Wickersham Commission

History of the Commission

President Hoover appointed the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement in May 1929, not only when law enforcement agencies were failing at enforcing Prohibition, but also when the criminal laws regulating alcohol had created a whole host of new outlaws who were manufacturing and distributing forbidden beer and spirits. Law enforcement agencies were dealing with a broad spectrum of Prohibition-related criminals, from backyard moonshiners to sophisticated organized crime gangs in Chicago and New York. Overall crime rates were also on the rise and Hoover believed the time had come to scientifically study crime and the criminal justice system.

Hoover was likely influenced by the use of scientific commissions on the municipal level beginning in the early 1920s. Following the Chicago (Illinois) Crime Commission in 1919, the Cleveland (Ohio) Survey in 1922 was the first commission to apply a scientific approach to investigate all aspects of crime and the municipal criminal justice system (and would later provide the model for the Wickersham Commission’s membership, scope of inquiry, and report generation). The Missouri Crime Survey did the same in 1926, broadening the review to include state corrections and county sheriff’s departments. Then, beginning in 1929, the Wickersham Commission began examining an even broader scope of issues at the national level.

The commission was named for its chair, George W. Wickersham, former U.S. attorney general under President William Taft. Its 10 other appointees were all drawn from positions in law and politics: Roscoe Pound, dean of Harvard Law School; Newton D. Baker, former secretary of war under President Woodrow Wilson; Ada Comstock, president of Radcliffe College; Frank Loesch, Chicago attorney and leader of the Chicago Crime Commission (noted for his work in prosecuting Al Capone); attorney Henry W. Anderson; William I. Grubb, U.S. District Court judge (Northern Alabama); former U.S. senator and circuit court of appeals judge William S. Kenyon; New Orleans attorney Monte M. Lehman; former chief judge of the Washington Supreme Court, Kenneth Mackintosh; and Paul J. McCormick, U.S. District Court judge (Southern California).

The commission’s scope of inquiry was unprecedented. It investigated the three major components of the criminal justice system—law enforcement, the courts, and corrections—but also examined issues like criminal statistics, prosecution, deportation enforcement, juvenile offenders, federal courts, criminal procedure, crime and the “foreign born,” and the costs and causes of crime. In January 1931, the commission issued its findings in 14 volumes, with titles such as Report on Prosecution, Report on Criminal Statistics, and Report on Penal Institutions, Probation and Parole.

...