If society would fight bad environment in big cities like it fights disease there would soon be a very satisfactory slump in crime. Most of the crime today is just a gesture of resentment by the criminal against his inability to make a social adjustment.
We are making a great fight today against disease because disease is no respecter of persons but affects the rich and poor alike. The wealthy and socially prominent are vitally interested in this fight because it so directly affects them and the result is that we are waging a winning fight against all forms of disease.
But bad environment and the slums do not affect them so directly and no real effort is being made to clean them up. The result is that the poor and underprivileged that live in these sections are ignored. If a few of them happen to get too pesky they are stuck behind bars, and if they become too violent society hangs them or burns them up. There's your crime problem.
If some of the money spent to build bigger and better prisons was expended to clean up these breeding places of crime and fight ignorance there would be no need for big penitentiaries. The crime problem will never be solved by building jails and placing men behind bars. This is the same old system, used for years and it hasn't worked yet.
The more prisons we have the more graft the politicians are going to get out of it. They want lots of prisons and full prisons. If they didn't have them it would mean the loss of a lot of contracts and there would be no need for a Crime Commission.
If society would only interest itself in the crime problem and make an intelligent effort to solve it, this condition could be ended. I believe that every prisoner should be put to work. It is best for him and best for society. As conditions are now, we are not sending reformed men out of our jails but more criminals.
When a man is released from a prison he is given a few dollars and expected to go out and find himself a job and resume his place as a respected member of society. It isn't being done and it can't be done. In a few days his money is gone and he is ashamed to face relatives and he goes back to his old cronies and asks for a loan, which immediately obligates him.
And what are we doing to reform these men while they are in jail? Nothing. All we seem to be interested in today is seeing how long we can keep them behind the bars. Those breaks at Auburn and Clinton prisons are not the last. They are directly attributable to the long sentences handed out and until the laws making mandatory these long terms are repealed there will be constant danger of more breaks.
This talk about those breaks being caused by bad food and inadequate accommodations is bunk. For years we had such conditions and there were no serious breaks. It is those stiff laws which have resulted in a tightening up all along the line and a loss of all hope to the prisoner that is the cause. If these prisoners had been a**ured a reasonable time off for good conduct after being given a humane sentence these breaks would not have happened.
Parole and probation are the only chances prisoners have for reformation. I do not advocate an indiscriminate paroling system but I do urge a decent, humane and intelligent handling of the problem. The records prove that about 85 percent of those sent out stay out and that certainly proves parole.
Take this parole situation out of the hands of politicians and grafters and place it in the hands of leading citizens and those who are interested in the problem, have proper agencies established so these men can secure work under proper supervision when they get out, and you will have gone a very long way toward solving the problem.