Remarks to the Delegates to the National Conference on Crime Control.

Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Secretary Katzenbach, Director Hoover, distinguished Members of the Congress, Mr. Vorenberg, ladies and gentlemen:

The newspaper the other day carried a story of the brutal murder of a young man. He was a college student, 20 years old, who had just made the honors list. He was accosted at night a few blocks from his school in Brooklyn, by a band of four other youths. They demanded cigarettes. When the student said he had none, one of the group stabbed him in the chest.

That young man, whose life was bright with promise, died there on that city street.

This tragic story is all too familiar to the readers of American newspapers. Each one of its kind brings its own sickening realization of the high cost of crime in this country. But the heartbroken mother of the young victim voiced that cost in a cry which must haunt us all. Her grief, she said, would have been easier to bear if her son had died-and now I quote her anguished words--"in Vietnam, for his country." "But to die for nothing," she said, "for a cigarette--it's monstrous."

It is monstrous that while more than 8,000 Americans were dying for their country 10,000 miles away in Vietnam, more than 50,000 Americans met violent death here on the streets of America, at the hands of other Americans.

That stricken mother spoke in her sorrow to the conscience of all America. The murder of her son was monstrous. And so was the pattern of crime into which it fits, the entire burden of crime that this country bears-monstrous, yes; senseless, and at violent odds with the goals of our society. The grim statistics of our crime record is America's national disgrace.

There is no reason for me to recount to you those statistics tonight because you know them. You know them perhaps better than anyone else in our country. Because the Crime Commission report--which you have met to study, and which you have met to implement--describes them, and describes them in very sobering detail.

Even beyond the statistics themselves, there is the climate of fear--the climate of fear that crime creates.

We are now mutually pledged--all of us who are in this room tonight, with all the resources that we command--to control and to finally eliminate that climate of fear in this country.

The war which we must now wage on crime will be fought on many fronts, and with many weapons. It must and will be fought with full dedication to the principle that in a democratic society there can be no contradiction between civil rights and civil order. It will be fought in the knowledge that safe streets are just as critical to a decent life in 'poor neighborhoods as in the suburbs of affluence.

The report of the National Crime Commission is a landmark in the systematic appraisal of the entire crime problem. But it will mean little--very little--until its findings and its recommendations become the actual impulses for change and redirection throughout this land.

That is why this conference is a hopeful conference. It is looking at the problem whole. It is convened in the awareness that the many disciplines represented here must not be isolated in their efforts.

Many of you are on the front lines in the fight against crime. You know the drudgery and the danger of that fight, and the occasional small triumphs that really make it all very worthwhile.

Not long ago someone told me, "Mr. President, there are three ways to lower the crime rate: You can reduce the number of people. You can limit the number of acts that you classify as crimes. Or you can get hold of the statistics and fudge."

I don't accept that prescription.

I think you lower the crime rate by improving the law enforcement and correction systems, by improving the conditions of life for all of our people, by teaching respect for law and order, and by supporting the police officers and the courts as they do their duty.

Clearing away the myths that obscure and obstruct our tasks ought to be first on the agenda of this conference.

What are some of these myths?

The first is the notion that crime can be described in a single category. It cannot. It is violent crime that creates the climate of fear in the streets of our cities. But in economic terms, white-collar crime--although it is much less visible--is considerably greater. The economic cost of crimes such as petty theft, consumer fraud, antitrust violations, and embezzlement dwarf all crimes of violence.

Moreover, there is more than one environment in which crime occurs.

We are all familiar with the crime that breeds in the cesspools of injustice and poverty in urban slums and in the ghettos throughout this great land. The great immigrant reformer, Jacob Riis, once wrote of the American slumdwellers: "They are the victims, not the masters, of their environment .... The bad environment becomes the heredity of the next generation."

Tonight we know the forceful and tragic truth of this. And we know that a major part of our assault on crime must be an attack on the conditions of despair and denial of human opportunity in which it can grow.

But there is also crime which thrives under conditions of affluence. Crime is neither the concern nor the responsibility of any isolated minority. No sector of our national life is untouched by its effects or freed of its responsibility.

A second myth is that all our law enforcement agencies and correctional institutions are already adequate to the job they must do.

We know from the recent exhaustive studies that many police forces are inadequately trained and poorly organized.

We know from these studies that antiquated prison facilities are themselves the major breeders of crime and return to crime.

We know that congested courts can produce assembly-line justice which sometimes is no justice at all.

Reforms and improvements in these areas are as vitally important as any other of our endeavors to isolate and to eliminate crime.

In making these improvements, we bear in mind that law enforcement is an exercise of local initiative and responsibility. It must always remain so. But the Federal Government will not abdicate its responsibility to help where it can in maintaining public order. The criminal intelligence network pioneered under the leadership of that great American, Edgar Hoover, and his Federal Bureau of Investigation, and made available to a growing number of State and city police agencies:

--the creation of halfway houses and work release programs in the Federal correctional system;

--the help given to local governments under the Law Enforcement Assistance Act of 1965.

These are all active, living examples of Federal assistance.

And finally--the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1967, that I have just forwarded to the Congress. I believe it provides the kind of assistance local governments need to meet the problems that local governments face.

We will need all the help that we can get to secure the passage of this urgent legislation. All volunteers will be gladly recognized.

We are ready to provide the funds for it after its enactment. We have asked the Congress to appropriate $50 million for the first fiscal year under the act, and $300 million for the second year. Beyond that our investment will depend on the response of State and local governments.

Many of you in this room tonight will be joined in breaking this fresh ground. You will be seeking to bridge the gaps that often exist between different jurisdictions of government, between different units of the criminal justice system, between those who gather information and those who bear the responsibility of acting upon information.

I hope that by the end of this year each State in this great Union will have a strong planning committee, made up of its leading citizens, and an agency whose vision embraces the whole sweep of the criminal judicial system.

If the new act is to do its job, then these committees and these agencies will be essential.

The Safe Streets and Crime Control Act is fundamental to the safety of the individual, fundamental to the security of our homes, and is fundamental to the enduring stability of our great society.

But until that legislation is passed, there is much that every State and every city and every county can and should do.

The revision of State criminal codes--the pooling of facilities--experimenting with community treatment of lesser offenders-new efforts at cooperation among all governments-all of these can be undertaken now, without any legislation, and not in the distant future.

"Public order," I said to the Congress in my message on crime in America, "is the first business of government."

I have come here to meet with you tonight because we are allies in the maintenance of public order. We share a trust which this Nation has reposed in us.

So together let us make it clear beyond the possibility of doubt or disbelief that, given the weapons we need, our war on crime in this great country of ours, from this hour on--from this night on--with this lit fie guard of courageous and enlightened leaders--this war on crime will be unremitting.

Thank you and good night.