Comprehensive Criminal Justice Planning: Successes, Failures and Lessons from the American Experience

Justice Coordination and Planning" was held twenty-five years after the birth of the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) in the United States. The LEAA began the American experiment with comprehensive criminal justice system planning. The impetus was largely intellectual and rational (that is, as the complexity and scope of crime grew, a more coordinated response was required). American interest today in comprehensive planning is prompted further by fiscal constraint. Although the drive for greater system efficiency is today a priority in the United States and Australia, both countries face the danger that severe budget constraint will force such overpowering attention to cost reduction that effectiveness may be the casualty. The American experiment tested the boundaries of just how comprehensive (systemic, rational and objective) criminal justice planning and management could be made. As the term "comprehensive" may suggest, it was intended as an all inclusive concept with implications of high cost. The proposed scope was both its greatest value and its mortal flaw. As Australia considers the value of coordination planning for its criminal justice system, there may be lessons from the earlier American experience worth recounting. This is suggested knowing that the two political systems, although federal, are not identical; that although crime is on the increase in Australia, the massive social disorder which was a major precipitant for