The Detroit times., 1916-06-02

i
The play with message of this years
season is Justice" written with every
mark of mastery by John Galsworthy. It
is satisfaction to those who believe that
the theater is more than a diversion,
more than a Grass appeal to sentiment.
more than pulpit or lecture platform
to those who believe that It is the self
expression of social life, the application
OF creative art to the Interpretation of
life.
This play has a theme, and it is one
to which civilization is now becoming
quick. 1t is that punishment is not JUS
tice, that to break man does not mend
the break of law, the old truth which
seers perceived and proclaimed to deaf
world ages ago, that you cannot cure
evil with evil.
Not even the stanchest advocates Of
law imagine, if they have any imagina-
ton at all, that a criminal court actually
remedies the ills of society. In judicial
procedure We simply do the best we can.
or the best we think we can. When the
community is injured by crime, we in
jure the one who commits it, not because
1t sucks the poison from the deed, but
because We must do something.
Yet reflection shows the entire futilitv
of punishment. For we send man to
the penitentiary for three reasons:
First, to change his nature by infiict-
ing hardship upon him so that he will
fear to do evil and learn to do well. Sec
ond that society may be protected from
his wicked activities. And third, that
others seeing his distress may be de-
TERED from initiating his offense.
| In every one of these points punish.
ment breaks down. Ask the warden of
any prison and he will tell you that GRIM
mails do not emerge from confinement
purified and good. AS one of them said
to me, This is no reformatory institu-
ton; it is place of punishment"
Society is not protected, for when the
malefactor comes back from doing his
time and purged of his one devil, he is
filled with seven other and fiercer devils.
AS rule the man goes to prison as an
average normal person who has made a
mistake or succumbed to temptation; he
is one of US who has slipped, and been
caught; he comes back from prison as
full member of the criminal class; he
is not any more of us, he is our profess
sional enemy.
We are all criminals, more or less, in
GLIDING you and me; that is, we do wrong
things at times. But because we are
prudent, or clever, or carefully conven-
tional, or perhaps good, we are not label
led criminal, criminality is not expected
of us. And the mass of men do about
what is expected of them. But when a
man is put through the mill of justice,
he is branded as with the mark of Cain,
whether he will or no he is a member of
the criminal union, we expect crime of
him, and usually are not disappointed.
AS for lettering others, putting an Of
fender in solitary confinement, subject
ing him to physical or mental torture,
or killing him, encourages crime by the
well-known psychological law of sugges-
ton and hardens and embitters wrong
ioers.
What to do, then?
The answer is, instead of prisons let us
have hospitals; instead of sating our ven
geance by hurting a sinner let US try to
cure him; instead of punishment, let us
have treatment. and above all, instead of
attacking symptoms, let US address our
selves to removing the causes of disease.
We have gotten over the barbarous
custom of beating the insane or half
witted with clubs to dr;~-e the devil out
of them; we put them in asylums and
give them scientific care. When will we
get over the custom of inficting pain
unon wronQdoers and learn to put them