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Improving Our Conceptualization and Measurement of Crime
Author(s) -
Wellford Charles F.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
criminology and public policy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.6
H-Index - 33
eISSN - 1745-9133
pISSN - 1538-6473
DOI - 10.1111/1745-9133.12355
Subject(s) - conceptualization , library science , citation , sociology , computer science , artificial intelligence
Although the Judiciary Act of 1789 (ch. 20, § 35, 1 Stat. 73, 92–93) created the position of the attorney general, it would be more than 80 years before the Department of Justice was established. After the Civil War, a group of Congressmen led an effort to address Reconstruction by passing legislation creating a Department of Justice. Once Ulysses Grant was president, the executive branch joined Congress in this effort. Grant was particularly interested in eliminating the influence of the Ku Klux Klan and saw a new government agency focusing on justice as the best way to do this (White, 2016). As a result, when in 1870 Congress passed the Act to Establish the Department of Justice (ch. 150, 16 Stat. 162 (1870), it assigned to that new agency many more functions than those that had been associated with the position of attorney general. This new agency was to handle not only all criminal and civil litigation, but it also was to direct all federal law enforcement activities. Furthermore, in Section 12 of the Act, the attorney general was required to