Crime Overview - Trends In The Justice System

In 1999, the Justice System as a whole — society's response to crime — employed nearly 2.2 million people, divided into the categories of police protection (47%), corrections (33%), and judicial and legal (20%). In this period, the "downstream" elements of this system have grown fastest — corrections 140% from 1982 to 1999, judicial and legal 84%, and police protection 41%.

The crime rate, shown as a dotted line on top — and calibrated to the right axis — shows a decline from 1982 to 1999 of 18% and the correctional population (probate, parole, prison, and jail) shows an increase of 82% measured form 1985.

If employment in the justice system has a direct impact on crime — and if the correctional population's increase is in part a reflection of success against offenders — then the justice system seems to be working. How cost effective it is is another question we shall explore later on. In this panel the object is to show some contrasting trends, the "us against them." Society has clearly poured human resources into combating the incidence of crime — which was rising until 1989 but has been dropping rapidly since.

The burdens between four levels of government — each of which fields its own forces of deterrence, prosecution, and correction — are roughly equal as shown in the table on the following page. The federal role is the smallest, representing 8.7%, the local role is largest (59.1%) — if counties and municipalities are combined — and the state role falls in the middle (32.2%). State justice employment is just slightly more than that of municipalities.

1999 Allocation of Justice System Employment

Total	Percent of	Percent of Sector
	Employment	Total	Police	Legal	Corrections
Federal	191,169	8.7	54.5	29.3	16.2
State	704,902	32.2	14.1	21.1	64.8
County	606,645	27.7	36.8	31.4	31.8
Municipality	686,761	31.4	86.0	8.7	5.2

Note that the different roles of different levels of government are indicated by the distribution of employment by category. Police protection plays the greatest role at the municipal level, judicial and legal activity at the county level — where, normally, the probates are located — the states maintain the prisons. Within the Federal Government, the policing function absorbs the largest number of people.

It is well to keep in mind that the Justice System in the United States is highly layered. Data are collected in different ways at different levels, and piecing together the "national" picture is therefore no simple business.

Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, 2000, downloaded from http://www.albany.edu/sourcebook/.