Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Remarks to the Delegates to the Conference of State Committees on Criminal Administration.

October 15, 1966

General Clark, Professor Vorenberg, distinguished mayors and judges, and others of you here tonight who have come together to join us in this great adventure to commit ourselves to a concerted attack on crime in this country:

Ramsey told me that you were few in number, but you had come from many places and he believed that we could begin here tonight our real fight on a war within our own boundaries. And I have driven for the last 35 minutes at the end of a busy day, so busy that I haven't had my lunch, because I wanted very much to talk to you and to give you a message in the hope that you could carry it back to your respective States.

We are today fighting a war within our own boundaries. The enemy is not identified by uniform, but no man, woman, or child is really free from the hostilities. And nothing short of total victory can ever be acceptable.

This war is a war against crime in America.

Of the evils which beset our society, crime is by far the most difficult to understand. It is, therefore, the most difficult to eradicate.

This great Nation of ours was built on a foundation of respect--respect from all the citizens--for law and order in all the States. Yet tonight there are more than 2,700,000 major crimes being committed in this Nation every year--that means there are more than five crimes being committed every minute.

This Nation can mount a major military effort on the other side of the globe, and we can transfer hundreds of thousands of men 10,000 miles away from home without too much difficulty. Yet this Nation tolerates criminal activity, right here at home, that costs the taxpayers far more in both lives and dollars than the Vietnam conflict has ever cost them.

We amass knowledge in the sciences to eradicate killing and crippling diseases. Yet we seem incapable of preventing a forcible rape every 23 minutes in this country, a robbery every 4 ½ minutes, an assault every 2 1/2 minutes, a car theft every minute, and a burglary every 27 seconds!

Now I think--and that is why I came here to talk to you tonight at this historic meeting and I think it will be historic--I think the time has come to reverse this trend.

I was quite disappointed that I made a statement very much of this same general tenor to three meetings of Governors that came here to meet with the President and I didn't see the press recognize it, although if we make a mistake in Vietnam it gets adequate attention. If we make a mistake other places we have no difficulties. But recording the President's appeal to all the Governors of the States of the Union to come in now and take the leadership in helping us to reverse this trend did not waken excitement or did not really come to the public interest.

We are trying to build for greatness in America. But it is pretty difficult with a society which lives in fear of robbers and murderers and racketeers to be great or even respectable.

It is the responsibility of the Government, I think, at all levels to secure for its citizens freedom from criminal outrages. I have said before, many times, and I repeat here again tonight, that I pledge myself in the allotted time to me in the Presidency to use every single resource of the Federal Government to banish crime from the United States of America.

But the Federal Government cannot solve this problem by itself. That is why we have enlisted your attention. That is why we have urged you to come here. We can help, we can lead the way, but the ultimate solution rests in the initiative and resolution of the individual States themselves--and the assistance that they provide and the leadership they provide to the local governments and to their own citizens. This is an area in which results depend on the officials of all the 50 States.

And that is why we are here tonight.

In my message on crime to the Congress this year, I asked the Attorney General to work with the Governors to establish statewide committees on law enforcement and criminal justice. Your meeting here this week represents the first important step toward that goal. Because we think that together we must chart a national strategy against crime.

Such a strategy, it seems to me, has five objectives (and I hope that you will follow me through the enunciation of these objectives):

First, is increased understanding of crime. There is hardly any other major area of public concern of which there is so little real knowledge. And you can get them to say very little about our solution and about our problem because they are so busy reporting the crime.

Second, is more help for our police. No man in our society in this land is more in the eye of the storm than the policeman. These few--often underpaid, most of the time overworked--are called upon to protect the lives and the properties and to be the custodians of the millions of our people. They are really the unsung heroes of our civilization.

Third, is a more efficient and more equitable system of criminal justice. Each year 7 million Americans confront the machinery of justice--and they overload it. Intolerable delay at best--miscarriage of justice at worst.

Fourth, is better prisoner rehabilitation. One-third of all parolees revert to crime.

Fifth, is the search for social reform as well as criminal reform. Because we all know that in this enlightened 20th century it is far better to prevent crime than to punish it.

So the crying need for new information on crime was a major reason for my establishment in July 1965 of the national crime commission. When its report to me is completed next January, I believe that it will become one of the major documents of the age in which we live.

Preliminary reports from the Commission show that the criminal statistics--the knowledge that we need to fight crime--are incomplete and quite unreliable. Only a fraction--I want to repeat--only a fraction, possibly as few as one-tenth of the crimes committed in America, are known to our police.

We do not know how many crimes are committed.

We do not know how many crimes are processed in our courts.

We do not know how many Americans are victimized by crime.

We must know and we will know.

But statistics are only a part of our national requirement. We must give local police the tools that they must have if we expect them to do the job.

The Law Enforcement Assistance Act is now channeling Federal help to local police. This pioneering legislation was approved by the Congress only last year. In its first year of operation, it financed 79 demonstration projects in 30 different States. This year more programs are underway. We are now seeking legislation to extend this program and to double the funds that are available under it.

The Federal Bureau of investigation, under the able leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, is expanding its National Academy--expanding it six-fold. It will soon be able to train 1,200 rather than 200 law enforcement officials each year. It will provide the best training in the Nation and very special training in the Nation for an additional 1,000 officers.

We must also modernize our system of criminal justice. Efficiency and fairness are difficult to reconcile. But convictions must not be won at the expense of the constitutional rights of the citizens. Nor must the guilty go unpunished. The National Crime Commission will recommend ways in which the courts might operate more fairly, and I hope more swiftly.

