OCR Text |
Show 111 oo R CRIME WAVE Ul AND ITS CAUSE U What has caused the crime wave ' which has swept over the United j States like a plague'.' The American ! Bar association in seeking an answer, I sent a committee to Joliet peniten 1 liary to Interview the prisoners. One of ihe convicts said . "Association and environment j:ang life--. The crowd a fellow runs with when he is growing up makes or breaks him. A boy without proper supervision starts oj,ii all wrong in a big town He gets to running with women He can't make money enougn "to stand the pace, so he goes crooked. He gets In with a gang, because he knows the gang can keep him out of Jail and off the gallows With the gang system working like it does now, a crook who is a member in good standing can get away with almost anything and stay out of jail. The gang and Its lawyers and professional bondsmen will fix it for him. If I had been able to scrape up $650 when they got me, I wouldn't be here now. 1 could have been Bet free for that amount. The state would have been 'fixed.' The cure for all this Is bome life and the breaking up of the gangs and the crooked lawyers and their crooked friends in official life." Another witness was a former member mem-ber of the faculty of a leading middle western university. In 1920 he was sentenced to five years for conspiracy to rob. He attributes the great increase in crime to the war. DM "War breeds queer kinks in the minds of men. Crime waveB have followed fol-lowed war during all the history of the H .world. They will until the end of time. Firsl term prisoners should be aegregatod I have learned more than i I ever dreamed of crime and wayi beat iiit- law Hince I associated hen I with hardened old-timer?" There arc three) big outstanding I points in the disclosures of the two prisoner.- First, is en Ironmeni and its Influence on tha boj Second, Is (he ?ang Influeuce Third, is the pro! ! tinning of ihe legal profession The flral proves how essential is scouting to bo life in order to free the boy from the Influence or the vi-ciotfaly vi-ciotfaly directed gang. Scouting allows the boy that freedom and adventure which grips the imagination of every j boy, but keeps him within ihe path way of wholesome leader-hip The second shows how well orgun-: orgun-: ized is the criminal element and to (What extent the officers of the law are (handicapped by the collusion of crimi-I crimi-I nals. The third is the disgrace of the men 'of legal learning who lend themselves to the screening ol the criminal gang In I tab nearly every city is afflicted with one or more attorneys who knowingly know-ingly encourage criminality by system ;atically bidding for the business of defending de-fending men recognized as crooks, I and, having the support of the gang, they become the most powerful in struments for law defiance and out-1 out-1 rage. Even a crook, of course, is entitled to the best possible defense in a court lot justice, but when a lawyer knows I he is perpetuating a criminal gang by 'repeatedly appearing as a shield, that lawypr must realize he is disgracing ;his high calling and promoting theft, (blackmail and even murder. oo |