Word: crimeds
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...assailant had qualified, through an elaborate point system, for special treatment under Boston's Major Violators program. It is hardly news in the U.S. that industrious malefactors, variously known as revolving-door or career criminals, commit crime after crime, year after year. About 7% of arrested suspects account for a quarter or more of the nation's crime. The first wholesale attack on the problem began only three years ago, when 24 cities, with federal funds and a good idea, both provided by the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, began establishing career-criminal prosecution units. The aim: first identify...
Local prosecutors select their career violators using individual systems. Louisville targets suspects with two previous felony convictions or five arrests. Washington concentrates on parolees who are arrested again, for a crime of violence; Detroit zeros in on three-time offenders charged with murder, rape, household burglary and armed robbery. Boston uses a "case evaluation form," based on a ten-point penalty system. Penalty points are given for brutality, use of firearms, parole or bail status at the time of the crime, and even strength of the evidence against the suspect. Any suspect who gets ten points or more gets...
...enforcement officials say the program is partially responsible for the slight reduction in big-city crime last year. Detroit reports a decline in major crime for the first six months of 1977: murder down 27%, burglary and armed robbery each down about 25%. New Orleans District Attorney Harry Connick, who started the first LEAA-financed career-criminal program in 1975, cites a Rand Corp. estimate that a career criminal commits 20 offenses a year. If that is true, the 992 career-criminal convictions obtained thus far in New Orleans could prevent about 198,000 crimes over the next ten years...
...version of the program, Operation Doorstop, without LEAA funds for 17 months. When Norfolk's LEAA grant runs out in October, prosecutors plan to work overtime to keep the program alive. New York, New Orleans and Boston are seeking state aid to continue. "Anybody who knows anything about crime in this society knows that what criminals fear most is a speedy trial and the certainty of punishment," says retired Massachusetts Jurist Walter H. McLaughlin. "The Major Violators program combines both. It ought to be continued at all costs...
...contrast, Begin's negotiating partner, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, last year faced pressures from religious militants for a law making apostasy a capital crime for Muslims. Egyptian Christians raised such an outcry that Sadat made sure that the bill was buried...