Katzenbach Commission

{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2015}}

The President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice was a group of 19 people appointed by President Johnson in 1967 to study the American criminal justice system. Johnson assigned the group the task of fighting crime and repairing the American criminal justice system:

{{quote| No agency of government has ever in our history undertaken to probe so fully and deeply into the problems of crime in our nation. I do not underestimate the difficulty of the assignment. But the very difficulty which these problems present and the staggering cost of inaction make it imperative that this task be undertaken.

|sign= President Lyndon Johnson {{cite web|title=Special Message to the Congress on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice|url=https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-law-enforcement-and-the-administration-justice|accessdate= April 30, 2020|first=Lyndon B. |last=Johnson|date=March 8, 1965}}

}}

The Commission's [https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/42.pdf final report] was issued in 1967{{cite book|first=Edmund F. |last=McGarrell|title=Juvenile Correctional Reform: Two Decades of Policy and Procedural Change|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DZCtPhhx944C&pg=PA8|accessdate=April 3, 2013|year=1988|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-1-4384-1243-6|page=8|via= Google Books }} has been described as "the most comprehensive evaluation of crime and crime control in the United States at the time".{{cite book|first1=Helen Taylor |last1= Greene|first2=Shaun L. |last2=Gabbidon|title=Encyclopedia of Race and Crime|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=e6gT7dL11OsC|accessdate=April 3, 2013|date=April 14, 2009|publisher=SAGE Publications|isbn=978-1-4129-5085-5 |via= Google Books}} It laid out reorganization plans for police departments{{cite book|first1=John S. |last1=Dempsey|first2=Linda S. |last2=Forst|title=An Introduction to Policing|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PmUwsHp8m1wC&pg=PA80|accessdate=April 3, 2013|year= 2011|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-1-111-13772-4|page=80|via= Google Books}} and suggested a range of reforms.{{cite book|first=Howard|last= Giles|title=Law Enforcement, Communication and Community|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hq3Wy-DkXI4C&pg=PA35|accessdate=April 3, 2013|year=2002|publisher=John Benjamins Publishing|isbn=978-1-58811-255-2|page=35 |via= Google Books}} Several of the Commission's findings related to the poor treatment of juvenile offenders.{{cite book|first1=Kären M.|last1= Hess|first2=Robert W. |last2=Drowns|title=Juvenile Justice|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fM-klUeEqEQC&pg=PA49|accessdate=April 3, 2013|year= 2009|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-0-495-50437-5|pages=49–|via= Google Books}}