NCJ Number
78880
Date Published
Unknown
Length
19 pages
Annotation
This paper argues that the decrease in crime rates during the Great Depression of the 1930's was largely due to the removal of a significant segment of those at risk for serious crime from the population at large via the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) relief program.
Abstract
The extreme economic hardship and social dislocation of the Great Depression were widely expected to produce a crime wave of major proportions. From the mid-1920's until 1933, crime rates rose, but then the trend mysteriously reversed itself. Between 1933 and 1941, large numbers of poor young men were institutionalized in work camps far from population centers as part of the CCC relief program. They were thereby effectively removed from the crime-committing population. The crime control function of the CCC was probably intended, but remained unrecognized by the public. The expressed purpose of the program was to provide economic relief for enrollees and their dependents and to perform various conservation projects, such as flood control and reforestation. At its peak in 1935, CCC operated 2,650 camps with a total enrollment of over 500,000 men. Thus, it appears that from 1932 to 1940 between one-quarter and one-third of the Nation's poor young men were in the CCC. This failure to recognize the important social control function as well as the program's overall success must be attributed to its striking correspondence with American values and traditions surrounding free enterprise. The paper concludes that the basic ideology of a society profoundly affects not only the kind of crime it will experience but the social control mechanisms it will use. A comparison of Soviet and American responses to economic and social crisis between 1930-40 support this interpretation. A total of 35 references are supplied.