Science: Crime & Punishment

To make the punishment fit the crime helps neither the criminal nor society. After 20 years of studying criminals in & out of jail, this is the conclusion reached by Harvard’s famed criminologists, Sheldon and Eleanor T. Glueck. In After-Conduct of Discharged Offenders (Macmillan—$2.50), they go beyond their previous factual reports (TIME, May 6, 1940 et ante) to propose radical reform in legal punishments, judicial sentencing and the work of parole boards.

Since 1925 the Gluecks have compiled detailed case histories of 2,000. Punishment, they have found, does not reform; 88% of juvenile delinquents remain delinquent. But the offenses tend to become less serious as the criminals grow older. Those who show least improvement are those who fail to mature with the years.

The Gluecks favor keeping present criminal legal methods, but only to determine acquittal or conviction. Sentence should then be passed, they say, not by a judge alone, but by a tribunal that includes a psychiatrist or a psychologist and a sociologist or educator along with the judge. The treatment prescribed by this tribunal should be modifiable by periodic checkups of the offenders’ psychological and social improvement.