Excerpt from Herbert L. Packer, Two Models of the Criminal Process, 113 U. Penn. L. Rev. 1
(1964). In this selection, Packer lays out two models that capture the competing values that
inform the laws and institutions of criminal justice:
…
2. Crime Control Values
The value system that underlies the Crime Control Model is based on the proposition that the
repression of criminal conduct is by far the most important function to be performed by the
criminal process. The failure of law enforcement to bring criminal conduct under tight control is
viewed as leading to the breakdown of public order and thence to the disappearance of an
important condition of human freedom. If the laws go unenforced, which is to say, if it is
perceived that there is a high percentage of failure to apprehend and convict in the criminal
process, a general disregard for legal controls tends to develop. … The claim ultimately is that
the criminal process is a positive guarantor of social freedom. In order to achieve this high
purpose, the Crime Control Model requires that primary attention be paid to the efficiency with
which the criminal process operates to screen suspects, determine guilt, and secure appropriate
dispositions of persons convicted of crime. ... By "efficiency" we mean the system's capacity to
apprehend, try, convict, and dispose of a high proportion of criminal offenders whose offenses
become known.…
The model, in order to operate successfully, must produce a high rate of apprehension and
conviction and must do so in a context where the magnitudes being dealt with are very large, and
the resources for dealing with them are very limited. There must then be a premium on speed and
finality. Speed, in turn, depends on informality and on uniformity; finality depends on
minimizing the occasions for challenge. The process must not be cluttered with ceremonious
rituals that do not advance the progress of a case. Facts can be established more quickly through
interrogation in a police station than through the formal process of examination and crossexamination
in a court; it follows that extrajudicial processes should be preferred to judicial
processes, informal to formal operations. Informality is not enough; there must also be
uniformity. Routine stereotyped procedures are essential if large numbers are being handled. The
model that will operate successfully on these presuppositions must be an administrative, almost a
managerial, model. The image that comes to mind is an assembly line or a conveyor belt down
which moves an endless stream of cases, never stopping, carrying the cases to workers who stand
at fixed stations and who perform on each case as it comes by the same small but essential
operation that brings it one step closer to being a finished product, or, to exchange the metaphor
for the reality, a closed file….
What is a successful conclusion? One that throws off at an early stage those cases in which it
appears unlikely that the person apprehended is an offender and then secures, as expeditiously as
possible, the conviction of the rest with a minimum of occasions for challenge, let alone
postaudit. By the application of administrative expertness, primarily that of the police and
prosecutors, an early determination of probable innocence or guilt emerges. The probably
innocent are screened out. The probably guilty are passed quickly through the remaining stages
of the process. The key to the operation of the model as to those who are not screened out is what
I shall call a presumption of guilt. The concept requires some explanation, since it may appear
startling to assert that what appears to be the precise converse of our generally accepted ideology
of a presumption of innocence can be an essential element of a model that does correspond in
some regards to the real-life operation of the criminal process.
The presumption of guilt allows the Crime Control Model to deal efficiently with large numbers.
The supposition is that the screening processes operated by police and prosecutors are reliable
indicators of probable guilt. Once a man has been investigated with-out being found to be
probably innocent, or, to put it differently, once a determination has been made that there is
enough evidence of guilt so that he should be held for further action rather than released from the
process, then all subsequent activity directed toward him is based on the view that he is probably
guilty. …
The presumption of guilt is not, of course, a thing. Nor is it even a rule of law in the usual sense. It simply
exemplifies a complex of attitudes, a mood. If there is confidence in the reliability of informal
administrative factfinding activities that take place in the early stages of the criminal process, the
remaining stages of the process can be relatively perfunctory without any loss in operating efficiency. The
presumption of guilt, as it operates in the Crime Control Model, is the expression of that confidence. It
would be a mistake to think of the presumption of guilt as the opposite of the presumption of
innocence…. The presumption of innocence is not its opposite; it is irrelevant to the presumption of guilt;
the two concepts embody different rather than opposite ideas. The difference can perhaps be epitomized
by an example. A murderer, for reasons best known to himself, chooses to shoot his victim in plain view
of a large number of people. When the police arrive, he hands them his gun and says: "I did it, and I'm
glad." His account of what happened is corroborated by several eye-witnesses. He is placed under arrest
and led off to jail. Under these circumstances, which may seem extreme but which in fact
characterize with rough accuracy the factfinding situation in a large proportion of criminal cases,
it would be plainly absurd to maintain that more probably than not the suspect did not commit
the killing. But that is not what the presumption of innocence means. It means that until there has
been an adjudication of guilt by an authority legally competent to make such an adjudication, the
suspect is to be treated, for reasons that have nothing whatever to do with the probable outcome
of the case, as if his guilt is an open question. The presumption of innocence is a direction to
officials how they are to proceed, not a prediction of outcome. The presumption of guilt,
however, is basically a prediction of outcome. …