Crime and the Race for Mayor in New York

...In any evuit, the new design will not prevent city officials from blaming crime on the courts, and they are sure to exercise that prerogative with increasing frequency.Ironically, it is quite possible that neither the courts nor the police are largely at fault: Some experts contend that the crime rate is dependent on demographic or other uncontrollable factors, and that the criminal justice system, no matter how efficiently it is made to operate, cannot significantly reduce it—and they may be right...

...The attitude is in keeping with a long New York tradition: allocating the lion's share of money earmarked for fighting crime to the police rather than the courts...

...SEARCHING FOR A CULPRIT Crime and the Race for Mayor in New York BY JOEL M. GERSHOWITZ New York "Crime is the Number One concern of almost everyone," declared Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton when he announced his candidacy for mayor of New York City last January, thus becoming the first horse out of the gates...

...These figures, said Vera, explain why so many charges that start out as felonies are subsequently reduced?because as tempers cool, complainants are reluctant to pursue prosecution of their relatives, friends or neighbors—and why so many felony convictions result in seemingly lenient sentences—because judges and prosecutors are inclined not to impose heavy penalties for unpremeditated overreactons to interpersonal grievances.Vera found, too, that the violent stranger, the most feared of criminals and the one who has had the most devasting impact on New York economic and social life, is usually dealt with as severely as we would wish him to be...

...Right or not, though, their argument is one we will certainly not be hearing this year from New York City's "law and order" candidates for mayor...

...Such critics generally attribute the lamentable state of affairs to plea bargaining...

...And it is one that City Hall occupants have vociferously refused to accept, stressing instead the need for increased productivity in existing courtrooms...

...If the Mayor is right and the courts are chiefly at fault, then the remedy is to relieve the caseload pressure that necessitates excessive resort to plea bargaining...

...Proponents of the first theory cite statistics showing that approximately 70 per cent of cases originally treated as felonies are eventually reduced to misdemeanors or lesser offenses...

...Nevertheless, the Vera data does tend to indicate that if there has been a breakdown in New York's law enforcement apparatus, it has occurred at the police level...

...The study therefore concluded that, on the whole, sentences in the city are just, given the circumstances of the crime and the history of the defendant...

...record, and that if criminals are "getting away with it," they are doing so, in the words of a Vera Institute for Justice study, "more on the streets than in the courtrooms...

...For example, in a study of 369 felony arrests in New York in 1971 released early this year, Vera found that victim and defendant had prior, often close, relations in 83 per cent of the rapes, 69 per cent of the assaults, and, most surprisingly, 36 per cent of the robberies and 39 per cent of the burglaries...

...Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain how 400,000 of the 500,000 felony complaints in 1971 failed to result in any arrests.However political the debate may become in this election year, the issue of where primary responsibility for New Yorkers' losing battle with crime belongs is a legitimate one...

...and erect enough new prisons to cops with a dramatically increased convict population.This is a tall order, to be sure...

...The explanation of the phenomenon is to a large extent political: The cop on the beat is more visible than the judge in his chambers, and consequently translates into more votes.But those who believe the courts are holding up their end reasonably well while criminals are getting away on the streets, would of course also endorse the budgetary imbalance...

...There is also room for considerable disagreement about what in a particular case constitutes a just sentence...

...Police officers obviously have a much more difficult time arresting an unknown offender than a culprit who is well-known to his victim, and the study sample, with its high incidence of prior relationship, suggests that the criminals not being apprehended in sufficient numbers are these strangers...

...the city would have to create scores of additional courtrooms...

...Even Abraham D. Beame, who presided over the laying off of 5,000 policemen (after promising during his 1973 campaign to hire 3,000 additional officers), and under whose mayoralty the crime rate has soared, was emphasizing the seriousness of problem before and after confirming that he would seek a second term in November.Beame's outspokenness on crime is no doubt designed in part to steer the campaign debate away from New York's fiscal troubles...

...The Mayor's strategy on crime has already emerged...

...man them with judges, prosecutors, Legal Aid attorneys, and support personnel...

...Indeed, if the recent state takeover of court financing had not removed most purse strings from the next mayor's hands, the judiciary could probably look forward to receiving a still thinner slice of the fiscal pie...

...For quite some years now, the Police Department has received about 80 per cent of the criminal justice budget, and the rest of the system has starved for funds...

...Those following Sutton onto what has become a crowded track have taken much the same line, albeit in civilian clothes...

...A few days later Sutton contrived to have himself photographed in his police auxiliary uniform, presumably demonstrating that he is no "softie" on this increasingly important issue...

...Vera concedes, it should be noted, that its random sample is not statistically valid...

...The other contends, to the contrary, that courtroom dispositions are generally proportional to the seriousness of the crime and the defendant's prior Joel M. Gershowitz, a new con-tributor, is a New York City attorney...

...To do so...

...One camp holds that the courts and related agencies —the district attorneys' offices, the Department of Probation—are dealing too leniently with defendants delivered by the police...

...Still, it represents an accurate reading of a public preoccupation...

...Clearly, the rhetoric of "law and order"—not too long ago regarded by many liberals here, including a few of this year's mayoral aspirants, as racist and reactionary—has entered into the mainstream of New York City politics...

...Put simply, it is to blame the courts—particularly the New York State Supreme Court, where the most serious felony cases are heard—for the rising crime rate...

...Actually, these two arguments that New York voters will hear in the months ahead reflect a longstanding theoretical debate on what is wrong with the city's criminal justice system...

...The practice accounts for 98 per cent of all felony convictions and, it is contended, virtually guarantees that all but the most outrageous cases will be disposed of in a manner more favorable to the defendant than the facts warrant...

...They point out, moreover, that the overwhelming majority of those found guilty of felonies do not receive sentences commensurate with their crime, and that a substantial percentage of them spend no time at all in jail...

...Meanwhile Beame's opponents, although they are unlikely to come to the defense of the vulnerable and unpopular judiciary, will certainly attempt to pin a good deal of the responsibility for crime on the seriously undermanned NYPD...

...This tactic has the important advantage of minimizing the onus of the Police Department, an executive agency...

...Plea bargaining, the argument goes, increases crime in two ways: by prematurely returning habitual and unreformed criminals to the streets to pick up where they left off (an estimated 80 per cent of New York crime is committed by recidivists), and by undermining whatever deterrent effect the law might have.The Vera Institute—a liberal private organization devoted to the study of criminal justice reform?and other supporters of the second theory would have us look behind disposition statistics to individual cases...