How the Federal Government Promotes Crime

The White House and Congress like to take credit for falling crime. Yet there is clear evidence that Big Government has not lowered crime, but elevated it. Consider one example: Congress has done a miserable job--far worse than any city government--of controlling crime in the one city under its direct supervision. The murder rate in Washington, DC is second only to that of New Orleans, twice that of New York City, and eight times higher than the national average.

Nationally, crime skyrocketed in the 1960s and 1970s following the Warren Court's reshaping of the criminal justice system into a thicket of defendants' rights. Most damaging was the 1966 Miranda 5-4 decision, the most famous of all Supreme Court criminal rulings. As a result, the police today must advise all suspects of their "Miranda rights": don't talk to us and don't be stupid enough to confess, even if you desperately want to. The Miranda decision was followed by a sudden and permanent decline in the rate of confessions, from 55 to 60 per 100 arrests to only 40, with a corresponding decline in the arrest clearance rate. Crime predictably soared.

Violent crimes by teenagers have doubled in the last ten years. Federal mandates, created in 1974 to divert juveniles from the justice system, have contributed to the problem. Widely acknowledged for damaging state and local efforts to combat young predators, these mandates may be relaxed in new federal legislation this year.

Some of the most successful local programs involve clever ways of getting around federal impediments to crime-fighting. In Charleston, South Carolina, for example, police get around the federal mandate against confining truants by taking them back to school. To enforce curfews, parents voluntarily agree that their own children should be forcibly returned home, obviating civil liberties objections. A reward of $100 in the "Hot Tip" program for information about juvenile gun possession gives police "reasonable grounds" or probable cause for search and seizure.

Through its grant-making powers, the federal government has coerced the states into using their crime-fighting resources inefficiently. The Brady law, for example, forces local law enforcement officials to spend resources checking the records of citizens who want to purchase guns, most of whom are law-abiding. Local communities must put up matching funds to sustain COPS (Community Oriented Police Services) and then fully fund them after three years of federal assistance, diverting money from efforts that may prove more effective in deterring crime.

Federal tax money helps communities that fail to control crime and punishes communities that succeed in holding crime down. The result? Crime is inadvertently subsidized. Federal crime grants also unintentionally transfer money from poor states (with low crime rates) to rich states (with high crime rates) and from rural areas (with only two-thirds of urban income) to urban areas. Competition for federal crime-fighting funds steers local efforts away from innovation toward a deadening uniformity favored by federal bureaucrats.

The federal welfare system bears major responsibility for the breakdown of the family, which in turn has spawned a massive increase in crime. AFDC, for example, has long subsidized out-of-wedlock birth, and yet African-American kids without a resident father are twice as likely to commit crimes as are statistically identical black kids with a resident father. Programs that successfully reduce the root causes of crime are almost always local, often faith-based, and have little, if any, federal involvement.

Federal policies in education have helped to lower the quality of public schools, and inferior academic achievement has contributed to juvenile and adult crime. Federal grants reward schools that fail. Further, federal judges have mandated busing, thereby driving middle-income families (mostly white) from urban schools, leaving failing schools behind. School choice programs are opposed by federal policy but would allow many children to escape failing inner-city schools.

Unintended consequences abound in federal intervention. JFK's youth crime program, for example, became a slush fund for big-city mayors. The Law Enforcement Assistance Act (LEAA) splurged $8 billion while crime soared. Local elected officials have much better incentives than politicians and bureaucrats ensconced in a distant national capitol.

In the Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton referred to "one transcendent advantage belonging to the province of the State governments"--namely, "the ordinary administration of criminal and civil justice." When the federal government takes the lead on crime policy, disaster usually ensues. Instead of new crime-fighting programs and more money, the federal government should retreat to a backup role where truly federal interests are involved.

Morgan O. Reynolds is director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis.