education and a trade as an honest means of livelihood for the imprisoned who need them and not mere idle incarceration; an institution for the unfortunate mental defectives and criminal insane, and not their repeated liberations from jail and penitentiary to prey again upon the people; a penitentiary that will punish the professional and hardened criminal and not prematurely release him; a reformatory that will reform and give another chance to the youthful first offender and not train him for other crimes. We contend for greater coordination and cooperation between the agencies that capture, that prosecute, that try, that punish, that treat and that reform. We contend for greater efficiency in these agencies.

We go forward to the accomplishment of this task firm in the determination that nothing shall be done and no measure shall be proposed that will endanger or remove a single barrier erected by a suffering and a patient past for the protection of the innocent. But we are also highly resolved that the devices of law and the shams of practice that serve merely as avenues of escape for the guilty, shall be forever swept away.

THE PROBLEM OF LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE LARGE CITIES OF THE UNITED STATES.

BY

WILLIAM E. DEVER,

MAYOR OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO.

Theoretically, law enforcement in any community, large or small, must depend upon two factors: First, a conviction on the part of substantially all members of the community that the laws set up for their government and well-being are just and reasonable and an insistence that violations of such laws be adequately punished. Second, the institution and maintenance of sufficient judicial machinery and a system of judicial procedure effective to secure prompt and certain conviction of the guilty.

For many years The American Bar Association and kindred organizations officially and through the voice of their membership have urged upon the legislative departments of the nation the critical need in many of our states of a re-examination of the whole subject of criminal procedure and practice. The changes have been wrung upon this plea so often that it has become rather an old story. As an indication of how difficult it is to move the legislative mind, at least in certain states, toward the completion of this necessary reform, attention may be called to the fact that the Chicago Bar Association has appealed, not once, but many times, to the State Legislature to reconstruct and amend our criminal procedure and practice so as to render it possible for the courts to bring persons charged with criminal offenses to speedy trial, and, further, to eliminate the unconscionable delays that occur during criminal trials.

Many things, at least in Illinois, have operated against the Chicago Bar Association in realizing this purpose, one of which is that the lawyer members of the legislature, in the main, take but little interest in or actually oppose the elimination of an archaic system of criminal law procedure that is rendering it practically impossible for our criminal courts to function in

such a manner as to strike terror to the hearts of evildoers either actual or potential. The conditions in Illinois may be said to be typical of those which exist in certain other jurisdictions. To quote from Dean Mikell of Pennsylvania University Law School:

Due to historic reasons that cannot be gone into here, the provisions for safeguarding the innocent accused person have grown out of proportion to the accusatory provisions, and so the system has been thrown out of balance with the result that too many guilty escape conviction.

The problem, then, as concerns the second of the factors to which I have referred is to bring sufficient pressure to bear upon legislative bodies so that, by the enactment of adequate laws, it will become possible to deal out swift and certain punishment to those who, in increasing numbers, find it possible to live without labor by violating every law that exists for the promotion of public peace and order.

In the first place, prompt trials are impossible with an insufficient number of criminal court judges. In Cook County, with which I am particularly familiar, we have not had at any time within the last twenty years a sufficient number of criminal court judges to promptly dispose of the constantly increasing number of criminal cases. An effort is made to make as prompt a disposition as possible of the so-called "jail" cases (cases where the defendants are unable to give bail), but bail cases, even of homicide, are often not tried for a year or two years after indictment. The facility with which bail is furnished in cases of the most serious character makes the situation one of extreme seriousness. Cases are by no means uncommon in Cook County of second and third offenses, committed by persons out on bail for a supposed first offense. Even under an inadequate and antiquated system of procedure a sufficient number of judges in the criminal courts to try any case within thirty or sixty days after the return of an indictment would go a long way toward improving present conditions.

The strict rules of ancient pleading as to indictments should be modified and amendments in matters of form permitted under such limitations as would not deprive the defendant of any substantial right.

Our cumbersome and tedious method of jury examination in criminal trials (such examinations not infrequently lasting from two weeks to two months) should be entirely changed. Preliminary examination of jurors by the judge, or assistants to the judge, to determine the presence or absence of a cause for challenge, and the "striking" from a panel so passed for cause of an equal number after a reasonable examination by the attorneys for the prosecution and defense in lieu of the present right to exercise from three to twenty peremptory challenges would go far towards eliminating the entirely unnecessary delay accompanying such examinations under existing practice.

Instead of the oft-repeated spectacle in so-called "insanity defenses" of highly paid medical experts taking up days and weeks of time in swearing to diametrically opposed opinions, provisions should be made for the substitution of official unbiased commissions paid by the state to determine the strictly medical question of sanity or insanity whether at the time of the commission of the crime or before the execution of sentence.

The law in many states prohibiting the trial judge in charging the jury from commenting on the facts, deprives the jury of a disinterested analysis of the evidence by the trained mind of the only unbiased participant in the trial-the judge.

Our practice on appeals should be greatly simplified. The English system might well serve as a model. Let criminal appeals. take precedence over all other appeals. Let them be heard within thirty, or at the most, sixty days, on the typewritten record of the lower court's proceedings and an oral argument except in cases of extraordinary importance where the court of appeals requests a written brief and argument.

Parole laws can and should be as nearly automatic as possible thus avoiding the possibility of abuses too well known to need specific statement. In some states every conviction, except for murder, carries with it a minimum and a maximum sentence. A first offender with a perfect prison record automatically becomes eligible for parole at the expiration of his minimum sentence, a second offender at the end of a term of years fixed to expire between the minimum and maximum sentence and a third offender must serve the maximum sentence. Demerits for breaches of prison discipline are computed and added to the time at which the

prisoner would otherwise be eligible for parole. Only in most extreme cases can the fixed period and computation be varied.

The above are some of the more important procedural reforms in the administration of criminal justice which if made effective would in my opinion go far toward making the courts an efficient instrument to carry into effect the will of the community, assuming that that will is to insist that all violations of law be promptly and adequately punished.

As I have already indicated, it is that will of the community, or, in other words, the attitude of the general public toward the enforcement of law, with which I more particularly want to deal in this paper. Possibly because of the controversial nature of the question involved there has been a woeful dearth of outspoken, impartial utterance. Because of its bearing upon the fundamental question of preserving law and order in many of our communities, the time is ripe for a statement of the facts, scientifically and accurately ascertained, rather than prejudiced or interested individual or group opinion. The first step in that approach is to honestly recognize and appraise existing conditions.

The prevalent belief that there is a growing disrespect for law is, in a measure, but not entirely, well founded. Many, probably most, of the laws that exist for the protection of life and property are as respected today as they ever were. The trouble arises from the fact that certain laws have been enacted in recent years not at all aimed at eliminating things of moral turpitude, but rather for the purpose of regulating human conduct in certain matters regarding which there is in many parts of the country a dominant belief that the law-making authorities have no right to interfere. To obtain in all quarters respect for the innate quality of such laws is an impossible task.

In the year 1920 Congress passed the Volstead Act which was intended to give vitality to the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution which prohibited the sale and traffic in intoxicating liquor. The effect of the Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act was to create new social inhibitions in several of the important industrial states. The consequences in those states of attempts to enforce this federal legislation, while startling to many, are but the natural results of the conditions in those states.