Evening star., 1930-06-11
URGES JAIL TERM
FORLAW OFFICERS.
Judges Should Know Prison
Conditions, Social Service
Speaker Says.

~ the Associated Press.
BOSTON, June l1.-A suggestion
that ut would have been a most useful
thing If the Governor of Ohio, on his
Inauguration night, might have spent
us first month as governor in the pen
4ntiary at Columbus" was made by
-. Charles N. Jathrop, D. D., of New
FORK, secretary of the social service
department of the Episcopal Church,
speaking at the national social service
conference of the church in Boston
yesterday.
He deplored the prison holocaust" in
which hundreds died.
Discussing the problem Of dealing
with the penal systems Of the country,
DR.. Lathrop continued:
1T would be helpful If it were the
obligation Of every judge on the bench
first to be an inmate Of the peniten-
tiary to which he sends his convicted
felons. I wish we might have the
judges dealing with criminal cases
clapped into prison for a couple Of
weeks before they are qualified to take
their places on the bench, that they
might know intimately the conditions Of
our penal institutions and our penal
systems"
Denies Crime Menace.
Or. Lathrop asked every department
Of Christian social service in every do
cese in the country to get in touch with
the jail situation.
Undoubtedly" he said, I'VE are go
ing TO have many new jails built in
the near future in our country and I
look forward with a shudder when I
realize that they are going to be built
In the same old way
DR.. Lathrop strongly urged extern
sion of the system Of probation. There
u o very common idea that there is
an enormous increase in crime in our
country" he remarked, that indeed
We are Ia danger of being submerged by
a great crime wave. There is no proper
basis for any such conclusion. Crime
has not increased out Of proportion to
the increase Of the population. Some
kinds of crime have very markedly
decreased. There is probably a decrease
in juvenile crime, although people need
to remember that crime has always
been in large part Juvenile. It is to
Q large degree the anti-social pranks
and vicious, wild adventures of young
men"
He said, however. that the organized
activity Of the wholesale bootleggers
"is new and serious menace" and that
the repeating pistol and the automobile
had helped increase the crime of rob-
berry.
Says Conditions Cause Outbreaks.
Sending a man to prison under con-
ditions often prevailing today is like
sending a patient to q hospital for
treatment without knowing what his
illness Is, Miss Ruth E. Collins, super
visor Of social service, bureau of pris-
ons, Of the Department of Justice in
Washington, told the conference of the
International Association Of Police
women.
The Federal Prison Bureau, she said
has inaugurated a system Of individual
study of prisoners, to evolve the treat
ment for each offender that will put
him back on his feet socially.
Outbreaks in Federal, State and city
prisons during the last two years were
attributed, not to increasing crime and
increasing viciousness Of inmates, but
to the failure Of society to develop wise
and considerate treatment Of offenders,
In an address by DR.. Hastings H. Hart,
consultant in delinquency and penology
Of the Russell Sage Foundation, New
York.