corruption and inefficiency within the criminal justice system. Over the years, the CCC has advocated a more punitive criminal justice system that deters crime. Its leadership describes the CCC’s role as that of a ”watchdog” that monitors police, courts, and correctional institutions for lenience, laxity, and corruption. The commission’s main claim to fame rests on a clever publicity stunt it pulled during the Prohibition era in order to arouse public indignation against Chicago’s gangs. When the CCC released the first ”public enemies list” in 1930, Chicago’s newspapers published this list and labeled Al Capone as ”Public Enemy Number One.” Although the CCC has not been in the limelight in recent decades, it has remained active in Chicago, monitoring the justice system, campaigning against legalized gambling, and pressing authorities to take a punitive response to crime.
The CCC was one of more than two dozen citizens’ crime commissions operating in the United States in 2006. Atlanta, Dallas, Kansas City, Los Angeles, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Wichita are some of the other communities that had citizens’ crime commissions in 2006.
Survey Commissions
Survey commissions were in vogue in America during the 1920s. These commissions mobilized the talents of experts from different fields, focused their energies on investigating the state of criminal justice in a particular city or state at a specific moment in time, prepared reports, used those reports to arouse public opinion to win support for the commission’s recommendation, and then went out of existence. In terms of their politics, these commissions reflected the crime control perspective that dominated thinking in the 1920s. They stressed the importance of improving the bureaucratic efficiency of criminal justice agencies and gave short shrift to the question of whether or not the legal system was achieving equal justice for all.
The Cleveland Survey of Criminal Justice was the single most important crime commission of its type. It put forth the model of criminal justice as a system, a model that other crime commissions copied. Codirectors of the survey were Roscoe Pound and Felix Frankfurter, two of the most famous figures in American criminal law in the 1920s. The final seven-hundred-page report, published in 1922, represented the best thinking about criminal justice in the United States. The section on the police, for instance, was written by Raymond B. Fosdick, author of American Police Systems.
The Missouri Crime Survey (1926) and the Illinois Crime Survey (1929) replicated the Cleveland Survey’s approach. These commissions differed from the Cleveland Survey, however, insofar as they were studies of criminal justice at the state level rather than the city level. Both the Illinois and Missouri surveys were started by respective state bar associations, were funded by business interests, and retained social scientists to do the research. The Illinois Survey also included an extraordinary study of organized crime in Chicago.
State Crime Commissions
State crime commissions are state agencies whose responsibilities range from investigation to planning and coordination. The examples of Nebraska and New York capture the diversity of state crime commissions.
The Nebraska Crime Commission provides comprehensive planning of activities leading to the improvement of the criminal justice system. Through the direction of a board comprised of criminal justice and juvenile justice professionals, this crime commission serves a leadership role by providing expertise, technical assistance, training, financial aid, enforcement of jail standards, research and evaluation, and informational resources to criminal justice and juvenile justice programs across the state.
The New York State Crime Commission investigates public corruption, labor racketeering, fraud, and organized crime. When evidence of criminal involvement is developed during an investigation, the commission refers the case to an appropriate prosecutor. Of equal importance is the commission’s role as a ”sunshine agency.” To focus public attention on particular problems of local or statewide importance, the commission has the authority to conduct public hearings and issue public reports. As a result of playing this role, the commission has been a catalyst for the passage of new laws and changes in existing laws.
Truth Commissions
Truth commissions are ad hoc bodies formed to research and report on human rights abuses in a particular country or in relationship to a specific conflict. These commissions permit victims, victims’ relatives, and the alleged perpetrators of human rights violations to present evidence. Usually truth commissions prepare recommendations on how to prevent a recurrence of human rights abuses. Governments and international organizations sponsor and fund truth commissions.
During the twenty-first century the international community has favored the idea of truth commissions as an alternative to prosecutions in order to document abuses and facilitate national reconciliation. Some shortcomings of truth commissions are that they lack prosecutorial power to subpoena witnesses or punish perjury and they are vulnerable to politically imposed limitations and manipulation.
A prominent example of a truth commission is Nelson Mandela’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Following the end of apartheid and Mandela’s election, South Africa sought to come to grips with its violent past. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to address human rights abuses during the time of apartheid and minority rule. The commission emphasized collecting information over assigning blame and guilt. It even extended pardons to those willing to cooperate. This commission did not bring any perpetrators of injustice to justice, but it did begin the dialogue necessary for ethnic healing and national unity.
Presidential Crime Commissions
Presidential crime commissions are corporate bodies of civilians created by the president to operate for a short period of time and to focus on a discrete task. Two types of presidential crime commissions are agenda commissions and information commissions. Agenda commissions direct their efforts toward a mass audience and try to marshal support for new presidential policy initiatives. Information commissions target a much narrower group of officials. Their goal is to improve policy making by providing new ideas, new facts, and new analysis to policy makers. Both types can be either proactive or reactive.
Examples of proactive presidential crime commissions include the Reagan administration’s Presidential Commission on Drunk Driving and the Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography (the Meese Commission), which was created in 1985 to bring greater public attention to the harms associated with pornography. An example of a reactive agenda commission is the Wickersham Commission. It responded to a hotly debated issue already in the public eye, prohibition, and its task was to control political damage, defuse the issue of prohibition enforcement to allow political passions to cool, deflect blame, and provide some sort of official administration response.
Proactive information presidential crime commissions feature a forward focus. These commissions are meant to get out in front of a policy problem and anticipate future developments. One of the most significant proactive crime commissions has been the U.S. Commission on National Security in the Twenty-First Century (better known as the Hart-Rudman Commission after its cochairs, former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman), which was created in 1998 to review U.S. national security challenges after the Cold War. This commission’s final report made the most accurate prediction ever made by a presidential crime commission: The report warned in January 2001 that terrorists would attack America on U.S. soil.
In their reactive form presidential crime commissions assess what went wrong, investigate policy failures, and report on lessons learned. Examples of reactive information commissions are the Warren Commission on President Kennedy’s assassination, the Kerner Commission on the 1967 race riots, and the 9/11 Commission.
