John DiIulio has argued that there were two federal “wars on crime,” with a third being initiated in the 1990s. Identify these three wars on crime, and explain the weapons used to fight them.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The first was the War on Poverty, whose programs were an attack on the root causes of crime as well as of poverty. This war was also fought with a number of more direct weapons, such as the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which provided substantial federal funding for local governments through the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA)--more, in fact, than the entire Department of Justice budget in 1968. The second federal war on crime opened a more direct attack on crime and criminals. That initiative, during the Reagan administration, was spearheaded by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984 and the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The LEAA was phased out, and with it much of federal support for local law enforcement (other than for antidrug programs). This war focused instead on providing stiffer sentences for perpetrators of federal crimes and especially on links between illegal drugs and other crimes. The third war on crime contained elements of the strategies of each of the two previous ones. Like DiIulio’s first war, it provided a good deal of money for local law enforcement--presumably 100,000 more police officers were to be on the streets because of the 1994 Crime Control Bill. That bill also contained a strong element of crime prevention and social policy. Like the second war, this latest effort focused attention on federal crimes and federal law enforcement, specifying new death penalties for 60 federal crimes. Given public fears of crime in the mid-1990s, there was little question that the federal government should be taking an active role in fighting crime; the policy question was what form that assault should take. Federal support for local policing, other than that directly related to homeland security, has declined over the past decade, so that this third war may now be winding down.