The Review, Vol. 1, No. 6, June 1911

Ex-Attorney-General Julius M. Mayer dissents from the foregoing paragraph as follows:

“I am opposed to the appointing power being placed in anybody except the judges, which, to my mind, leaves open only the question as to whether examinations should be competitive or non-competitive.”

In a further letter Judge Mayer writes:

“There cannot be any discussion as to who should appoint probation officers. It is absurd to say that any person outside of the judge should appoint. I personally should refuse, if a judge, to place anybody on probation if the probation officers were appointed by any one but the court or judge. As a matter of fact I doubt seriously whether in New York State there would be any legal power in any other body to make any such appointment. The suggestions, in this regard, are, to my mind, utterly absurd and unworthy of being dignified by being incorporated in our report.”

A problem in administrative efficiency that must be worked out is the co-ordination of probation and parole systems. There seem no valid reasons why in general the same persons cannot do both probation and parole work in the same localities. At present parole supervision is usually exercised by persons who are not probation officers and often the parole officers are itinerant officers obliged to travel over wide areas. The effective supervision and aid of those on parole requires that those exercising the parole oversight shall confine their efforts to a comparatively limited area. The efficiency of parole service would undoubtedly be greatly strengthened in communities where it is not practicable to have special parole officers, if the parole work were entrusted to the local probation officers. This combination of work, if properly carried on, can be carried on with mutual advantage to both systems and without any detriment to either of them.

_The Wives and Children of Prisoners._ The dependency of these often innocent victims of the delinquency of the breadwinner is closely allied to the problem of prison labor. Any plan is paradoxical that removes a breadwinner to prison idleness and leaves a despairing family to exist by charitable help or by the bounty of impoverished neighbors. The state having the right to protect itself from crime by imprisoning the offender, has also the duty to make work for him, first to pay for his own maintenance, and secondly, to contribute, so far as possible, to the maintenance of his family. No explanations of alleged necessary idleness, of lack of orders for prison goods, of political interference with extension of prison labor systems, or of the need of the payment of prisoners’ earnings to a tax-ridden state should prevail against the fact that the state or the political subdivision of a state owes to the stricken family the partial fruits of the toil of the prisoner and _must_ develop such a system of industry as will both make the prisoner self supporting and bring to his family some return for his labor. Inability to accomplish less than this is a confession of state-inefficiency that should not be tolerated and that invites the fullest scrutiny.

_Farm Colonies._ The campaign for compulsory farm colonies for habitual tramps and vagrants has gained much impetus since 1907, when the problems of vagrancy were discussed in detail, at the Minneapolis national conference of charities and correction. In a half dozen states farm colony bills were introduced last winter, but none were passed. The press seems almost unanimous in favor of such colonies; public opinion is expressing even greater annoyance at the so-called “tramp-army.” Typical of the dissatisfaction with the present expensive and palliative treatment of vagrancy is the reiterated statement of the New York State Board of Charities that vagrancy costs the state of New York about two million dollars a year from public and private charitable funds.

The time certainty seems at hand for a systematic campaign against the vagrancy evil. Drifting methods of alleviation and of passing-on constitute only an aggravation of the situation. Vagrancy and crime are closely akin. The Committee on Lawbreakers raises the question whether the movement partially organized several years ago for a national vagrancy committee should not at this session of the national conference be organized with the aim of furthering systematic methods for the reduction of vagrancy. A problem in European countries sufficiently serious to be called one of the most fundamental social problems deserves systematic and adequate attention in the United States where the problem is still in its earlier stages.

Closely allied is the great problem of inebriety and its treatment. The special United States census of 1904 showed that 54% of all commitments to correctional institutions were due to intoxication, vagrancy and disorderly conduct. A special committee of this national conference of 1911 treats of this national question in a general session and in section meetings. The committee on lawbreakers emphasizes the pressing immediate need of state and national campaigns for the reduction of drunkenness and the rational treatment of the drunkard.

_Prisoners’ Aid Societies._ Organized charitable work of private societies in the correctional field is woefully slight in comparison with the charity organization movement for the spread of the gospel of social service. There are hardly a score of active prisoners’ aid societies of fairly wide range in the United States. Yet the great movement for probation and parole, for better prisons and for better prisoners, for the help of released prisoners and for dependent families of prisoners, for the reduction of vagrancy and inebriety, for the better care of the mentally or physically defective delinquents, for better laws and greater public information--these great movements need the directing power of strong charitable organizations of the prisoners’ aid kind. The field of delinquency needs the same thorough development that in the last generation has been accorded to the field of charity. A national prisoners’ aid society was organized at the last meeting of the American Prison Association, to develop greater co-operation between the now existing prisoners’ aid societies and to extend the prisoners’ aid work. The national association publishes a monthly journal of sixteen pages called the Review.

