The Hill News

Half a century ago, President Lyndon Baines Johnson set up a National Crime Commission to study the broad and confounding subject of crime in America. A useful report was published in 1967, but for the most part the systemic reforms hoped for by the sponsors and participants have not occurred. In fact, many of the problems analyzed then still exist, and some have gotten worse.

That was the subject of a new report, Smart on Crime, just released by the Constitution Project. It included contributors from a collation of 40 interested organizations that run the ideological range from the ACLU to the Cato Institute to the Open society, ABA, PEW Center and others. Its aim is to present Congress and the administration with an agenda for reform of the criminal justice system, and hopefully to provide a proposed national commission now before the U.S. Senate with a jumpstart of recommendations.

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