A History of Crime and Criminal Injustices

How did crime, laws, and the criminal justice system vary by colony and region? 

Natives once inhabited the area occupied by the United States of America before the arrival of white Europeans and Black Africans crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Unlike their Black counterparts, the majority of the Europeans migrated through their own free will. Before the 1600s, Africans were brought to America against their own will by slave traders. However, the onsets of the early 1600s oversaw a lot of these Africans migrating by choice, aware of the servitude in America. Furthermore, slaves were emancipated and became free members of society after a few years of serving their white masters. 

Colonial crime rates in America were quite a few as compared to today's statistics. The crimes we deem as ordinary, like murder, robbery, and sexual assault, were unpopular in the 1600s, and this can be attributed to the strict social control the communities imposed. Everyone in society, including churches and families were obligated to uphold the highest standards of morality and be a brother's keeper. According to historian Roger Lane, the number of murder prosecutions in the colonies was fewer than that in England. Lane discovered that the death rates in the settled areas within Colonial South did not threaten the social order and that murder was rare and prosecutions were quick. 

The beginning of the Colonial Law can be traced back to the English Law, which stipulated that any legislation passed should conform to the English Common Laws. When the earliest Europeans migrated into America, they took English principles to govern their way of life in the new country. The development of laws in Colonial America took place in three phases: adapting the English Law, adjusting the law based on local needs, and establishing the law on religion. Many colonies derived the rule of the land from Biblical teachings with minimal distinction between crimes and sins. For instance, Massachusetts set a death penalty for capital crimes like bestiality, sodomy, adultery, and idolatry. In the colonial era, the Criminal Justice system shared similar laws and almost identical convictions mainly based on what religion considered unlawful. 

What changes occurred in the institution of slavery? 

Slavery became a fixed institution in America during the Colonial era, with England shipping many enslaved Africans in the 1700s. The transportation of enslaved Africans from their coasts was a rigorous and brutal process. African tribespeople kidnapped their kin and sold them off to traders in exchange for goods. Enslaved Africans were then shackled up in chains and loaded into ships for a two-four month voyage at sea. These ships had horrid conditions that did not support life, like poor ventilation and inadequate food supplies. Furthermore, Africans were held in cramped spaces that allowed diseases to spread quickly, causing the deaths of at least one-quarter of the captives. 

In some instances, slaves could break off their chains, capture the ship, and sail back home. However, many were unlucky as they were thrown into the sea for disobedience while the ones who attempted to swim drowned. Slave trade had thrived for hundreds of years before slave revolts became popular in the American colonies. This was after laws were made to ultimately make enslaved Africans and their descendants' permanent slaves. White Americans passed these laws after seeing the impact of enslaved labor on their economic and industrial growth, killing the hope that slaves may be emancipated from their masters after serving for a few years. 

Additionally, these laws were created to protect slave masters from any convictions arising from their choice of punishing a slave. For instance, the rebellion of at least two dozen enslaved Africans in New York in the early eighteenth century led to the killing of eight whites and dozens injured. Twenty-five slaves were captured the next day and given a summary trial that led to their immediate execution. These uprisings and slave rebellion continued to rise, with black people advocating and fighting for their freedom which bore fruit centuries later. 

What new ideas and experiments were used in corrections? 

The origin of corrections reforms can be traced back to Pennsylvania under the Quaker philosophy by William Penn. According to Penn, the British rule over the colonies only focused on the British system on strict punishment, hindering a progressive system's growth. The first prison reform in the new nation was promulgated by Richard Wister, a Quaker and the founder of the Philadelphia Society for Assisting Distressed Prisoners. Despite his efforts in distributing food and clothing to prison inmates, no penal reforms were made under his group. 

Soon after Britain's surrender to George Washington in 1781, several prominent Philadelphians, including Benjamin Franklin, created an organization to review the criminal laws of Pennsylvania. The group began by reviewing and reducing the number of crimes defined as capital offences and formed a new criminal code known as the Penal Code of 1786. For instance, some crimes were punishable by hard labor, with convicts adorning multicolored uniforms and tied to a ball and chain. However, this practice was quickly repealed by DR. Benjamin Rush, who believed that public punishments tend to make evil men worse as they are subjected to public ridicule and mocking. Additionally, Rush believed that the death sentence was unnecessary as it did nothing to prevent crime, and it came with a severe effect on society. 

