STUPIDLY HANDLED

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 July 1936, Page 5

STUPIDLY HANDLED

CRIME PROBLEMS IN U.S.A. ATLANTIC CITY, N.J., May 23. . Organised society is handling its crime problem in a. way that is ‘utterly stupid,” Judge Joseph N. Ulman, of the Supreme ‘Court of Baltimore and chairman .of the Prison Industries Reorganisation Administration named by President Roosevelt last year, told a joint meeting of the National Probation Association and the American Public Welfare Association here to-day, “A penal system that operates to make fairly decent men bad, to make bad men worse, and then turn them loose to prey upon society is the last word in so.cial stupidity,” he declared. Judge Ulman urged “sound think-ing-on the subject of. crime,” declaring he agreed with tlje importance of catching criminals, of prosecuting them and dealing with them vigorously:-.-, - ‘ “I agree that the alliance between organised crime and politics must be dissolved,” he continued. “I am strong for hard-boiled justice for the hardboiled criminal, but no one wishes that every person once found guilty of an infraction of the law should forever be either a prisoner or an outcast.

“Whether we like jt or not, from 95 to 99 per cent, of those convicted will not be permanently segregated. They are coming out of prison again after months or years to be our neighbours, and a sound penal system places its main emphasis on the day of the prisoner’s release —not so much for his sake as for ours.” NEW PROCEDURE SOUGHT. Judge Ulman came out strongly for “1 he new system of criminal procedure with eacli law. violator treated as an individual, to be reclaimed early if possible, or if irreclaimable, to be segregated or confined for life where he would do tjig least harm.” “Tiie first cost may; he enormously greater than the cost of our present slipshod mass treatment,” he said, “but the ultimate saying in men and money would be incalculable. "Some of our states and the Federal Government have done and are doing a great deal. Idleness has been reduced, education is. not neglected, prisoners are classified according to their, individual peculiarities and appropriate work or treatment is given them.

“The. yonpg, are Rept.apart from the older and' more hardened criminals, and intelligent efforts are made to create in— them, new- patterns of thought and action, new habits of industry r .of-cleanliness, Of social thinking, so.that -they may kpuw how to go sti’aigbL/. - •■■■ ’.- “It is -not enough to want to live a decent life. Aman-must know how to do it, and. he..can-be- helped to know while still in prison. “The Prison Industries Reorganisation Administration is., the first and only deliberate effort of the Federal Government to create an agency to help the states §olvp one of their most difficult problems.”