ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the problems of administration of criminal justice in a heterogeneous, urban, industrial community, and the difficulties in meeting those problems with the legal and judicial machinery inherited or received from England, as given new and fixed shape for nineteenth-century America. As one studies criminal justice in action in America today, he must be struck with the way in which the different agencies of justice, acting quite independently, continually hinder or thwart each other, or, if fortunately there is no interference, at best lend each other little or no aid. In more than one locality, local and state police may act together or may act independently, or may act at cross purposes. Federal enforcement officers acting under different bureaus have been known to ignore or even thwart each other. State and federal enforcement agencies frequently clash, and when municipal, state, and federal agencies have concurrent powers, they seldom concur in any effective cooperation.