The committee in charge of correction managed to have the abolishment of corporal punishment and advocated for the need to have a jail in the United States. The Walnut Street Jail was the first jail in the United States after the Pennsylvania Legislature approved the building funds in 1786. This was to offer solitary confinement to criminals accused of capital crimes instead of giving them the death sentence. As years went by, more reforms were done to ease the management of these prisons, like separating capital offenders from petty offenders and separating men and women in the prisons. 

What social and political changes occurred to the United States in the Jacksonian Era? 

The Jacksonian era was a period in the nineteenth century symbolized by the ascension of Andrew Jackson under the Democratic Party. The expanded suffrage of white men characterizes this era and the restructure of several federal institutions, among other social and political changes. For instance, the booming cotton business in the South revived the plantation slave economy that was once abolished. Jackson became the President of the United States after winning the 1828 national elections under the Democratic Party. This was during an era where claiming to be a Democrat was viewed as an epithet instead of a compliment. President Jack was a strongly opinionated and dominating person who gained strong enemies and friends alike as he expanded the powers of the Presidential office unconstitutionally. 

To begin with, the Jacksonian era experienced a political change in terms of voting and electoral guidelines. For instance, the old voting system required voters to own property before exercising their democratic rights. However, under the Jacksonian Era, changes in the law allowed more people to vote regardless of their social class. Additionally, parties disbanded the tradition of the party rank appointing their candidate of choice by substituting it with a caucus method of nominating people to office. Before the Jacksonian Era, previous Presidents came from the gentlemanly “Virginia dynasty” that had reserved and cautious administrative styles. The society's elite usually shaped political decisions, but the Jacksonian Era widened the political field, therefore politically changing the landscape of America. The Jacksonian Era was a period of remarkable growth, expansion, and change as populations became more diverse, and each group wanted representation at the national table. 

What changes occurred to policing in the era? 

The American Civil War began in 1861 after the tensions built up for decades between northern and southern states. The northern and southern state residents often disagree on slavery, individual state rights, and the westward expansion. For four years, Americans fought and killed each resulting in the costliest and deadliest war with millions dead. The war and reconstruction period slowed down the police reforms despite the much-needed changes. The U.S. Secret Service was created in 1865 to investigate counterfeiting claims on the United States currency. In 1806, Congress had passed the Enforcement of Counterfeiting Prevention Act that was assigned to combat counterfeit products through prosecution of counterfeiters. However, its operations began in 1860 after the authority was transferred to the Department of Treasury. 

Before the Civil War, the police had a poor public image as people claimed no respect from civilians. For instance, police patrols were often humiliated and beaten up for sport, making it challenging to do their jobs. They had poor salary remunerations, and they were ill-equipped to perform their duties. To remedy these complaints and issues, the administration was transferred from the spoils system to the administrative boards in 1857, with the legislature seizing the control of the New York Police Department after deeming it too corrupt to govern itself. In 1870, the new mayor of New York City, William Marcy Tweed, sponsored a bill to return the control of the police department by relinquishing it from the state. Additionally, the law enforcement officers who were once political puppets became more independent in their profession by being governed by federal bodies. For instance, the capture of New Orleans in 1861 led to the abolishment of the civil government, and the military took the position of the police after the establishment of martial law. 

What was ordinary crime like in the West? 

The American West has often been described as lawless, with many settlers disregarding the legal stipulations and committing criminal acts. However, it is quite challenging to gauge ordinary crime in the West as Americans continuously expanded, giving rise to towns and cities with all types of crimes. Furthermore, the vast tracts of land lured many settlers to lust for potential wealth and opportunity, increasing populations. For instance, violent and property crime reached an all-time high in San Francisco in 1850 after discovering gold. This town had begun as a small village on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Other towns like Salt Lake City maintained low crime rates despite the sudden expansion during this period. 

According to Lane, Bodie in California was a small mining town that thrived between 1870 and 1880. It was common for settlers and miners to stake ownership over a piece of land as they believed that they had rights over all the gold within the region. However, crime rates in terms of murders and manslaughters rose expeditiously, and this could be attributed to the high number of single young men and the low number of women in the area. Also, firearms and alcohol contributed to these numbers as the young men engaged in acts of proving their honor. Ethnic and racial differences increased the ordinary crime rates in the West, making it be known as the “violent land”. Additionally, the existing law enforcement systems were inadequately equipped in handling the rapid population increase and the rising levels of crime. 

