“Not So Much Orwellian as Kafkaesque”: The War on Crime,Information Sharing Systems,and the Limits of Criminal Justice Modernization and Surveillance in Los Angeles County

Abstract

In response to the increasing frequency of urban rebellions and rising crime rates, President Lyndon Johnson announced a War on Crime in 1965, inaugurating the modernization of criminal justice systems nationwide. Buoyed by federal monetary support from the newly formed Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), Los Angeles County attempted to develop a massive information sharing system to efficiently track suspects and expedite criminal record file-sharing within the county’s criminal justice bureaucracy. However, both projects failed. The failure of the Regional Justice Information System (RJIS) and the Optimum Records Automation for Courts and Law Enforcement (ORACLE) reveals the contingency surrounding the development of massive surveillance systems during the War on Crime and shows that the modern criminal justice surveillance state was not inevitable. Ultimately, it exposes the limits of criminal justice modernization and surveillance during the largest federal investment in local crime control in U.S. history.