Department of Justice 



Although the office of Attorney General dates 

 back to 1789, the Department of Justice was not 

 founded until 1870. The first record of any basic 

 research support by the Department of Justice is 

 that of fiscal year 1968, when the Bureau of Pri- 

 sons designated $6,000 for research in mathematics 

 and $34,000 for research in the social sciences. 

 This was the year after the Institute for Defense 

 Analyses (IDA) submitted a report to the Presi- 

 dent's Commission on Law Enforcement and 

 Administration of Justice. This report contains the 

 following statement concerning research: 



The natural sciences and technology have long 

 helped the police to solve crimes. Scientists and 

 engineers have had very little impact, however. 

 on the overall operations of the criminal justice 

 system and its principal components: police, 

 courts, and corrections. More than 200,000 sci- 

 entists and engineers have applied themselves to 

 solving military problems and hundreds of thou- 

 sands more to innovation in other areas of mod- 

 ern life, but only a handful are working to con- 

 trol the crimes that injure or frighten millions of 

 Americans each year. 



IDA recommended, in part: 



Probably the most important single mechanism 

 for bringing the resources of science and tech- 

 nology to bear on the problems of crime would 

 be the establishment of a major prestigious sci- 

 ence and technology research program within a 

 research institute. The program would create 

 interdisciplinary teams of mathematicians, com- 

 puter scientists, electronics engineers, physi- 

 cists, biologists, and other natural scientists, and 

 would require psychologists, sociologists, econ- 

 omists, and lawyers on these teams. The insti- 

 tute and the program must be significant enough 

 to attract the best scientists available, and to 

 this end, the director of this institute must him- 

 self have a background in science and technolo- 

 gy or have the respect of scientists.''^** 



The Commission then recommended that, "A 

 major scientific and technological research pro- 

 gram within a research institute should be created 

 and supported by the Federal Government. "-'^'^ It 



also stated that a National Foundation for Criminal 

 Research should be established as an independent 

 agency, commenting that, "there is too little re- 

 search now being done in this field and very few 

 skilled researchers to do it. "3^0 Jhe Commission 

 also recommended the creation of the Law En- 

 forcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) but 

 indicated caution about trying to do too much all at 

 once, stating that perhaps the Foundation should 

 be delayed until after LEAA was operating. 



LEAA was established by the so-called 1968 

 Safe Streets Act; an amendment to this act created 

 the National Institute of Law Enforcement and 

 Criminal Justice (NILECJ) under LEAA; since its 

 creation, all reported funding for Justice Depart- 

 ment research has been designated for the Insti- 

 tute. 



The first confirmed director of LEAA, Henry 

 Ruth, felt strongly that the mood of Congress was 

 anti-research. -■'41 Furthermore, the administrative 

 procedures of LEAA allowed him almost no free- 

 dom to plan a research program, regardless of his 

 experience and qualifications. -''*2 NILECJ moved 

 into applied research rather rapidly, but the first 

 funding for basic research was not reported until 

 1973 — $2.1 million, almost all in social sciences. ''43 

 The latest published estimate of the Institute's 

 1977 basic research obligations shows that $10.0 

 million has been designated — all of it for research 

 in the social sciences.'''" All Institute research is 

 extramural (the 11 percent reported as intramural 

 represents the cost of administering the prog- 

 ram). 34.'i The program was rather severely criti- 

 cized by the Committee on Research in Law En- 

 forcement and Criminal Justice of the National 

 Research Council. ''4^ This matter was extensively 

 reviewed by Congress in 1977, and the Director 

 has since expressed confidence that the situation 

 will improve rapidly. ^47 



Other Executive Agencies 



A number of agencies have reported either rela- 

 tively small or intermittent basic research pro- 

 grams and hence were not requested to contribute 

 to Part I of this report. The Treasury Department, 

 for example, has been the agent of the Govern- 



''••Institule for Defense Analyses, Task Force Report: Sci- 

 ence and Technology {GPO: Washington, D.C., 1967). pp. 1-82. 



"'President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Admin- 

 istration of Justice, The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society 

 (GPO: Washington, D.C., 1967), p. 271. 



^■»Ibid..p. 277. 



'■"National Research Council, Understanding Crime (NAS; 

 Washington, D.C.. 1977), pp. 17-18, 

 '■'-Ibid., p. 18. 



»^ Federal Funds. Vol. XXIII, NSF 74-320A, Table C-33. 

 '■" Federa/Fund.s. Vol. XXVI. NSF 77-3 17, Table C--34. 

 J^Mbid., Table C-.30. 



'■""National Research Council, op. cil., pp. 4-6. 

 '■'^Informal communication to NSB staff. 1977. 



COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS AND HISTORICAL TRENDS 365 



