AMERICA’S CRIME WAVE.

Taranaki Daily News, 12 October 1922, Page 7

AMERICA’S CRIME WAVE.

DRASTIC CHANGE IN LAW.

TOO MUCH CODDLING. Eminent American jurists met at New recently under the auspices of the American Bar Association, in an effort to devise reforms in the criminal procedure of that country for the betterment of the admittedly deplorable crime cnoditions. Judges from all parts of the country present declared that there were never so many crimnials as to-day, and that it is dishonest to claim otherwise. It is essential, speakers said, that a drastic revision be made in America’s criminal law if the vast crime wave now sweeping over the country is to be curbed. It is the opinion of Mr. Henry Taft, vice-president of the Bar Association of New York, Mr. John Goff, former Justice of the Supreme Court, Colonel Hayward, United States Attorney, Mr. William McAdoo, the chief New York City magistrate, Mr. Francis Hugo, a former Secretary of State, and others, that the great danger lies in the inclination of women’s organisations and lenient judges to coddle criminals, in the unfairness of “trials by the newspapers,” and the disposition of the judges to permit politics to, sway justice. Mr. Goff declared that crime in the streets of New York was more prevalent than it had been in by-gone days on the wild Western plains. It was a war upon society, he said, which was being aided by the tendency of recent legislation to favor the criminal. Prison discipline had been relaxed, he said, until the criminal was treated in an apologetic way as if society had wronged him, and the cardinal fault of the present situation was the lack of promptness and finality in the administration of the criminal law and the difficulty of obtaining juries unopposed to the death penalty. Mr. Taft urged the strict enforcement of the criminal law, and complained that the American newspapers do not report trials fairly and impartially, as do the London newspapers. In America, Mr. Taft said, it was possible to predict which side would win a trial merely by following the newspaper accounts, which over-emphasised the human appeal in the case and often omitted’ important facts. He accused many State Governors of virtual gaol-breaking because of the tendeny to issue wholesale pardons on the eve of their relinquishing office.