What changes, innovations, and new experiments are there in corrections? 

Before his death, Enoch Wines was the driving force of the National Prison Association by documenting the problems of penitentiaries to the American Society. Wines coauthored a book named the Report on the Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and Canada . Four years after his death, some of the drifted group members of the National Prisons Association met and revived the organization by appointing U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes to become its leader. However, the significant impact of the revival of the National Prisons Association happened during Zebulon Brockway's tenure at the Elmira Reformatory that prioritized reforming initiatives. 

Brockway used the Elmira Reformatory to prove that prison reforms are necessary together, adopting the indeterminate method of sentencing whereby a marks system is created to rank prisoners' behavior in a three-stage procedure. For instance, most first-time offenders sentenced at Elmira were young with indefinite to less than five-year sentences. However, what determined a prisoner's release was the wardens' report, Brockway, and the approval of a discrete board of managers. Additionally, the Elmira Reformatory used both academic and industrial education to teach prisoners based on their skills and education instead of being taught any prison industry-related trade. Since every detainee is screened, it was easy to match their educational level with the appropriate job skills. 

Furthermore, Brockway implemented the military system of order and discipline by incorporating physical fitness and sports into his reform groups. These reforms and innovations made Elmira Reformatory the most advanced prison globally, with visitors coming to benchmark and learn about them. The success of the Elmira reformatory also led to the construction of other reformatories in the country, and Brockway's recognition and influence lasted into the twentieth century. 

How did policing grow in size and oversight in the period? 

Policing in the twentieth century grew in size and development after President Theodore Roosevelt created the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In 1907, President Roosevelt proposed to Congress a bill to create a federal detective body to investigate crimes at a national level. However, Congress rejected this bill among many others as he was a Republican and most ideas were held by the Democratic Party. Additionally, many of the Congress members had been accused of fraud and other crimes and were afraid that the investigative agency would be used against them 

Nevertheless, President Roosevelt used a backdoor maneuver to create the agency by moving some U.S. Secret Service agents from the Treasury Department into the White House while borrowing some of their budgets. The U.S. Congress was outraged by this move and passed a bill to outlaw the shifting of funds across agencies. However, Roosevelt issued an executive order through the executive prerogative hence creating the Bureau of Investigation. 

One of the significant changes in policing happened during the progressive era with the National Chiefs of Police Union, founded in the Gilded Age, changing its name to the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). The primary role of the IACP was to create a centralized clearinghouse for the identification of criminal records, a system that was later converted into the fingerprint repository. Also, policing experiments were being conducted at the state level in different locations that emulated state police agencies during this period. For instance, the Arizona Rangers created in 1901 decided to emulate the ways of the Texas Rangers. Connecticut also created its state patrol while New Mexico appointed the local police to patrol the Borders. 

How was technology changing law enforcement? 

Technology has played a significant role in changing the structure of law enforcement at different levels. The teletypewriter was an evolution of the World War I printing telegram machine because of an essential police department fixture. Furthermore, the police used telephotography developed in the early 1900s to identify subjects. Another technological development that changed the course of law enforcement at a local and state level was the use of polygraphs used to detect lies. Under the initiative of August Vollmer, police officer John A. Larson of Berkeley, California, used the polygraph to screen potential police officers and investigate crimes. 

The Berkeley Police Department also became the first police agency to own the one-way radio system to communicate with their fellow officers while on duty. The headquarters would broadcast information to the police cars, but no transmission was possible to revert to the headquarters. However, this technological development posed the challenge that emergency broadcast was not easily picked up by moving police cars. Nevertheless, these problems were effectively solved, and the Kansas City Police Department installed the first two-way radio transmission. 

At the federal level, technology was initially used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to advance criminal identification. When nationalization began, the fingerprint cards under the management of the FBI rapidly grew, making it quite difficult for the Bureau to maintain the same efficiency. The government first began experimenting with computers and computer imaging for fingerprints in the 1960s. While local systems were implementing the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), the FBI adopted the Fingerprint Reader System known as FINDER, which became the driving force of computer fingerprint automation. Also, the FBI sought the United States crime statistics database to enhance criminal investigations through the IACP. 

How did Chief Justice Earl Warren's court change the focus and the structure of the judiciary? 

