The American issue. [volume] (Westerville, Ohio) 1912-19??, 1923-06-01

For the last seventeen years | have
been a judge of the municipal court
Of Chicago and am fairly familiar with
what has been going on during that
time.
Fifteen years ago the bridewell Our
city prison, seldom had less than 1900
prisoners and very often was crowded
with 1900, now the number OF inmates
in that ins stitution ranges from oo0 to
1.200. Then it took I'll of the time of
two Judges sitting at Harrison street,
Our central court to dispose of the.
criminal business there. They often
tried as high as four hundred cases
on a single morning. Now only one
Judge sits there and he seldom has
over l25 and often less than fifty cases
per day. Then Monday was the worst
day of the week, for we had the drunks
brought in during Saturday after
noon and Sunday. Frequently we
tried as high as two hundred drunks
lon Nowsssthe number of
drunks arraigned in that court will
not average oyer fifteen per day and
Monday is our shortest day. Since
the Eighteenth Amendment, we have
abolished two courts for want of bust
ness, one at Hyde Park, where we for
merly had from one hundred TO one
hundred and fifty cases per day, and
one at Thirty-hfth and Halsted streets,
where we had like number. In the
last three years the number of pris-
oners brought to these two courts had
been reduced from ten to twenty per
day each. The judges, therefore, aban-
doned these courts and had what little
business that remained transferred to
other courts.
Delirium Tremens Disappearing
In the twenty years preceding 1918
he record of our city bridewell shows
that $4,000 persons were sent there
for alcoholism. For many years
special ward was maintained in that
institution for persons afflicted with
delrium tremens,S From fifty to
hundred patients were kept in this
ward most OF sthe time strapped to
steel beds, nS order that they might
not injurc anyone else or themselves.
Now this ward is closed and last year
there was not single case of delirium
.remens there or in the county hos
pital. DR.. Joseph Capps, in recent
statement before the Chicago Medical
Society. said that out of the 37,5o6 pa
tents who passed through our county
hospital in 1922, there was not single
case of delirium tremens, and, the med
ical staff now had difficulty in finding
a typical case of delirium tremens to
exhibit at their students clinic. De
Iirium tremens has been outlawed by
!he Eighteenth Amendment.
The Juvenile Delinquency Record
There has been in the last three
years a most remarkable decrease i'll
juvenile delinquency and dependency.
The records of our juvenile courts
show the following
1917 1918 1919
Delinquency -. 3,007 5000 3,402
Dependency 90. 2,073 2,OS3 1886
1920 1921 1922
Delinquency -. 2,550 2,4l5 1917
Dependency -. 1902 1892 1896
From this it will be observed that
since the enactment of prohibition de-
linquency has decreased nearly fifty
per cent and dependency about forty
per cent. These figures are very sig
nihcant because most of our cases of
Juvenile dependency come from
drunken homes.
Prohibition and Poverty
The effect of prohibition is even
more pronounced in our Oak Forest
Inhrmary, this is Our poor house. The
record Of inmates passed through this