Statement by the President at a Meeting With a Group of Governors on Problems of Crime and Law Enforcement.

THE FACT of crime and the fear of crime are common across our land. For it has an unrelenting pace. It exacts heavy costs in human suffering and in financial losses to both individuals and communities. It blocks the achievement of a good life for all our people.

No government and no society can fully immunize itself against criminal behavior. But government has a special duty to exert every means to insure for all our people safety of the home and safety of the streets. A society can be neither great nor just as long as crime rates swell.

Freedom from fear is not a figure of speech. It is a principal requirement in a decent society and a just expectation of every citizen.

Our system of agriculture produces more food with fewer people than any country in the world.

Our vast transportation system is among the swiftest, safest, and most effective in the world.

We have extended the span of life because of sustained research by government, industry, and private citizens.

But in the field of crime, our efforts are archaic. Our system of criminal justice, fragmented in function and geography, is starved of concerted attention.

There is hardly any other overriding area of public concern in which there is so little real knowledge, so great a deferral of public action and delayed reform, and so widespread a need for all levels of government to make new starts and pursue new courses.

Our Nation has long prided itself on a tradition of local responsibility in the principal domains of law enforcement. The thought of a national police force--a Gestapo--repels us.

For ours is a federal society. Responsibility is shared. We insist that each unit of government exercise its full capacities.

And yet there is a driving and creative role for the Federal Government to play in partnership with State and local officials. Let me just give you a few measurements of our joint task.

--Each year over 7 million Americans confront the machinery of justice.

--The correctional institutions and services in the United States handle more than 1 1/2 million persons each day.

--The cost of operating all our correctional services is nearly $1 billion. The annual "tuition" for an adult offender is nearly $2,000; for a juvenile it is nearly $4,000.

--The highest rate of increase in crime is among juveniles. One out of six boys will be referred to a juvenile court for an act of delinquency before his 18th birthday. The arrests of persons under 18 for serious crimes has increased nearly 50 percent since 1960.

--The full cost to our society of all crime in 1 year cannot be accurately estimated. It is at least $27 billion.

What are we doing about these damning facts? What can be done?

The first goal of our efforts has been fuller knowledge and understanding. We are energetically seeking it now in the work of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice.

This Commission is chaired by the Attorney General. It consists of 18 members drawn from the bar and many sections of private endeavor. It has mobilized the best minds and talents from every relevant discipline. More than 200 experts are aiding in the Commission's nationwide inquiries. The inquiries of its staff are directed at every level of the law enforcement process.

The Commission is moving in several directions:

1. It has confirmed that we must improve the method of collecting crime statistics.

The leadership of the FBI and Mr. Hoover in the compilation of crime statistics and in the promotion of police standards has been outstanding. But no matter how careful their work, large numbers of crime are unreported in many areas. We know how many crimes are reported. But what of those which are not?

There are even greater deficiencies in figures on crimes processed in the courts and the numbers of criminals successfully rehabilitated in our correctional institutions. And there are no figures on perhaps the most necessary topic of all--the numbers of persons who are victimized by crime.

The Commission is probing further. A careful, representative sample has been made of 13,000 American households to analyze the full effects of crime. This was supplemented by intensive precinct profiles in three large cities. Here the questions are being discussed fully with policemen who have their daily beats in the precincts; they are being discussed with the businesses, schools, churches, and park personnel located in these precincts.

2. The Commission is looking closely at those important segments of the criminal justice system which lie outside the courtroom.

At least 80 percent of those arrested never come to trial. The various mechanisms of plea-bargaining in lower courts are being analyzed. The Commission will recommend ways by which these might operate more fairly or swiftly.

Similar hard questions are being asked about the correctional institutions and programs in the Nation. We need to know whether crime will be reduced by getting certain prisoners back to the community earlier--or whether work-release programs can be used more beneficially--or what further contributions medicine and psychiatry can make to prisoner rehabilitation.

3. The President's Commission is trying to discover how science and technology can be servants in the national effort to reduce the scourge of crime.

There are no easy remedies. The Commission has found, for example, that in other countries--Great Britain, Sweden, Israel-affluence may itself invite crime, just as it does in this country. For example, the rise in car thefts closely parallels the rise in car sales; the spreading use of credit cards or self-service markets brings an increase of crime in suburbs as well as cities.

Beyond intense probing for knowledge and root causes, the Federal Government has also adopted new programs which are already showing heartening results.

A pioneering venture, approved by the Congress last year, is the Law Enforcement Assistance Act. During the last fiscal year, 79 demonstration projects in 30 States conducted by nonprofit groups or local agencies were made possible.

This is not a subsidy program. Its purpose is to encourage and support promising experimental approaches in communities willing to innovate.

Nevertheless, crime cannot be liquidated by a single solvent. Delinquency, dropouts, youth unemployment, rootlessness, and lack of commitment are common symptoms of the isolations and deprivations of much urban life.

That is why a strategy against crime must have a wide context and that is why this administration is seeking to set in motion a full medley of tools which assist young people to pursue a genuine career with opportunities, incentive, and social value.

The establishment of over 150 Youth Opportunity Centers, the Job Corps, the Neighborhood Youth Corps, the invigoration and expansion of the Bureau of Apprenticeship and Training, the reevaluation of selective service and national service indicate our Federal effort. The use of public-private neighborhood corporations under the demonstration cities program, which should soon be enacted, will be a major step against crime.

But without another element, it will make little difference what the Crime Commission can teach us. Without another element, it will make little difference what experimental success the law enforcement assistance program can achieve. Without another element, the impact of our other and broader Federal programs will be blunted. And that element, clearly, is the involvement of other units of government--and the States in particular.

There must be follow-through at the local level if the findings of the Commission are to be converted into action and we derive the greatest possible benefit from the Law Enforcement Assistance Act. Thus, at my direction earlier this year, the Attorney General invited the Governor of each State to appoint planning committees on criminal administration.

I am pleased to announce today that 20 Governors have already acted and 14 of these have indicated their intentions to form such committees. As you know, we have asked every State to send a representative to Washington for a major conference in October to discuss ways of implementing the principal findings and recommendations of the National Crime Commission.

I cannot stress too strongly the critical dependence of this Nation on the initiative and resolution of the States in meeting the mounting and complex problems of crime. This is truly an area in which our attainment of solutions depends on the officials of our 50 States.

Your example, your accomplishments, your willingness to share your findings and experiences with others far outweighs the help the Federal Government alone can give. Practically everything the Federal Government is undertaking is hostage to your enterprise and vision.

That is why I hope that every State will soon have its planning committee on criminal administration. That is why I hope each State will send its very best representation to the October conference in Washington.

It is simple fact that the Federal Government and all the citizens of this land depend on the alert response of its State and community leaders. It is beyond the powers of the Federal Government by itself to overhaul and modernize the system of criminal justice. It is within the power of our State Governments, in partnership with the Federal Government, to control crime, to enlarge justice, and to insure the public safety.