Chief Justice Earl Warren was a law graduate from the University graduate who climbed up the legal and political ladders over the years. After he was appointed Chief Justice in 1953, Earl Warren promoted the dramatic shift toward civil liberties. This was influenced by the famous case of Brown versus the Board of education in 1954. According to this case, an eight-year-old girl named Linda Carol Brown had to cross a railroad field to get a bus that travelled over 21 blocks to get to her school because the local school that was five blocks away only admitted white scholars. Brown's father appealed this case to the Supreme Court before an order to desegregate Southern school systems was issued therefore repealing the Plessy versus Fergusson case of 1896. Since the court had no enforcement authority, the majority of the government officials ignored this order forcing the court to issue a second decision that ordered the desegregation of Southern schools at an all deliberate speed. 

Another way in which Chief Justice Earl Warren's tenure shifted the course of the judiciary was during the Mapp versus Ohio case of 1961, which extended the exclusionary rule protections such that evidence obtained illegally cannot be submitted as evidence in a court. The highlight of the Supreme Court rulings came in after the Roe versus Wade case of 1974. The court ruled in favor of Roe by effectively stating that women have a right to privacy as implied by the 14 th amendment. This was after hundreds of activists and feminists advocated for the rights of women to procure abortions by repealing laws that existed for hundreds of years. The court ruled and issued a judgement on similar cases by outlawing outdated and oppressive laws like the Texas state law, mainly based on religion. 

What did the political assassinations of the 60s tell you about the broader changes in the U.S. culture? 

Any actions that led to the loss of life were considered an extraordinary crime in the 1960s. Assassinations of prominent political figures were at an all-time high, causing many to wonder about the direction of American Society. On November 22 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot in the head as he rode in his automobile across Dallas. It is speculated that the lone shooter who aimed at the President from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository Building was part of a larger conspiracy. 

Four years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Reverend and activist Martin Luther King Jr. was shot while standing at the balcony of the motel he was staying in. The murder of Martin Luther King caused a wave of riots, especially from the Black community, who believed their oppressors were trying to intimidate and silence them. A few months after his death, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and brother to the late President John F. Kennedy was gunned down by a young Jordanian immigrant. Kennedy had gained massive popularity despite being a latecomer in the presidential race campaigns. 

The violent 1960s was characterized by two other assassinations of prominent political figures in American society. The house of civil rights leader Medgar Evers was firebombed in 1963, a month before his assassination in his driveway. Malcolm X was deemed a complicated man who was part of the Nation of Islam and advocated against white supremacy. Malcolm also spoke against white atrocities by encouraging the black community to become more aggressive towards their oppressors. Like the rest of the personalities mentioned above, Malcolm X was gunned down just before he gave a speech in New York City. These assassinations indicate the social upheaval that was occurring in America in the 1960s. Stained racial relationships and the increased advocacy by minority groups fueled the atrocities committed during this period. 

What was the 'prison boom', and how did it expose racial and economic problems within the criminal justice system? 

In 1980, President Reagan ascended into office, and the total prison population doubled during his two-term tenure. The increase in crime rates within the country oversaw the building of more prisons as administrators viewed that action as a mitigating solution. More state and federal funds were allocated to build these prisons which eventually became overcrowded due to the war on drugs in the 1980s. In Utah and North Dakota, prisons operated with less than the recommended capacity, while others in New York and California operated at double capacity. 

Besides the fact that prisons were being allocated a lot of funds, the increased sentencing practices were overcrowded regularly. During the 1980s and 1990s, alternative methods to imprisonment began to crop up. For instance, the introduction of home arrests, boot camps, and electronic monitoring substituted prison and solitary sentences, therefore temporarily easing the overcrowding pressures. However, it was discovered that these programs were not significantly different from the traditional incarceration method. An extensive and costly amount of after-care was necessary to adopt for the success of these programs. Local and state governments were not able to keep up with these expenses. 

The prison boom in the Reagan Era exposed racial disparities within the criminal justice system by highlighting the encroachment of freedoms for minority groups. Targeting repeat offenders was popularized in the 1980s, with stricter measures being put in place. For instance, individuals with existing criminal records were awarded more brutal punishments through determinate sentencing. This was a difficult time, especially for Black people who were stereotyped as criminals even before any investigation. Criminal injustices against the Black community are deeply intertwined with the concept of slavery.