_American Criminology._ Tendencies in this country in the problems of the treatment of the criminal have been overwhelmingly administrative rather than analytical and academic. Our foreign guests in 1910 often remarked that we characteristically experimented and did things rather than debated and philosophized on the theories of criminology. The extravagance of sole adhesion to the former method is increasingly obvious, however, and has led, among other things, to the organization of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, a central body for the inculcation of more scientific methods for the treatment of the delinquent as well as for the extension of our knowledge of the criminal. A recent conference in New York City on the reform of the criminal law and procedure indicated the wide-spread belief of the ablest members of the bench and bar that our criminal law and its administration need radical reforms. In the fields of criminal statistics, also, we need far more light even if such light shall only indicate clearly that comprehensive and accurate criminal statistics are practically impossible to collate. To the efforts of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology to advance in accuracy, in dignity, and in usefulness our store of information as to crime and its treatment, the national conference should give full credit and strong encouragement.

THE SUPPRESSION OF MORAL DEFECTIVES

Abstract of Address of Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard University

The prevention of crime through the isolation or extirpation of criminals offers many analogies to the prevention of disease by the isolation or death of diseased persons. These analogies are obvious, and are based on observed facts and not on any theory that all moral defects originate in, or are caused by physical defects. Opinions might differ widely concerning the bodily origin of drunkenness, inordinate sexual passion, or kleptomania; and yet persons holding different views on this point might agree as to the wisest treatment in practice of such moral delinquents. Let us compare society’s treatment of moral defectives with its best treatment of physical defectives. In the first place, a large proportion of the crimes committed in our country are not treated socially at all, the criminals escaping detection and arrest, or being acquitted when brought to trial through the ingenious use of legal technicalities and delays. This is as if victims of scarlet fever or smallpox should be left quite free to move about in the community so far as their condition permitted, society manifesting no active interest in their welfare and taking no precautions whatever against the spread of their disease.

Secondly, in cases in which criminals are arrested and convicted the penalties imposed by courts have, as a rule, no remedial and no preventive effect. Drunkards, for example, brought frequently before courts for sentence, are sent over and over again to jails or houses of correction for terms too short for effectual cure, so that they soon relapse into drunkenness when discharged. Or again, a burglar is sentenced to a few years in prison, acquires while confined no better disposition and no new means of earning a livelihood, and so when freed naturally returns to his former criminal mode of life.

Thirdly, many researches into the history of criminal families have made it sure that the propensity to crime, be it moral, or physical, or both, is eminently transmissible; so that criminals, like imbeciles and other physical defectives, will surely breed their like, if left free to do so. To leave them free is to perpetuate and multiply by inheritance the evils and losses which criminality inflicts on the race. These comparisons suggest strongly that society needs to revise its methods of dealing with criminals. In this revision, what improvements should be aimed at? Better police protection, especially in the detective department, so that fewer crimes should be committed with impunity. This would correspond with the improving registration and responsible social treatment of diseases.

A lessened use of fines and an increased use of imprisonment for convicted criminals of all sorts, a fine being an almost useless penalty for crimes against the person, since it has no improving or instructive quality whatever, is for the well-to-do a matter of indifference and is often impossible to collect from the poor. The habitual use of longer terms of imprisonment, that is, terms of isolation and temporary exemption from temptation to crime. The conversion of houses of correction, jails and prisons into places of instruction and of instructive labor, with incidental confinement, from being places of confinement with incidental labor, which is often uninstructive or impossible of utilization by the individual on his return to the outer world. Through this transformation houses of correction and prisons would become agricultural or industrial colonies, in which most prisoners would acquire the habit of productive labor and some skill available towards livelihood when they should again enjoy freedom.

Every person, male or female, who has been convicted of crime, should be registered at many points with complete means of identification, and should be kept under supervision for a long period after discharge; and the new laws needed to secure such continuous supervision, if any, should be promptly adopted in all the States. With such systematic supervision should go assistance in the giving of employment.

THE ABOLITION OF THE JAIL

Synopsis of Address by Frederick H. Wines, Statistician, State Board of Administration, Illinois.

The average county or municipal jail in this country is a school for crime, a cesspool of moral contagion, a propagating house of criminality, a feeder for the penitentiary, a public nuisance and a disgrace to modern civilization. The public indifference to the situation is attributed partly to ignorance. The county officials do not know what a jail should be and the people do not know what their jails really are. In plain Anglo-Saxon, the truth is that wherever there exists local graft and political dishonesty the county prison is its centre and its stronghold. The sheriff or the jailor makes a personal profit from crime by charging a per diem for board for prisoners and by the receipt of fees for locking and unlocking the jail doors. That profit is a live wire. No local politician, possibly no member of the Legislature or even of the State administration dares monkey with it.

We have substantially won the fight for the reformatory State prison and the indeterminate sentence because we concentrated our fire upon a vulnerable point and made every shot tell. In attacking the county jail system we have pursued the opposite policy. We have addressed our arguments and remonstrances to the county authorities, of whom there are in round numbers, 2,500 sets, instead of to the legislative bodies, of which there are less than fifty. We have pleaded for new jails, better jails, when we should have demanded their replacement by prisons owned and controlled by the State and their emancipation from local political control with its petty and selfish interests.

