CRIME: Cauterizers

It was just the week for a meeting of the National Crime Commission in Washington, D. C. What looked very much like a grand scale attempt at jury-wangling was fresh on the docket, in the devious history of a successful and therefore widely admired oilman and a onetime Cabinet member (see CORRUPTION, p. 12).

In speeches and interviews, delegates to the Crime Conference dwelt on the jury problem. Mr. Chief Justice William Howard Taft of the U.S. Supreme Court flayed “jurors of weak intelligence” and the prevalent exemption from jury duty of “worthy” citizens.

Chairman Caleb H. Baumes of the New York Crime Commission, author of the current model for habitual-offender crime laws,†said: “It is ridiculous to exclude from a jury persons who read the newspapers. A citizen who doesn’t read the newspapers is not an intelligent citizen and he probably is not fit to be on a jury.” Mr. Baumes urged that judges be empowered to select juries, leaving counsel the chance to show cause why any selection is unsuitable.

The National Crime Commission, formed last year, is a voluntary body of citizens who propose to cauterize whatever social infection it is that gives the U. S. the highest crime temperature in the civilized world. In the report of its chairman, Richard Washburn Child, “the most important things”listed for discussion and improvement were: 1) Laws against traffic in stolen goods. 2) Compiling of crime statistics by all the states. 3) Prison labor problems. 4) The pardon & parole system.

When the National Commission was founded there were only three organized state or city crime commissions in the U. S. Twenty-six such bodies sent delegates to the gathering last week. Largely through the efforts of the National Commission 42 states made 587 criminal code amendments. Some of these amendments the commission found foolish—such as Missouri’s making dog-stealing grand larceny* and Idaho’s law against buying or selling chickens after dark with out notifying a sheriff. But nine-tenths of the changes were declared “seriously and carefully considered”—anti-pistol laws in Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island;†Baumes-type laws in Vermont, Minnesota, Missouri, Massachusetts and Iowa; a whole new code in California;the appointment of a commission in Louisiana to rewrite the century-old Napoleonic code.

There was many a speaker, many a topic:

¶Professor E. E. Sutherland of the University of Minnesota gave a definition: “Crime in modern society is the result of mobility which has broken traditions, multiplied contacts, introduced variety and conflict in culture, resulted in segregating people in different culture areas, where they support each other in crime.”

¶Miss Leona Marie Esch of Cleveland said that the only way to beat the criminal was to “load the dice,” i.e. stiffen the law. “He gambles with the law,” said Miss Esch, “playing three to one he never will be caught, two to one he never will be convicted, and then playing a last chance [that] he will never be sent to a state penal institution.”

¶ President Arthur H. Sapp of Rotary International was on hand. He reported on Modern Youth. “Modern youth,” said President Sapp, “has neither hope of heaven nor fear of hell. He commits suicide as a part of his college course, and he and his sisters fly across the seas knowing that saltwater is a sure cure for all ills.

“There is a dash and abandon among the youth of our land that is inspiring and terrible to contemplate. . . .”

President Sapp told how Premier Mussolini had lately said to him of the Italians: “‘Mr. Sapp, what these people need is discipline.’ ”

¶ One of the most strenuous delegates was James E. Baum of the American Bankers’ Association, whose plan for bands of citizen vigilantes armed with pistols and sawed-off shotguns sounded much like the Ku Klux Klan.

¶ One of the mildest delegates was onetime (1916-21) Secretary of War Newton D. Baker (see POLITICAL NOTES below), who spoke of the U. S. prison population as “just a part of our common citizenship that has been found wanting and taken away.” Convicts, he said, are “part of ourselves” and in evolving methods for their rehabilitation “we are dealing with a long procession of men and women who at present are babes in arms; who, as the revolving years come on, are quite certain, under the deadly percentages which the criminologists are beginning to establish … to lead lives of crime.” Mr. Baker’s plea was for closer study of criminal psychopathy.

*The Baumes Code, effective last year in New York, copied widely since, imposes life imprisonment upon any thrice-convicted person who is convicted a fourth time, no matter how trivial the fourth offender may seem. Lately, under Michigan’s new Baumes Law, a three-time convict was sentenced for _ life when caught with one bottle of bootleg gin.

*Few dog-owners, however, would agree that dog-stealing is a light offense.

†Illinois refused to curb not only pistols but machine guns.