Washington, July 22.
Some amazing revelations have recently been made in connexion with an investigation of the prevalence of crime and the inadaquacy of the measures employed in its suppression. The investigation has been made by the Committee on Law Enforcement of the American Bar Association, which has visited six widely separated portions of the country, taking the testimony of distinguished jurists and lawyers, and co-ordinating the records of criminal courts and other statistics of crime.
One of the most astonishing features of the Committee's report is the fact that of the total population of the country one in every 300 is engaged in organized crime. It is doubtful whether even our best informed criminologists were prepared for statistics so startling. Scarcely less appalling are the statistics that show murder to be 20 times as common in this country as in the British Empire. During the seven years covered by the investigation there were 131,000 murders in the United States, and only 2,200 executions, or one execution to every 60 murders, as compared with one execution to every two murders in England and Canada.
The geographical distribution of criminality is equally interesting During the seven-year period Los Angeles stood at the head of the criminal list with three times as many murders ip proportion to its population as New York and twice as many as Chicago. In 1921 St. Louis had 426 murders, or more than ten times as many as New York. Los Angeles slightly exceed ed its seven-year average, and was closely followed by Washington, most of whose crimes are com: mitted by negroes, although the coloured population of the city constitutes only 25 per cent of the total. Chicago, Cincinnati, Buf-tale and New Orleans follow the order named, New York being one of the lowest, entirely _belying its reputation. As regards burglaries and housebreakings, the opening months of the present year found Dos Angeles again heading the list, followed by Chicago and Washington. St. Louis stands sixth and New York eleventh.
ManapMiNistTRaTION oF THE Law.
It would have carried the Com mittee too far afield to have inquired why the city that was only sixth in burglaries was first. in murders, or to have attempted a solution of any of the intricate problems involved in the geographical distribution of the major crimes. But it had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that the prevalence of crime was due in general to the lax administration of the law and to other defects in our judicial system.
Fifteen recommendations have. been agreed upon by the Committee, and it is not unlikely that before the annual meeting of the Bar Association, to be held at San Francisco on August 9, 10 and 11, other recommendations may be adopted, there having been several sweeping reforms urged upon the Committee by distinguished jurists regarding which no action has been taken.
Prominent among the 15 is the divorce of all judicial officials from polities, together with an increase in their number and a betterment of their quality. Under no circumstances, says the Committee, should a judge be allowed to become a candidate for any other office unless he first resigns his judicial position, an announcement of his candidacy to act automatically as a resignation.
An increase in the powers of trial judges is also recommended, and that they should sum up not alone as to the law, but also as to the facts, so as to clarify the issues for the jury.
One of the most important recommendations looks to the abolition of reversals of judgement on pure technicalities. No greater reform in American legal proce dure than this could be made. Readers. of the orth-China Daily News" may remember that when the Earl of Reading, then Lord Chief Justice of England, was in this country he told the New York State Bar Association that in English judicial procedure there was a marked and growing tendency to regard every case from the standpoint of equity. In America unfortunately the ends of jus are almost daily frum strated on the merest_ technicalities. In this connexion I may mention that a great impression has been created in this country by the sentencing of Horatio Bottomley immediately upon—his conviction and by the prompt affirmation of the verdict and sentence by the Court of Criminal Appeal.
The diversity of the codes of law and of the methods of criminal procedure in the 48 states is referred to by the Committee as calling for investigation and harmonization.
Among the reforms advocated aside from those in court procedure are the prohibition of the interstate transportation of firearms and their importation from abroad: a more stringent limitation of immigration so as more effectually to exclude the entrance into the United Siates of criminals and defectives, and a_ federal enactment dealing with mob violence within the limits of the Constitution.
The last recommendation of the 15 takes the form of a denunciation of that mollycoddling of prisoners by silly women which has long been so common and so disgraceful. Prisoners guilty of the most heinous crimes are treated as if society had committed a wrong against them. They are visited in prison, given flowers, read to, sung to, and made heroes Testimony or New York Jurisys.
Jurists of New York presented the Committee with so much interesting and valuable testimony that only lack of space prevents me from quoting it at considerable length. Mr. Justice Dike, of the State Supreme Court, said that next to efficiency on the part of the police he ranked prompt and severe action by the courts as the chief preventive measures, adding that criminals were encouraged by every measure that diminish. ed the authority of the courts. In this connexion he quoted a ruling of the Attorney General with regard to prisoners freed by the Parole Board which, he said, had had a most pernicious effect. Justice Dike favoured a relaxation of the rule against hearsay evidence and said that prosecuting attorneys ought to have the privilege, now denied them, of commenting upon the non-appearance of the criminal on the stand.
Ex-Justice Goff, of the same court, suggested the disbarment of lawyers who publicly discussed the cases of their clients before trial. He strongly deprecated, the rule requiring an interval between conviction and sentence as: largely destructive of the moral effect of the conviction, and—sometimes affording opportunity for the ex-excise of improper influence upon the judge.
Mr. Henry W. Taft, past President of the New York State Bar Association and. brother of the Chief Justice of the U. S, Supreme Coun expressed the opinion that the rules of evidence in criminal cases were so greatly to the advantage of the accused that it would really be conducive to the ends of justice to abolish them altogether.
Mr. William McAdoo, Chief Magistrate of New York City, said that in no other country in the world do so many people go armed as in America, and he declared the pistol to be the curse of the country. Quoting recent English statistics he said that there were only 15 murders in London last year. Only two of them went unsolved and only one trial resulted in an acquittal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.