THE 42ND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ACADEMY OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SCIENCES
Drew 1,100 attendees to the Sheraton Chicago Mar. 15-19
WITH 274 PANELS covering everything from racial profiling, elder abuse, recidivism, management of sex offenders, crimes against the disabled, violence against kids, white-collar crime, organized crime, prison issues, the death penalty, gang violence, suicide-by-cop, Cambodian-American attitudes towards law enforcement, the ecology of gun crime in Anchorage, police training in Turkey and “Car Stereo Noise Violations and Arrest,” this gathering of criminal justice professors, police, corrections officers and other peacekeeper types had on its plate a vast array of law-enforcement issues.
But as the conference pursued its overall theme-the direction of criminal justice education-the sinister background music of 9/11 was always there. The prospect of more terrorist strikes; the pressure placed on cherished Constitutional values; the way people’s ears perk up when they hear certain foreign accents-these and related concerns were on more than a few minds.
“Ask yourself, do you feel safe?” inquired Edgar J. Hartung, a retired FBI agent now at Alvernia College, who at one session was giving his view on “Constitutional Rights vs. Public Safety” in the post-9/11 world. “I’m a man’s man. I can do you with my bare hands. But last night I was afraid to sleep on the 20th floor of this hotel, listening to sirens in the street and worrying about how I’d get out in case of attack. We are never going to feel secure again in our lives. Our campuses aren’t secure. Our borders are so porous we should bring the military back from Iraq just to guard them.”
“If we’re so vulnerable, why haven’t the terrorists struck again?” asked a man in the audience. Hartung’s answer: They are scrupulous planners.
So what do we do? “The best we can,” Hartung shrugged. “I still believe in the Constitution.”
