Victims: the forgotten ingredient.

• Author: Constantine, Thomas A.

First of all, I want to thank Dean Moore for the invitation to speak at today's event. I think the administration and faculty of Albany Law School should know the role that Jim Peluso played in putting this together. He literally tracked me across the country, and even though there was a need for a number of last minute adjustments, he was unfailingly polite and courteous in allowing me to take part in this particular program.

It think it is obvious to any one who reads a newspaper or watches television that the issues of drugs and crime are both topical and timely. It is almost impossible to pick up any publication in which these issues are not discussed in one format or another.

The current debate to me, now that I am out of active law enforcement, is somewhat interesting, but at the same time disappointing. It is disappointing because I think that objective research and facts are far too often replaced by a reliance on continual innuendo, myth, and a kind of emotional reaction to many of the issues and problems that face us. My concern is that the lack of adequate research in an objective apolitical fashion will not lead to a candid discussion of the issue. If we do not have a candid, open discussion we will produce flawed public policy that, ultimately, will have a major impact on the citizens of this state and the entire nation.

I think in many ways, particularly because of my background, I stand alone on this particular panel and on other panels on which I have spoken. I have served thirty-nine years in active law enforcement at the local, state and federal level. All of that life--and still, to a degree, even though it is in a tangential fashion--had really been primarily focused on the concern for victims of crime.

Police officers in our society occupy a somewhat unique position in the criminal justice system and government service generally. They are really the only representatives of government or the criminal justice system who see the individuals, the families, or the neighborhoods as they are victimized by the trauma that occurs. Whether it is a young police officer who experiences his first drunk driving fatal accident and has the responsibility of notifying a mother or father that they have lost their most precious asset; or whether it is the battered spouse in a domestic abuse situation where that trooper arrives at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, in some rural area of the state, to find the woman has been literally held hostage for a substantial period of time; or whether it is a shocked rape victim who feels ashamed and does not know where to go for help; or whether it is narcotics, homicides, or burglaries--all of these events eventually impact on how police officers or the law enforcement profession looks at the problem.

As the system proceeds past this critical stage, the focus changes. The next stage of the process exists for people probably in this room, either prosecutors or members of the defense bar. In my experience I usually see very intelligent, very dedicated and very impassioned individuals on both sides of the discussion; but they are not necessarily focused on the victim. In fact, much of the discussion that takes place deals with statutory law, constitutional law, interpretation of decisions, or strategy which, by that point in time--months if not years after the event--often fails to consider the needs of the victim.

As the judiciary views the criminal case, they have a role to insure that everyone has a fair and impartial trial; a role to insure that the rules are on an even ground for all of the participants.

When you reach the post-conviction stage, the focus becomes much more concerned with the needs of the defendant than on the injury to the victim, whose name may even have been forgotten at that stage in the process. This means all decisions will be made--whether it is the length of the sentence, possible treatment, possible release from prison, eligibility for parole--based on the defendant rather than on the victim. I have limited experience in academic settings; they have been mostly as a student, and now as a public service professor. But my experience in the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany is that probably ninety-percent of all dissertations deal with post-conviction status of an individual or defendant. Much of the focus of the students, faculty, and their research interests is disproportionately skewed to the needs of the defendant. The result is that police officers, rightfully or wrongfully, see their role as protecting the vulnerable and innocent from the evil and violent forces of society and often questions the experience of the other segments of the criminal justice system as they relate to the victim of the crime.

I think it is important before any of us decide what our future policy should be, or make any alterations to our present policy, to realize that we have to analyze the history of the problem. Never in my life did I think that I would be following a professor who never used statistics, and that I would be forced to use them. I will try to keep my presentation in a frame of reference so that shortly after lunch everyone's eyes do not glaze over as a result of this statistical review.

This State and this Nation up until the mid-1960s were by comparative standards of the succeeding decades drug free and crime free. Beginning in the mid-1960s, our society changed throughout the entire nation--and those events, along with the public policy reaction, had very serious implications for the citizens of this State. I am going to give you some numbers--I will later have some slides which will make it easier for you--but I will start with 1960 because I think it is an important demarcation point.

The population of New York State in 1960 was not a great deal different than it is today.(1) In this State, there were 481 murders in 1960.(2) By 1970, with little change in the population,(3) there were 1439 murders. There were 7400 robberies in this state in 1960, by 1970 there were 80,000 robberies. In 1960 there were 12,000 people who were victims of felony assaults, by 1970 there were 38,000 people who were victims of felony assaults and the burglaries rose from 56,000 to 257,000 in that ten-year period of time.

An interesting anomaly for which I do not have an explanation, (although I think I have a sense as what it might be), is the decrease of the prison population in the State of New York from 17,000 in 1960 to 12,000 in 1970 despite this dramatic increase in crime. Out crime rate went up 430% and our incarceration rate went down 35%. I believe, and there may even be studies that have been conducted on this, that one of the reasons for this reduction in prison population as crime virtually exploded was a program known as the Narcotics Addiction...