Background
He was born on May 23, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Clarence B. Smith, a banker and real estate operator, and Jessie Annin Smith.
He was born on May 23, 1892 in Brooklyn, New York, United States, the son of Clarence B. Smith, a banker and real estate operator, and Jessie Annin Smith.
He attended Erasmus Hall High School before entering Wesleyan University, where he was a notorious prankster and an outspoken opponent of compulsory chapel attendance. He was expelled after publicly ridiculing the college chaplain. Undaunted, Smith entered Columbia University, receiving the B. A. in 1914 and the M. A. and LL. B. in 1916.
As a student at Columbia, Smith spent his spare time at the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, then directed by Charles A. Beard, who exerted an important influence on Smith's professional development. In 1916 the bureau sent Smith to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in response to an urgent request for a police study there. He later recalled: "That's how I got into police work. I was dragged in squealing and protesting. I knew nothing about cops. Boy, how I hated to leave those actuarial tables. "
Smith interrupted his career to serve in World War I as an army pilot in France. During World War II, as a civilian consultant assigned to help rid the Army Air Force of deadwood, he practiced a favorite technique by shifting about 350 colonels from desk jobs to field duty. A major component of his police surveys also involved the transfer of men from inside tasks to the beat. His first assignment as a police expert was in New Orleans in 1923; when he returned in 1946 he found many of the same problems he had encountered earlier. A similar sequence occurred in Missouri - in 1940 he analyzed the St. Louis Police Department and made recommendations almost identical to those he had offered them fourteen years before.
Although Smith is best known as a police consultant, his interests and activities covered a much broader field. From 1921 to 1928 he managed the Institute of Public Administration, was acting director from 1941 to 1946 and again from 1950 to 1952, and finally held the post of director from 1954 until his death. During the 1930's and early 1940's he worked with a number of commissions on the administration of justice and on law revision for the state of New York. He also sat on the executive board of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology.
From 1938 to 1955 he was a member, and once chairman (1943 - 1944), of the Committee on Police Training and Merit Systems of the American Bar Association. He served three terms on the executive board of the Governmental Research Association and was a visiting faculty member at the FBI national police training school from its founding in 1935 until his death. His Uniform Crime Reports were first published in 1930, and although several changes of varying significance have been made, they are still published.
He died in Southampton, New York.
As an unreconstructed Progressive, efficiency and businesslike methods were his guiding concerns. He particularly tried to implement these concepts in regard to the structural organization of police forces, systems of promotion, training and discipline, and methods for crime reporting.
Smith supported neither contemporary practices of civil service selection nor strict intelligence and educational tests for entrance to the force.
To many of his friends, he was known as Uncle Jack, a title indicative of his personal warmth.
Quotes from others about the person
In the foreword to Smith's Police Systems in the United States, Raymond Fosdick, a police expert and friend, praised Smith's "unique background of experience and qualification. "
Colonel Sir Frank Brook, formerly Inspector of Constabulary for England and Wales, provided a fitting tribute: "He was an amazing man, and his knowledge of policing in all its aspects was, I think, not equaled anywhere. We have never had anyone comparable to him. "
On October 23, 1915, he married Mary Rowell, daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Mary Smith was associated with a number of movements for bettering society.