A MAN'S A MAN

The new Harvard Institute for Criminal Law brings together an illustrious body of jurists to deal with an important aspect of the administration of justice. The purpose of Professor Sayre and his colleagues, an attack on specific problems relative to fitting the punishment to the criminal and not to the crime, appears to the layman as a sound method for dealing with criminal cases. What the Institute is able to report from its studies will be eagerly awaited by those interested in the advancement of social justice.

To go from the study of law in books and documents to the examination of individual offenses against society indicates a new outlook in the legal profession. Today the lawbreaker is dealt with under a hard and fast rule which was made to consider the mass and not the individual. With the present code there is little or no room for the services which a psychiatrist, physician, or social worker might render, not in punishing the crime, but in getting at the cause of the un-social conduct in the individual.

That the present penal system is not reducing crime is a thought often expressed. Clarance Darrow in recent years has achieved considerable celebrity for his advocacy of the treatment of the individual criminal as a cure for the cause of crime. Despite the unfortunate angles of many of his cases and the adverse public opinion regarding them, it would seem that some such treatment is necessary to get at the root of the trouble. In seeking for the practical details to work out this idea the Institute offers excellent hope for some plan for improvement of present conditions.