Researching Law Volume 31 Issue 1 - Flipbook - Page 2
R ESEA RC HI N G L AW
The ABF Survey on Crimina
Origins of the M
Crimi
In the mid-20th century, concern over organized crime was rising
across the country. New crime syndicates had established themselves
in the late 1940s, leading to an increasing state of alarm among state
and local law enforcement officials.
Criminal Justice Administration:
Material and Cases by Frank J.
Remington, Donald J. Newman,
Edward L. Kimball, Marygold Melli,
and Herman Goldstein. Image
courtesy of The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc.
2
The rising concern over organized
crime led to decades of scholarship
by national crime commissions,
which resulted in a criminal justice
model known as the Progressive
Era Paradigm. The Progressive
Era Paradigm relied on official
data and undertook no direct
observations of criminal justice
agencies in action, which led to
ideological assumptions about
the administration of justice.
According to these assumptions,
a series of actors operated
according to the letter of the law
and never used discretion in their
decision-making process. Any
divergence from applying full
law enforcement was perceived
to be evidence of some political,
institutional, or moral failure to
punish wrongdoers.
The American Bar Foundation
(ABF) recently marked the 50th
anniversary of the final book of
five published on the ABF Survey
on Criminal Justice Administration
(Criminal Justice Administration:
Materials and Cases, published in
1969 by Remington et al.), which
swept aside the Progressive Era
Paradigm. The ABF Survey was the
first to gain insight into the day-today operation of criminal justice
agencies, relying less on official
data and more on observational
research. The ABF Survey used
empirical observations to carefully
examine the criminal justice process,
from defendants’ first contact with
police to contact with the courts,
probation, and parole.