STUDYING CRIMINALS

Hokitika Guardian, 7 October 1931, Page 3

STUDYING CRIMINALS

A CHICAGO EXPERIMENT. NEW ANALYTICAL -SYSTEM. REFORMATIVE TESTS. CHICAGO,. June 10. “Guilty,” says the, judge. Tin prisoner is led downstairs, across -the white gravel yard of the Cook County Criminal Courts, and is locked in a yellow-barred cell inside the big new gaol. -Six psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers examine the culprits. He may not have to serve -time in prison after all.

Quietly, two months ago, this style of treating guilty men was started ai the Criminal Courts building. No other city in -the United States has such a system, and criminologists are watching with curiosity. This spring six murderers, instead of being sent to the electric chair or to the penitentiary for life, were shipped away to 'the institution for the criminally insane at Chester, a Mississippi river town in Southern Illinois, as a result of examination by the lieAv clinic at the Ciirninal 'Courts building. Likewise, convicted criminals have been placed on probation ratlier than sent to prison. The compensation, as some view it, is that this clinic will recommend life imprisonment for convicts who might otherwise be released in a few years.

This “behaviour'’ clinic, as it is called, was started on April 1 by the • CookCounty Board and Chief Justice John P. Met loony, who, with the other judges, had realised for years that thousands of men were being sent to the penitentiary from this country with results disastrous to society and to the condemned.

IN'DI VIDUAL PROBLEMS. Proper study of each man after conviction would show that some were repentant and could be placed on probation, rather than made vicious by gaol confinement, the sponsors believed. Others were clearly insane cases, and when scientifically assayed as such should be sent to an institution lor life lather than to prison for a few years, with subsequent release and its danger to the public.

The man at the head of the new clinic is Dr Harry R. Hoffman, professor of mental and nervous diseases at Bush Medical College and psychiatrist, who, in an official capacity, has been studying prisoners and talking to them almost daily for 20 years.

“My y.-ais of study of prisoners convince me that every case is an individual problem,” he said, “and that no judge cap give just, sentence unless he lias a complete analysis of the health of the ci nvict, the mental make-up', the previous environment, the reaction to that environment, the development and

•experience of the individual, and the possible adaptability and adjustment if returned to society under supervision or in a new environment.

“The way I see it, a nagging husband is as *much a criminal, an anti-social being, as a man who steals an automobile. That’s all there is to it; wc have our driving impulses and instinct: and if we cannot hold them in restraint within the artificial bounds made bv a group of legislators and called the law. then we are crimjnals. Tt is entirely artificial, of course. LAW MADE CRIMINALS. “One year we buy liquor and are committing no crime. The next year we buy liquor and are criminals. One month we are in war and kill an enemy and get a medal. The next month it is peace and we kill a man and we are criminals. A man does not pay alimony to his exwife and he is locked up, a criminal. He may not be in the least more antisocial in his ordinary actions than he was before the divorce, but now he becomes a criminal. , “One case T remember last winter. A Madison Street hobo with a wooden leg slipped, on the ice and fell against a window, breaking it. The judge asked him if he were guilty of breaking the window. Tie said he was. The judge gave him six months. Tf that had been a comparable criminal case out. here and our clinic had questioned the man, we would have recommended probation, and the judge would have seen the justice of it.

‘■"Now we have such a small staff we can study only a few of those convicted. When we enlarge our staff we will he able to analyse every one. That is the ideal.”