The House of Representatives has unanimously approved the request for this administration for a 12-member national commission to recommend revisions in criminal laws and to close gaps that permit guilty persons to escape punishment. This bill is now before the Senate and we expect passage before the end of the session.

I am going to charge the Attorney General with the very special responsibility in that field. I hope when I come back, he tells me that we have come, and we have seen, and we have conquered.

In June, I signed into law the first real reform of our bail system in this country. It insures that all defendants will be considered as individuals and not as dollar signs.

Another area that demands our attention is rehabilitation. We are looking deeply into our correctional institutions and programs. The rate of crime among previous offenders is one problem, the ineffectiveness of correctional methods is another.

We need to know if crime can be reduced by getting certain prisoners back to the community earlier.

We need to know whether work-release programs can be used more beneficially.

We need to know what further contributions medicine and psychiatry can make to prisoner rehabilitation.

Your Federal Government will continue to strengthen the Nation's ability to resist crime. We will use the laws that we have and we will seek new laws that are seen to be necessary and appear to be useful.

We have legislation to control the illegal drug traffic.

We have legislation to control juvenile delinquency.

We will continue to fight for legal authority to end indiscriminate sale of firearms in the face of 17,000 Americans shot to death each year.

We will continue and accelerate our battle with that monster of our time, organized crime. And I wish we could excite and awaken the interest of every mother and every father to get up and do something to help us to fight that monster, organized crime, in this country.

But for the long-range prospects of this Nation, I look not to the anticrime laws but instead to the antipoverty laws.

Crime is elusive. Criminologists rack their brains to put their finger on the potential criminal and to find out and to determine why, oh why, does he act the way he does.

I believe a large part of the answer--possibly, conceivably, the largest part of all-was given to us many years ago by George Bernard Shaw when he said, "The greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty."

Poverty.

There is the real enemy.

Strike poverty down tonight and much of the crime will fall down with it.

Punish the criminal? By all means.

But if we wish to rid our Nation of crime, if we wish to stop hacking at its branches, we must cut its roots and we must drain its swampy breeding places--and that swampy breeding place, you know where it is--it is in the slums of this Nation.

There are very few affluent and educated Americans that are attracted to crime, and very few that have criminal records. But as we bring a fairer measure of prosperity and education to our 32 million poor people in this country, I believe that the crime rate whose growth frightens us tonight will begin to shrink significantly.

But we are working and we are building and we are trying to reach this goal. But the realities compel me to tell you that the need for a strong, effective system of law enforcement was never greater.

What can you do about it--this little group that is modestly met out here, relatively unnoticed, that comes from all corners of our globe not to write a Declaration of Independence or not to engage in a constitutional convention but to perform a service that may be almost as important--what can you do?

Well, I will tell you first what we can do. We can give our police in this Nation the support and the help that they need.

We can see that our laws are strictly but fairly enforced.

And that action is obtainable on a much prompter basis. We can see that our courts operate with speed and with justice and with efficiency.

All of us--every public official in this land--must make clear to all of our associates, our colleagues, our fellow citizens, that each of us regards the law as it is: a basic essential to orderly living, to modern society, and to the protection of all the rights of all the people and particularly to the dignity of the individual.

I don't know what will develop from your exchange of opinions. I do know that I am very proud of the leadership, the imagination, and the determination of General Clark in this field, and his predecessor, General Katzenbach. I do know that I want to offer them all the prestige of my office and all the influence of the Presidency and all the power of leadership that I can provoke and incite and contribute.

There are in Vietnam tonight more than 300,000 men, none of whom really want to be there. All of whom are afraid they will die tomorrow. Most people are not privileged to be there to protect the freedom of our fireplaces and our home life and our liberty in this Nation. And those of us that are not there have an even more compelling duty to do our job at home. And your job at home, which is evidenced by the fact that you are here, this is your interest, and there are reasons for your coming here: Your job at home is to help us to win this war at home, this war that I said is costing us more in lives and more in dollars and more in prestige and more in the future of this land than any war that we have ever been engaged in.

I cannot claim to be an expert, I don't know the details, but I hope that you by this exchange, and by this dedicated effort that is exemplified by this little band of courageous and far-seeing patriots meeting out here 35 minutes from where I had to come-I guess there is a good reason for being here-I hope that you will make a contribution, help us find the answer, and that in the years to come there will be inscribed in the historical recordings of our country that this little group did meet, did plan, did execute, and as a consequence our women, our children, our homes, are safer for your having come this way.

Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 9:20 p.m. in the Adult Education Center at the University of Maryland at College Park. In his opening words he referred to Ramsey Clark, Acting Attorney General, and James Vorenberg, Executive Secretary of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. Later he referred to, among others, Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Under Secretary of State, Chairman of the Commission, and former Attorney General.

The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice was established on July 23, 1965 (see 1965 volume, this series, Book II, Items 381, 382). Its report, transmitted to the President on February 18, 1967, is entitled "The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society" (Government Printing Office, 340 pp.).

For the President's message to Congress on crime and law enforcement, see Item 116. For the statement on the same subject, delivered before a group of Governors, see Item 491.

The Bail Reform Act of 1966 was approved by the President on June 22, 1966 (see Item 286).

The bill establishing the 12-member National Commission on Reform of Federal Criminal Laws was approved by the President on November 8, 1966 (see Item 598).

Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks to the Delegates to the Conference of State Committees on Criminal Administration. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238118

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