WAR ON CRIMINALS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20310, 19 January 1928, Page 14

WAR ON CRIMINALS.

CHICAGO’S MENTAL TEST. Fearing the humiliation of being publicly branded as mentally incompetent by the new sanity tests administered by the police, many Chicago criminals have had their intelligence tested by their own physicians or psychiatrists, and have forwarded to the police headquarters bills ol clean mental health. Mental tests for criminals were inaugurated in order to enable the polio to put mental defectives in institutions for the rest of their lives instead of for a short term in prison, from which they emerge ready to turn to crime again. Justice had frequently been outwitted by the procedure of the habeas corpus writ, which was often served before the suspect had reached police headquarters. The decision to apply the mental test of war-time was made as the result if series of conferences between the Chicago chief of police, chief of detectives, chief of the Criminal Court, and the physician in charge of the municipal psychopathic laboratory. Although an order has been issued co all' police stations to subject habitual criminals to the test, lack of accommodation prevents any large scale test. There have been no commitments to the asylum as yet, but the mere prospect of suen confinement, it is said, has struck greater terror to the heart of the gunmen than any punishment or threat heretofore do vised. Some opposition has arisen, how ever, and the way of the mental testers will apparently not be easy. One Chicago judge dismissed a.n habitual criminal charge with the comment that "we are not yet in Russia.” Some of the problems set are to count backward from 20 to 1, to define “soporific.” and make simple computations in algebra.