PSU Magazine Summer 1988

A t first sight the head of the department of Administration of Just ice at PSU, Dr. C harles A. Tracy appears to be a calmer man than Perl stein. He is an expert on criminal justice hi story and statist ics as well as police dynamics. In hi s office the air is filled not with smoke, but with the music of Beethoven . There is, however, more than a trace of the iconoclast about the man. One might specul ate that this strange mixture is the result of Tracy's training; originall y a policeman, Tracy got his advanced degrees at Berkeley during its most turbulent years. On some subj ects Perlstein and Tracy echo one another. "There are a lot of myth s about crime," the lat– ter began. "That it will be made to go away, for example. I t won' t fall below a certain level." "Inaeasing tlu number of police has not decreased tlu crime rate." But on at least one subject Tracy seems the more rad ical of the two, " Increasing the number of police has not decreased the crime rate." This, he said, is partly because "American police are mostly reac– tive. They are not trained to be good watchers. They conduct ran– dom patrols, hopin g to stumble on . crimes in process. That approach does not control crime." What we need, he said, are "problem-solving police who talk to people in the n eighborhood and solve problems with local co-operation. One of the m any things we do here is to pro– mote this proactive strategy." Tracy says he is not a mere "theoretical academic." There's nothing "ivory tower," he explained, about being involved with a restitu– tion center only two blocks away from campu s. "Our student s and faculty must live with its success or failure." PSU, he explained, has become the educational focal point for reform movements in the field of criminal justice. He regards the ma– jor goal of hi s department as trying to make sense of an un-coord inated justice system. Recen tl y, the depart– ment was authorized to offer a masters program that addresses this problem. Unfortunately, funding for the program has not been provided and students are not being admitted . "PSU," he said, " would like to become the central state repository for crime data." At the moment, he added, most agencies collect their own information, which means that there's little system wide-analysis. It is almost impossible, for example, to trace an offender's path from arrest Kathleen Bogan, head of the Oregon Criminal Justice Council located on the Portland State campus. through release from prison. Tracy's doctoral research was about criminal justice in Oregon in the early 1800s. "There's very little that's n ew," he explained. The last century's equivalent to today's latest electronic surveillance and house ar– rest was something called "th e Oregon Boot':__a heavy brass shackle that prevented criminals from doing anything too feisty. A cross the hall from the Admin– istration of Justice offices, PSU houses an independent body-the Oregon Criminal Justice Council. It is headed by a very capable lawyer, Kathleen Bogan, who lists among the many influences on her thinking about criminal justice, time spent in Alaska. "The sense of responsibility to the community demonstrated by m 6 Eskimos, Aleuts and Athabascan In– dians," she argues, " is something we can all learn from." In 1985 the Oregon Legislature establi shed the 20-member Criminal Ju stice Council and directed it to report annuall y to the Governor, Legislature and the C hi ef Justice of the Supreme Court. The first report pulled few pun– ches. Oregon's criminal justice system, the Council announced, is not coordinated. There is insufficient cu stod ial capacity and resources are not being managed properly. There is little effort to gather the informa– tion necessary for making good deci– sions, and the whole system lacks a clear statement of purpose. The Council was instructed to do some systemwide planning, initiall y for four years, but that deadline has been called into question by demands from the Legislature for work that carries into 1992. The "The system ~ so far from even begin– ning to ask tlu right questions. '' Council, according to Bogan, has become a place to send problems that won't go away. But more impor– tantly, she added , while preparing plans and reports, the Council has become a forum for new ideas. "Legislators and correction managers tried tinkering with the system," Bogan said. "Now we are trying to help them to manage resources better. For example, in an effort to cont rol the number of of– fenders entering the system, the Legislature has charged the Council to develop sentencing guidelines for use by judges in felony cases. If you 're going to use expen sive prison space you must be able to both iden– tify seriou s offenders and be consis~ tent in its u se." Bogan suffers moments of pessimism. The system, she said, "is so far from even beginning to ask the right questions. If we really wanted to fix it, we'd strip it to the bare roots, and talk about how peo– ple in this society relate to one another. We'd go back to the begin-