CRIME AND PUNISHMENT DISCUSSED AT MEETING

"Crime and Punishment" was the subject discussed in a symposium last night at the New Lecture Hall, conducted under the auspices of the Gamma Alpha fraternity, a graduate scientific society, which has annually presented such discussions for a number of years.

Sanford Bates, Commissioner of Corrections for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, began the discussion taking up the general subject from the legal point of view. Momentarily pausing to comment on the glories of the Boy Scout movement, he passed to the subject for discussion. He spoke of the law, as practiced in former years, as revolving wholly upon the question of responsibility, this theory being based upon the belief that man's will is supreme.

"But," said Mr. Bates, "Criminal law has recently been shelving off into other sciences, sociology, anthropology, and psychology."

In concluding he stressed the need of science in determining crime and punishment, and urged universal eduction as a means to this end.

Associate Professor E. A. Booton of the department of Anthropology continued the discussion, although "without the inspiration of the Boy Scouts, rather, undergraduates." He pointed out the methods of identification in crime which belong essentially to the field of Anthropology. "Our, hope is that we may identify the criminal before, as well as after the act," he said, "so that we may recognize the presence of dementia praicox before and not after little Willie has put the baby in the oven." He mentioned the possibilities of the relation between race and crime citing statistics of the negro, and foreign races in the United States. Racial psychology, according to Professor Hooton, is not yet definite, but with delicacy of technique increasing, it may be possible to determine exact relations between race, physical stigmats and abnormalities and crime.

Dr. C. M. Campbell, professor of Psychiatry and director of the Massachusetts Psychopathic Hospital, discussed crime from the viewpoint of medical psychology. According to Dr. Campbell the field of the medical man is limited to understanding such phenomena and abnormalities of life as are not infrequent among criminals, studying behavior and mental conditions preceding crime, as much as it is possible for medical science to determine should be the share of the physchiatrist." Dr. Campbell asserted.