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reed in any will engage raaeaaie rae : ny. State for even so little as six mo! hs, and criminals will ~ fo avoid it. +f ‘ea fF - : The blame ‘for the current terror, it seems to me, is; at the wrong door. The poor cops are the When a conspicuous criminal is at large, ww yc always laid “. "" common gonts. joc they are -_ kim or have been bribed to let him go. But in nearly ~ .. every auch case they have actually taken him already, not- once but half a dozen times. He is not loose because they _ have failed but because the whole machinery of justice - "” abovs them has failed—because it has fallen, in only too ~“many American states, unfaithful, and only too often crooked men. He is loose _ ... because getting loose, with the grotesque system which now prevails among ué, is at least twice as easy as staying _. Why are there so many more murders in the United - States than im any other civilized country? For the «= Obvious reason that killing a man is safer here than any- > where else on earth. But is that because the cops do not ;. dotheirduty? Many Americans, suppose, would answer =: veatigation, covering “SIE America tities, exhibit the plain facts. They show. that - fa all the cases of murder reported in 1933 arrests were made in 80.5 per cent, and that in all the cases of man- _ Slaughter they were made in 89.4 per cent. we Certainly there is no sign of neglect of duty here. The eops go out at the risk of their lives and drag the scoun- : drels in. Scores of them are killed at the business every * year, and unnumbered hundreds-are shot, mauled, and * crippled. In the year 1932, according to the Bureau of , the Census, there were 11,000 homicides in the United _ States, and during the same year, if we take the figures ? of the Bureau of Investigation, the cops arrested 9,000 ! of the murdérérs” But of the 9,000 only 130 went to the : gallows or the chair, and of the rest probably not more than a third even went to prison. an : _. + And how many, having got behind the bars, stayed _, there? The answer is to be found in another report of the Census Bureau. It shows that the normal prison population of the country is about 125,000, and that in an average year about 75,000 new prisoners are dressed in, and about the same number are turned loose. And how and why are they turned loose? A hundred or Bo, as I have just said, depart in coffin, executed for their crimes. A‘ thousand die from natura! causes. Two thousand take - iL French leave over the wall. Twenty-five thousand, or “5. only about one third, finish their sentences. All the rest, . _ running to more than 40,000 in an average year, are par- doned, paroled, or “ otherwise released.” - _ - © things are responsible for this wholesale and intol- - & erable cheating of justice. The first and foremost is the chaotic state of legal procedure in the United States — not of law, mind you, but of mere procedure. The law is - everywhere sufficient to deal with every kind of serious grime. In forty of the forty-eight states the punishment __ for deliberate murder is death, and in all there are severe penalties for the lesser crimes of violence. If these laws were enforced for year at least 2.000 murderers would * go to the gallows instead of 130. But they are nowhere enforced adequately, and in many states scarcely at all. - What stands in the way of their execution is simply the’ .” glmost incredible imbecility and lack of conscience of so many American judges and lawyers. A murder trial in _.. most states is no longer an orderly effort to discover the guilty man and bring him to punishment. It is, instead, a gaudy public combat between two gangs of prima- _ donna lawyers, with a decayed ex-lawyer on. the bench to | get as referee. As likely as not the chief lawyer for the .” defense is a professional jury fixer, with no more res :. fox the law than the prisoner in the dock. And almost - " ¢eytainly the chief lawyer for the prosecution is a political. “"- "4 heok seeking publicity, and hopeful of higher office... *.:°. There are, of course; exceptions in both directions. We- -« are refreshed now and then by the spectacie of a prose- “ disdain to violate their oaths. But inly they ~ are pot numerous. denounced for not taking him at once, and not _ new uncommonly it is hinted that they are afraid to tackle“ who, having fsiled at the bar, now sweats and suffers of into the hands of incompetent, ~ 44). yes, but if so they would answer wrong. The returns of Agus the United States Bureau of Invest 4 ing 696 ~ ere and The average is precisa as I have described it. The defense ia carried on without the slightest regard for either the law or the faqs, and the prosecution is hardly more than e show put on newspapers. And on the bench sits an elderly vacuum the bench, scarcely knowing what it is all about. In England a judge actually runa hia court. Tf a shy- _ater defending a triminal resorts to trickery and obfusca- tion he is hauled up at once, and if he persists he is as good as disbarred. And if a prosecuting officer, forgetting the aolemnity of the inquiry before him, begins to strike atti- tudes and tear his hair, he is hauled up just as quickly, and thereafter he prosecutes no more. An English judge is supposed to know the law, and he does know it. There is no way to deceive him, and there is no way to intimi- date him. He makes. up his mind without delay, he sees that his orders are obeyed instantly, and it is seldom that his judgments are upset.on appeal - ©. > | +4 fy drama while it ia going on, almost delays. -It ta least @ year to bring a well heeled criminal te trial, 5S for the: : ¥ aca’ even two or three, to get him inte jail, even though his_ guilt may be gross and glaring. Back in 1931 a rich Southern politician, banker, and general rogue was put- in the dock in North Carolina for a series of swindles, _and by some accident was promptly convicted. But it was May, 1934, before he was actually behind the bars. During the same year of 1931 a rich crook of the same kidney was brought to trial in England. He was arraigned on July 20, convicted on July 31, and jailed on August 31, and in jail he remained until the end of his term. How can any one argue that the American system is N the United States s criminal trial is « tin-pot melo~....- and before and after it there - ~ -I¢ takes an average of te after he is convicted it takes another year, and maybe - ~ rational, or that it seryes the ends of justice? By the —. time the criminal comes to trial half the witnesses againat ~ him have disappeared, and before he gets into jail the reat are dying of old age. And once he is behind the bars, - if he ever arrives there, it is at least two to one that he - will be out again before his term has expired. The blame for all this rests squarely upon the bench and bar of the country. Half the delays in justice among ws are due te the failure of lawyers to show a reasonable professional conscience, and the other half are due to _ the failure of judges to bring them to book. There are | go many shysters if practice everywhere that even decent lawyers. must resort to. dodges in order to get an even break. And there is 30 much incompetence on the bench ‘ that the central object of all criminal law, to bring evil- doers to punishment, is allowed to be forgotten, and a prosecution becomes no more than a preliminary te along . and scandalous conspiracy to cheat justice. . : Under cover of thia wholesale failure there is lush opportunity for the quacks and. sentimentalists who re- . gard all criminals as poor unfortunates who ought to be coddled instead of punished. We have a great swarm of such professors in the United States, and they are chiefly responsible for the fact that the odds against a felon stay- ing in prison, once he ever gets there, are lengthening. They whoop up various complicated and improbable - theories about the causes and nature of crime, some of them political, some economic, and some alleged to be medical: but all of those theories resolve themselves into the doctrine that a criminal deserves sympathy rather than detestation, and that it is somehow disgraceful to ~ believe that he should be punished. - tn this doctrine J can discover nothing save hooey. It - is against human nature and it is against common sense. When a bold and atrocioug crime has been committed nor- people are nét interested in hearing a long discourse | mal ‘on the criminal’s psychology, couched in muddy, pseudo- ' scientific language; what they are interested in is hear« aogeonoe - ing that he has been promptly and adequately punished. - : And -by adequate they do not mean merely aufficient to — they mean sufficient to make 2 a} think ba ho : : make him transiently sorry; my e ® « ° 2,92 £ a seat what a”