The Outposts of Crime
THE OUTPOSTS OF CRIME A S might have been anticipated, the National ¦*¦ *¦ Crime Commission has furnished the incentive for much interesting conversation. Some of this has even taken on a...
...Some of this has even taken on a resemblance to good, old-fashioned sermons of the sort which traced human wickedness to its roots and secret springs...
...Dean Roscoe Pound, of the Harvard Law School, is absolutely right when he points out the dangers latent in 44O THE COMMONWEAL September 16, 1925 tumultuous, unguarded agitation...
...Thus will it insure comparative safety for citizens in the lawful pursuit of their affairs...
...The Times list could be developed further...
...Prentiss's benefit that "further analysis" presents some striking facts about the ratio of crime to the "foreign-born" population...
...We do not wish to imply that immigrants and their children are never guilty of misdemeanors...
...Prentiss is impatient with the slow processes of inductive reasoning, but in love with generalizations which smack of celebrating the Fourth...
...These blanket statements mean nothing else than that Mr...
...We have not yet completely broken the lynching habit, and there are scores of citizens who hanker after corporals' chevrons in new Viligante outfits...
...but it is essential to subject to criticism the hasty utterances of a man who presumably speaks as the mouthpiece of the National Crime Commission...
...Memphis, Tennessee, with a foreign element of 3 1/5 percent, has a murder ratio of 65 per 100,000...
...by inducing its members to set the example of intelligent service on juries...
...Judge Gary, for instance, has conservatively catalogued such fundamental errors as improper home training, insidious propaganda in the schools and elsewhere, and petty law-breaking...
...You can do anything with statistics, especially when they are of a shocking nature...
...There have been some instances where magistrates of cities predominantly foreign in population have openly declared that the great majority of their criminal cases involve native Americans...
...Mark Prentiss...
...The National Crime Commission can do a great deal to allay this libertinism of righteousness, even while it undertakes to dry up the sources of violent wrong-doing...
...Most of us are quite ready to nod agreement thus far and wish the commission speedy success in its endeavor to cut down the staggering number of murders and other violent crimes...
...But obviously it is most important that the work be undertaken in a way that will really do good...
...It can aim to restore the prestige of the courts by bringing about more rapid and effective conduct of criminal cases...
...Americans realize how tragically easy it is to arouse popular hysteria on such topics as criminal violence...
...Thus Lowell, Massachusetts, with an alien population constituting 34 percent of its total, has a murder rate of 3 1/5 per 100,000 inhabitants...
...His first conclusion about the 10,000 murders committed in the United States last year, is that "these figures do not need further analysis...
...his second conclusion is that "police records of all our cities will show that more than 60 percent of our crimes of violence were committed by the foreign-born, or the sons of foreign-born...
...Other citizens have attacked the courts...
...These utterances have a singular after-taste of the Klan and the illiberal standpatter...
...They make it seem desirable that the commission should annex a few people like Dean Pound, and acquaint its publicity men with the elements of induction...
...The New York Times made the public its debtor once more by observing for Mr...
...Prentiss might discover that it is safer to declare off-hand that 60 percent of the men engaged in the prevention of crime—policemen and detectives—are "foreign-born or the sons of foreign-born...
...and by encouraging the development and application of preventive moral medicine...
...This ancient truth is borne out once more by a speaker for the Crime Commission, Mr...
Vol. 2 • September 1925 • No. 19
