Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1910-10-31
Reform
BY GRIFFITH j. GRIFFITH
In the Business Philosopher

millions upon millions are spent annu-
ally in graphing with 1t. Obviously,
therefore, 1t Is matter that touches
our national existence to the quick.
Now we submit that every judge who
passes what is called an exemplary"
sentence in the hope of checking crime;
every warden or Jailer who excuses
brutality toward prisoners with the
plea that they have been sent to jail
for punishment: every police officer
who coneeives it to be his role to ter
rify malefactors by the display or
exercise of force, Is making the same
false argument as that by which the
upholders of things as they are seek
to Justify capital punishment. All
these classes. paid by society to pro-
tect it against crime, are-in our view
victims of an utterly erroneous phi
losophy and intensity the very evil
they are hired to cure.
The old Roman question, "Who shall
guard us from our guardians?" has to
be asked again by US and with more
emphasis than ever, for the evidence
shows that the methods they employ
are infinitely worse than useless.
Here, then, is pretty quarrel; one
of stubborn fact; one that no smooth
words can settle.
Either the deterrent policy, exempli-
fed most pronouncedly by capital
punishment but permeating our entire
treatment of crime and criminals, does
actually deter or 1t does not.
Every tree must be tested by its
fruit; the proof of the pudding must
be always in the eating. We insist
that crime increases under punitive
treatment; that brutality toward the
individual by society, instead of saving
society brings it into increasingly
desperate straits. If we are right in
this, the authorities, whom society
pays so handsomely for alleged pro-
lection, are wrong. If we are wrong,
they are right, and the tighter the
screws of repression are turned the
better 1t is a quarrel that does not
admit of compromise.
We say that it never pays society to
wrong the individual. We say the
state wrongs him inexpressibly when
it processes to seek his reform and de-
bases him; that murder cannot be
abolished or diminished in volume by
the state turning murderer; that when
the state compels q man to toll with
out remuneration 1t is itself a thief.
and that such is not the way to dis
courage theft; that if the poor, iso-
lated and therefore helpless individual
has duties toward the all powerful
state, infinitely greater are the duties
of that almost organization toward the
question has been overlooked, and we
call attention 70 it in the very sharp
est terms at our command.
Clearly the agitation of this question
must cut very deep. Clearly we are
calling on a whole nation to revise its
thinking Clearly we cannot hope to
win until that thinking has been re-
vised, To bring about that revision
seems to us our task, and we are en-
| deavoring to accomplishing it by sub
hitting proofs with such ability as
we can muster and wherever we can
get a hearing. Meanwhile we take
much comfort at finding the subject
more and more intelligently discussed.
and such an address as that delivered
| by Fred Kohler chief of police of
| Cleveland, o., before the recent con-
vention of the International Associa-
| ton of Chiefs of Police, inspires us
with the assurance that our dream OF
today will be the reality of a future
far less distant than many may
! suppose.