1 Goldstein, Herman, “Improving Policing: A Problem-oriented Approach,” 25 Crime & Delinquency 236 (1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Herman Goldstein, Policing a Free Society (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger Press, 1967).Google Scholar

3 Joseph Gerald Woods, The Progressives and the Police: Urban Reform and the Professionalization of the Los Angeles Police Department at 6 (Ph.D. diss., UCLA, 1973).Google Scholar

4 Many, including this author, believed that Parker had originated the term. I thank Chief Daniel Guido for pointing this out by providing examples from earlier sources.Google Scholar

5 Orlando W. Wilson, Police Administration, 1st ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1950).Google Scholar

6 I prefer to call this model of policing the reform model, as against the professional model, because of the special meaning of “professional” in police history. It does not refer to “professional” in the classic sense of the clergy, law, or medicine; instead it refers to a strongly centralized bureaucratic model of command and control.Google Scholar

7 Anthony V. Bouza, “Police Unions: Paper Tigers or Roaring Lions,” in William A. Geller, ed., Police Leadership in America Crisis and Opportunity 243 (Chicago: American Bar Foundation; New York: Praeger, 1985).Google Scholar

8 Jane Jacobs, The Life and Death of Great American Cities 31 (New York: Vintage Press, 1961).Google Scholar

9 This point has been most powerfully made by Egon Bittner in his introductory chapter to Aspects of Police Work (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990).Google Scholar

10 The Challenge of Crime in u Free Society 8–9 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967).Google Scholar

11 For examples of the use of metaphors in organizational analysis generally or, more specifically, the use of biological metaphors, see Gareth Morgan, Images of Organization (Beverly Hills, Cal.: Sage Publications, 1986).Google Scholar

12 Tom Peterman & R. H. Waterman, In Search of Excellence (New York: Harper & Row, 1982).Google Scholar

13 The five books, all published by Little, Brown, are Wayne Lefave, Arrest: The Decision to Take a Suspect into Custody (1965); Donald J. Newman, Conviction: The Determination of Guilt or Innocence without Trial (1966); Lawrence P. Tiffany, Donald M. McIntyre, Jr., & Daniel Rotenberg, Detection of Crime: Stopping and Questioning, Search and Seizure, Encouragement and Entrapment (1967); Robert O. Dawson, Sentencing: The Decision as to the Type, length and Conditions of Sentence, 1969; and Frank W. Miller, Prosecution: The Decision to Charge a Suspect with a Crime (1970).Google Scholar

14 The contributions of The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society to criminal justice thinking and policy have been substantial. It is a complex and rich document, the total contributions of which to crime control policy in the United States have yet to be critically evaluated. (See notes 15 and 22 below for further comment.) Regarding police, the report is ambivalent. While it was highly critical of police, overall police strategy was largely endorsed. Most recommendations focused on improving policing through improved recruitment and training and organizational modifications. The problem with police was execution of strategy, not the strategy itself. Likewise, the authors of the president's report acknowledged that the idea of a criminal justice “system” metaphor had problems. The authors noted: The system of criminal justice America uses … is not a monolithic, or even a consistent system. It was not designed or built in one piece at one time. … Parts of the system—magistrates' courts, trial by jury, bail—are of great antiquity. Other parts—juvenile courts, probation and parole, policemen—are relatively new. … Every village, town, county, and State has its own criminal justice system, and there is a Federal one as well. All of them operate somewhat alike. No two of them operate precisely alike. The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society 7.Google Scholar

15 The story of these planning councils has yet to be told. But the idea that a system existed and that it could plan foundered on the shoals of reality in virtually every state. In my own state at the time, Wisconsin, for example, no appointees of any governor, and certainly no liberal appointees of a liberal governor (Governor Patrick Lucey), were going to tell Milwaukee's then-Chief Harold Brier what programs the Milwaukee Police Department would implement. Chief Brier and most other chiefs at the time were barely accountable to the city governments that authorized and funded them; they certainly were not going to be accountable to, or have police plans approved by, some fictive planning unit. Harold Brier might have been an outspoken example: however, he was only that. Judges, prosecutors, and police chiefs pursued their own agendas irrespective of state planning councils. Money flowed through states to cities and urban agencies but hardly in the spirit intended by state planning councils. Agencies that were prepared to pursue policies congruent with state plans wrote their applications accordingly. Those that were not either “twisted the text to meet the message” or let the state planning councils reconcile police department statements to, for example, state plans. It was amazing in state after state how much equipment and anti-riot gear was congruent with state plans.Google Scholar

