Crime and Punishment
500 Criminal Careers. By Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor T. Glueck. xxvii and 364 pp. (Knopf. 21s.) THE present writer was in Toronto last August for the meetings of the Fifty-ninth American Prison Congress, a gathering attended partly (according to an exasperated prison governor) by a " bunch of self-appointed uplifters " and partly (according to a prison reformer) by the " hardboiled " officials themselves. In the mixed grill provided for this varied audience, a paper by Dr. Sheldon Glueck, of the Law School of Harvard Univer- sity, stood out as by far the most able contribution. And now this interesting and readable volume has appeared, giving at length an account of the research which he then described in outline.
Those associated with welfare societies and correctional institutions are very prone to interpret much too optimis- tically the measure of their success. For the purpose of testing the extent to which present-day prison methods succeed in reforming the law-breaker, Dr. Glueck and his wife have conducted with extreme competence an exhaustive inquiry into the antecedents and subsequent history of the 51(1 men discharged from the Massachusetts Adult Reforma- tory during a two-year period. This institution is typical of many in the United States, where younger and more hopeful prisoners are sent.
As far as we know, this is the first inquiry of its kind under- taken with anything like such detachment and thoroughness. Only 27 out of the 510 men concerned were completely un- traced ; and several were discovered who had been wanted by the police for years ! And what were the results of the inquiry ? Of the 510 men, " 80 per cent. were not reformed but went right on committing crimes after their discharge."
" In this " (says Dr. Richard C. Cabot in his introduction) " there is no reason for surprise. N't'hy should such men change all these bad habits and acquire new ones, merely because they are confined for a little over a year in an institution where they are forced to do work in which they have little or no interest . . . pursued not principally for its educational valuo but for its economic results for which the prisoners care nothing 1"
This is a much-needed and salutary lesson. As long as we continue a penal system which doles out so much punishment for so much crime, with little reference either to the nature of the individual or the true interests of the community, and with no attempt to determine the results of our treatment, so long must we expect our methods to fail.
But Dr. and Mrs. Glueck do not end by recording that 80 per cent. of their subjects are failures. They have acquired much valuable information about the material with which the reformatory bad to deal, and the most probable causes of the failure. Sixty per cent. of the men came originally from " broken homes," and 80 per cent. left their homes before the age of eighteen. About half started on their criminal career between the ages of eleven and fourteen ; 53 per cent. of the men were native born of foreign parents, as compared with only 22 per cent. in the adult male population —a clear confirmation of our previous view that maladjust- ment is no inconsiderable factor in causing crime. Only 15 per cent. of the men or youths had belonged to any social club or organization for the constructive use of leisure. (What a challenge here to the Boy Scouts Association and kindred bodies !) In only 33 per cent. of the cases could the men be described as mentally normal, and the rest were either dull, borderline, or feeble-minded.
An unexpected but interesting fact revealed by the inquiry is that, compared with the pm-reformatory record, " there is a marked post-parole increase in regard to both those who attended church regularly and those who did not attend at all, and a corresponding decrease in those who attended occasionally." It looks as if some men are helped by institu- tional religion and others definitely put off by it.
The Gluecks have many wise things to say in the direction of improvement. The opportunities for vocational training in the institution should be greatly increased and an element of progressive self-government introduced. (It is idle to imagine that you can strengthen a man's ability to resist social temptations by shutting him completely away from them all.) Much is also said about the need for improved " parole " work. The- Gluecks realize that much of the delin- quency has its genesis in bad social conditions—" the social sore of broken homes," bad housing, parental irresponsibility, and biologically unhealthy mating. One most striking factor revealed by the inquiry is that :-
" legislative prescription of penalties and judicial sentencing are founded upon considerations almost wholly irrelevant to whether or not a criminal will thereunder ultimately be a success. Can any proof of the unscientific nature of the contemporary treatment of this problem be stronger ? "
In one chapter in the book it is attempted to compile " prognostic tables " for the guidance of judges, in the light of the information collected. Here we are frankly sceptical. An attempt thus to predict success with scientific accuracy from statistical data ignores the importance of the individuality of the offender. Moreover, we doubt whether the factors which operate most in character building are nearly so im- portant as the human personalities associated with them. Dr. Cabot in his introduction truly says that one essential condi- tion of the reformation of any of these men seems to be " that someone should come to know and to understand the man in so 'intimate and friendly a way that he comes to a better understanding of himself, and to a truer comprehension of the world he lives in."
But in these days, when journalists are called criminologists and expensive volumes of articles about crime and criminals reprinted from the Sunday newspapers, and written in sensa- tional journalese, are hailed as important contributions to penological science, we welcome Dr. and Mrs. Glueck's book. It is a valuable piece of work which does credit not only to its authors but to the University from which it comes. And how much longer is England going to withhold encouragement from this kind of necessary inquiry and research by having no University with a chair in penology ?
E. ROY CALVERT.
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