Evening star., 1960-03-15
Baze|on Urges
Rethinking Of
Criminal Law
Wants Emphasis
On Rehabilitation,
Not Punishment
BY PHIL THOMAS
Star Stan Writer


"top-to-bottom ret linking"
about this country's criminal
law system and advocated
changing the emphasis from
punish, punish, punish" to re-
Mobilization.
Judge Bazelon of the United
States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia, who
wrote an opinion which set up
a new legal insanity test here
in 1854, made the remarks as
he presented the annual Bran
deis Memorial Lecture at Bran
deis University in Waltham,
Mass.
He recalled that the late
Supreme Court Justice Louis
BrandeiS started a legal revolu-
ton in 1908 when. as an at
torney. he presented success
full Supreme Court brief that
amounted to a major sociolog-
zeal treatise" in case involving
women'S work rights.
Judge Bazelon said the brief
in the 1854 Supreme Court
school segregation case, Brown
VS.. Board of Education. fol-
lowed this same pattern.
Sees Logical Trend
The District jurist suggested
that these cases, like the 1854
Durham insanity case. were
only following a logical trend
toward recognition by the law
of the great strides of the
social and behavioral sciences.
Judge Bazelon said the law
by itself, without help from
the behavioral scientists, is
cast in the hopeless role of
a socially isolated, traditional
bulwark against the welter of
personal. social and economic
forces which create today's
problem of crime and the So
called criminal population"
by itself the law would dis
pose of both the problem of
crime and the criminal himself
with the one idea of punish
ment."
But. he said, this does not
fully apply to our system of
criminal justice because there
is agitation much heat
and a certain amount Of light"
1T is a system in transi-
ton"
He pictured the Durham
rule. which gives psychiatrists
greater latitude in testifying
in court cases involving the
insanity defense. as the peak
of an iceberg visible above the
waterline."
Barrier Seen
But the deeper part of the
iceberg consists of the retribu-
tive urge to punish irrespective
Of effect and the accompany
ing intellectual justification Of
this primitive urge. the So
called theory of deterrence."
This theory. the judge said,
is "the greatest carrier to
progress in the criminal law
proposing that the criminaD
be punished as an example to
all, to keep all the rest of us
from committing his crime"
He said the emphasis on
punishment is accompanied by
a disastrously high level" Of
repeated crimes. He pointed
out that in the period from
l949 to 1858 two-thirds of the
criminals sent to Federal pris-
ons in this country were neither
reformed nor deferred from
committing another crime after
one Jail term and half of those
imprisoned were arrested again
after two or more Jail terms.
He urged that society stop
treating (the criminaD like a
pariah, as a person who is
entitled to punishment ana
only punishment, because if we
treat him that way he will
become that way"
The judge said he is not op-
posed to all measures of punish
ment, or deprivation and recog-
nizeS their necessity. but dis
associates himself from the
"either-or, all-or-nothlng atti-
tude."
THE problem really posed
is. how much punishment
and what kinds required to
sustain the threat of punish
ment at an effective level?"
Choice of Change
Saying that the alternative
to rehabilitation can only be
"destructiveness," the judge
asked: Would it really be
the end of the world if all
jails were turned into, hos
pitals, or rehabilitation GEN.
ters?'
The defendant would then
just as the committed men,
tai patient is today-be de-
prived Of his dearest posses
sion, his personal liberty"
Judge Bazelon said.
In such rehabilitation CEN
ters the criminal would be CIV
en- the chance to change his
personality, his very style of
responding to life"
ITO make the effort Coward
personal alteration is indeed
the true command of all re-
ligion and all morality" he
said.
He conceded there are limits
to what the behavioral SCI
ences, such as psychiatry. can
do in aiding in this rehabili-