Ogden Standard-Examiner | 1920-12-13 | Page 4 | Police and Crime in United States

I POLICE AND CRIME IN UNITED STATES. There is a gi ;.t i i ino wave in America and r. n. Fosdick. farmer chairman of Iho commission on t ruin-ins ruin-ins camp activities, say:; our weakness in this respect Is due lo our method of treating crime. We at tempi 10 con trol the criminal, but do vr n' little to prevent Clime. In his book. "American "Amer-ican Pollco Systems." Mr. Fosdick says: "In Seattle tw h blocks in the heart of the city ore unnatrolled bv day or night, while seven-eighths of the city is without police protection between 4 a. m. and li" nocn. I was told by the chief of the Sail Lake City department that the residential sce-tion sce-tion of the city never sees an officer during the 36a days ol the year, un less one is specially detailed on a particular par-ticular ca?e." Mr. Fosdick declares (ft r art more people murdered in Now York in a year than In all ol England and Wale6; more burglaries In any large American city than in London. Wash-ington Wash-ington has three timer- ninny murders mur-ders as Liverpool. Far more interesting than proof of America's world leadership in Hie production pro-duction of all kin' or CT mi Is hlr. acute analysis of il i for this. His viewpoint here is that of n cosmopolitan cosmo-politan rather than a typical American reformer. He does not see the cause of our crime-ridden state primarily In the fact that we do not all go to sun day school, nor In the movie?, nor In the dime novels, nor in the lex trot, nor In short skirts, nor in home brew nor cabarets. He does not believe that a great wave of moral reform could sweep all this crime away, nor that a multiplication of lawi would solve the problem. On the contrary, he makes out a strong cise for the view that what we suffer lroiu is loo many laws, which attempt to regulate personal conduct m.'ti ad ol to pn crime; laws which are fundamentally unenforcible, because they are not suf ficiently supported by opinion, and which have had the erfect of making all law ridiculous, and of giving social sanction to such law-breaking. I Mr. Fosdick overlook- one of the. , greatest forces at work today to pre- vent crime, and that is the Boy Scout movement. Boys are being taught due j respect for superiors nnd proper re- j gard for authority. By this influ. nee our boys are being trained to be law) abiding, and later as men thes will be a tremendous power for orderly I government, making a more capable police force unnecessary.