There was a time when local control was necessary and proper but that was long ago. Today the county prison is an anachronism. We imported it with other institutions from England, but conservative England has outgrown it and dates the dawn of its regenerate prison system from the year of its abolition. There is no good and sufficient reason why the State which enacts a criminal code with its definition of crime, its prohibitions and its penalties should assume the custody and care of the man committed to prison for three years and refuse to recognize its responsibility for the man sentenced for three months, abandoning him to the haphazard mercies of the inferior jurisdiction which is certainly ignorant, often brutal and sometimes dishonest. It is not the majesty of the county but that of the State which calls for vindication. The supervision of crime, let it take what form it may, is the business of the State. The State should name, and it should have exclusive authority over the executive agents to whom it entrusts the discharge of this supreme governmental function.

The one hope of enlightened progress in dealing with the problem of crime is the overthrow of the county jail system. To this end we must direct our energy. With the State once in command, there can be no question but it will find a way to right the wrong and remedy the evils which inhere in the present organization and management of minor prisons.

MENTAL DEFECTS AND DELINQUENCY

WM. HEALY, M. D.

Director, Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, Chicago

Reasons for the abundant ineffectiveness in the treatment of the criminal are to be found in the historical development of the situation. His case is handled by court procedure evolved, almost wholly, from legal precedent and consisting of rules which appertain, as it were, to a definite contest. As the result of this evolution it has come about that even modern criminal procedure in several respects fails to apply well established scientific knowledge and so lags far behind the dictates of common sense.

It may be that the experiential wisdom of the ages, crystallized into modern law, serves well enough as the setting for criminal trials in which there is much presumption of innocence, as well as for civil cases, although in this hour of testing mental capacities even some points here seem doubtful. But what shall we say about the trial of recidivists, those repeaters who make up the costly and dangerous class, the confirmed criminals? If there is anything clear about the matter to the man in the street it is that certain facts either purposely avoided in court procedure, such as inadmissible evidence, or not brought out on account of incomplete examination into the case are frequently most important for decision from the standpoint of the welfare of society and indeed often of the defendant’s own well-being. The fact that the defendant has been convicted of crime and perhaps of this particular type of crime before, that he has mental peculiarities or physical infirmities that make him specially liable to commit crime, that he comes from a family in which mental deficiency is inherited or the criminalistic tendency is rampant--these points among others are not only of scientific import, but seem clearly germane and most valuable for deciding what ought to be done with him.

The facts of recidivism are startling enough to command attention--whether one’s interest in the matter be economic, legal, humanitarian or anthropological. The terrific cost of crime, the failure of court methods to check criminalism, either in the individual or as a whole, the impotency of ordinary penological efforts and the considerable inadequacy of even the best reformatory type of institution are causes for amazement. By even a superficial glance at the facts we are thrown at once into an inquiry, what manner of a person is this recidivist, this individual who in spite of admonitory teachings and punishments goes on pursuing a career which leads him into just the situation which he wishes to avoid. Justice Rhodes of England writes an article in a medical journal, putting up the matter squarely to the medical profession, asking them what it means when out of 182,000 convictions in a year, 10,000 have been convicted more than twenty times before. “On the face of it,” he asks, “doesn’t this seem more like a problem for those who have to do with abnormal personalities than merely for the law?”

Even if a statistical survey of crime and recidivism did not point directly in explanation to the peculiarities of the unit offender, it would in general seem as if the anthropological outlook, applied to the criminal himself, would be easily the best point of vantage in studying the crime situation. Here is a given individual, performing acts inimical to his fellows and retributively painful to himself. What leads him socially to react thus and so? Taking this view, common sense would seem to demand study of the causative factors in every case, and this means, first and foremost, investigation of those mental characteristics which underlie conduct.

Beginning such a study of the causative factors of crime and taking account of deviation from the normal among the criminalistic, we immediately see that mental defect looms very large. Just how extensive this factor is we are unable to say, because thoroughgoing examinations of delinquents have not yet been registered in sufficient numbers. Sutherland, who has had a large experience and has well considered the matter, states in his work on Recidivism (p. 50) that it is not wide of the mark to say that one-third of criminal recidivists are pathological specimens, “suffering from physical and mental degeneracy characterized by mental warp, instability and feeblemindedness,” and that of petty offender recidivists it is equally safe to hold that two-thirds are pathological in the same sense. The British Royal Commission for the study of the feebleminded looked at 2,300 prisoners in cursory fashion and without mental tests decided that they could determine about ten per cent. to be feebleminded. Incomplete work from many sources testifies to considerable proportions of feebleminded among criminals. We ourselves, in our Chicago Institute, are for several reasons doing fairly intensive work, and I would at once disclaim that our figures have much statistical value. Yet of 620 cases of youthful repeaters carefully studied by us and classified in a scale of mental ability and peculiarity, twenty-six per cent. grade distinctly below the class which we call poor in native ability.