Things to remember while reading excerpts from The Problem of Law Enforcement:
- Wickersham was a short, stocky man who was very blunt in expressing his views. He was an excellent choice as a strong leader for the commission, which became known as the Wickersham Commission.
- Wickersham's primary task as attorney general in 1909 was to enforce the Sherman Antitrust Law against illegal corporate practices. He earned great respect for the large number of business monopoly cases he tackled.
- The Wickersham Commission was the first national study of criminal justice in the United States. Two previous crime commissions were the Cleveland Survey of Criminal Justice in the early 1920s and the 1926 Missouri Crime Survey.
- Competition among criminals over the lucrative bootlegging market led to bloody gangster wars in the late 1920s, drawing even greater public concern over the ability of law enforcement to make the streets safe.
- A "get tough on crime" approach in the late 1920s had decreased the use of parole (when inmates are allowed to leave prison before serving out their full sentences) and probation (when offenders are allowed to remain in their community under supervision) in criminal justice.
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