16 Donald J. Newman, “The American Bar Foundation Survey and the Development of Criminal Justice Higher Education” (“Newman, ‘ABF Survey’”), in Lloyd E. Ohlin & Frank J. Remington, eds., Discretion in Criminal Justice: The Tension between Individualization and Uniformity 2 (forthcoming) (“Ohlin & Remington, Discretion”).Google Scholar

17 Education for criminal justice positions reflected the historical and functional diversity that characterized the various organizations. Until the President's Commission, police were largely high school graduates. The popular vision of police, law enforcers who use little discretion, supported a commonsense approach that police officers required strong moral character, “manly” virtues of strength and quick decision making (in case they were resisted and had to overwhelm opposition), street smarts, and practical shrewdness. Prosecutors and judges required legal education. Probation and parole officers almost uniformly had university degrees, some with master's degrees in social work, psychology, or sociology. Correctional administrators generally had social science or legal backgrounds as well, although prison guards had backgrounds similar to police—high school diplomas.Google Scholar

American universities developed some special programs for police during the 1930s. Few flourished until the 1960s, but early programs included the University of California at Berkeley (both August Vollmer and O. W. Wilson, Early 20th-century police reformers, played key roles there), the predecessor college of Michigan State University, Northwestern University, San Jose State College, and Harvard University.Google Scholar

Regarding the status of universities that pioneered in criminal justice education, see Newman, id. at 49–50.Google Scholar

18 Remington, Frank J., “Development of Criminal Justice as an Academic Field,” 1 J. Crim. Just. Educ. 9 March 1990). For a detailed history of the development of criminal justice education at SUNY-Albany, its relationship to the ABF Survey, and its reliance on the criminal justice system conceptualization, see Newman, “ABF Survey.”.Google Scholar

19 Herman Goldstein, “Confronting the Complexity of the Policing Function,” in Ohlin & Remington, Discretion.Google Scholar

20 See Goldstein, Policing (cited in note 2).Google Scholar

21 Personal conversations with Herman Goldstein and with Charles Rogovin, former assistant director of the President's Commission.Google Scholar

22 This isn't entirely true. Some, primarily a small number of academics, fussed about the concept of a criminal justice system. Such concerns were largely seen as academic quibbles, however. The ideas of the president's report had such momentum and the elites of the field were so committed to it that such concerns were largely pushed aside. The only major voice that quickly moved to a different set of assumptions than those of the President's Commission was that of James Q. Wilson, Especially in his 1975 book Thinking about Crime (New York: Basic Books). Wilson had been a member of the commission's Task Force on Science and Technology, the group that created the system flow chart; however, he began to question the report's policy implications even during the late 1960s.Google Scholar

23 For example, the link between disorder and public fear of crime had been established empirically by Biderman as early as 1967. A. D. Biderman, L. A. Johnson, J. McIntyre, and A. W. Weir, Report on a Pilot Study in the District of Columbia on Victimization and Attitudes towards Law Enforcement (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1967). Nonetheless, these ideas received police attention only after the publication of “The Police and Neighborhood Safety,” Atlantic, March 1982, at 29–38, by James Q. Wilson and me in March 1982.Google Scholar

24 The observations in this paragraph are based on my own experiences (I am a professor in a college of criminal justice) and discussions with other criminal justice faculty members at other universities.Google Scholar

25 George L. Kelling, “Crime and Metaphor: Toward a New Concept of Policing,”N.Y.: The City Journal, Autumn 1991, at 71.Google Scholar

26 For a summary of this literature see George L. Kelling & James K. Stewart, Municipal Policing ch. 1 (Washington, D.C.: International City Management Association, 1991).Google Scholar

27 Goldstein's chap. 3, “The Current State of the Field,” summarizes these changes.Google Scholar

28 Goldstein's chap. 4, “Problem-oriented Policing: The Basic Elements,” details the core ingredients of the methodology.Google Scholar

29 For a discussion of the evolution of this effort and the legal challenges to it, see George L. Kelling, “Reclaiming the Subway,”NY: The City Journal, Winter 1991, at 17–28.Google Scholar

30 See, e.g., William Spelman & John E. Eck, “Problem-oriented Policing,”Research in Brief (National Institute of Justice, Washington, D.C.), January 1987.Google Scholar

31 Eck, John E. & Spelman, William, “Who Ya Gonna Call? The Police as Problem-Busters,” 33 Crime & Delinquency 5–6 (1987).Google Scholar

32 By no means should readers assume that my perceptions about the system metaphor are shared by Goldstein. For example, in a paper written since Problem-oriented Policing, and cited above in note 19, he writes:Google Scholar

Yet, this does not go far enough in my view: The system metaphor not only drove out good thinking about the police, it drove out good thinking about how society deals with crime, disorder, and fear—it abandoned crime control for criminal processing.