480
The Green Bag
offenders and to provide for such offenders such therapeutic, disciplinary or segregative treat ment as expert advice shall indicate is the best means of restoring them to a normal condition; it hopes to surround the juvenile criminal with the sympathetic care of a foster parent and rescue him from a career of crime rather than to consign him to the company of abandoned criminals where an advanced education in crime is inevitable."
He favored a state custodian asylum for the criminal insane, the habitual criminals, and those who by their con duct have shown themselves to be in competent to refrain from criminal action. Judge Reid, president of the Wis consin branch, discussed the adminis Franklin L. Randall, superintendent of tration of the criminal law by the Wis the Minnesota state reformatory, treat consin courts, speaking highly of the ing "The Treatment of Offenders after record made by his state, thirty-three Conviction," described the male con out of thirty-six convictions having victs as he had found them at the insti been affirmed on appeal in the last few tutions under his care, indicating the years. He felt justified in challenging character of teaching and training that anyone to find in the recent past or the they require for their reformation and immediate future any glaring mis-car for the best protection of the interests riage of justice due to any technicality. He said that he would not advocate of society. giving to the judge the right to express He referred to their congenital and to a jury his opinion of the guilt or inno acquired incompetency and to the mis cence of the prisoner. fits and defectives in the various public The report of Committee G, on Crime institutions. He advocated the indiand Immigration, Gino C. Speranza, vidualization of punishment and treat chairman, was presented, the conclusions ment and pointed out the difficulties being as follows
— that embarrass judges when called upon to sentence convicted persons of whose 1. Let us strengthen our ridiculously weak individuality and previous history they methods of exclusion of alien criminals; let us are usually ignorant. He suggested that ask for a passport showing the criminal record, the work of the court and its officers if any, of the arriving alien and let us insist should cease with the conviction of the that the alien's photograph accompany the pass port lest a common trick of alien criminals nullify offender and his commitment, except in our efforts to bar them. cases where it appears clearly that the 2. Let us enlarge the power of deportation person may be properly released upon both as to the time within which this govern ment may exercise it and as to the acts for which probation under supervision. Mr. Randall also advocated the estab it may be exercised. To my mind nothing would lishment of a commission to receive all be so effective as a provision making alien crimi nals deportable for any crime committed here persons found guilty by the court and within five years of their arrival, such deporta to sort them out at a receiving station, tion to take place at the expiration of their sen assigning them to those state institu tence. tions where they will receive effective 3. Let us profit by the experience of older treatment looking to their rehabilita countries in the war of the state against crime tion. He would give to such commis by overcoming our national prejudice against a secret police. The benefits resulting to the lawsion, however, full authority to transfer abiding citizens of large cities like New York convicted persons from one institution and Chicago by a corps of secret detectives on to another as often as necessary and to their police force would be incalculable. release them finally only when it seems 4. Let us learn to give full faith and credit clear that they are fitted to be at large. to the efforts of foreign governments to appre-
