EDUCATED WARDENS

Even a casual and infrequent perusal of the daily press cannot fail to impress upon the average citizen that his country, a world leader in so many lines of endeavor, must at the same time own to preeminence in the rougher arts of hijacking, racketeering, municipal corruption, and homicide. Headlines keep us in touch with a gangster here entering a hospital to recuperate after a brush with a few other thugs, or with another resisting with lead the intrusion of some scores of New York police into his apartment. And the past year has seen an unusually large number of struggles, like those at Dannemora and Auburn, between the forces of the law and the apprehended criminal. The report of the Wickersham committee only emphasized the complexity of the problem presented by the crime wave; with the announcement yesterday that the Institute of Criminal Law will offer a curriculum for corrective administrators, it is not out of place to ask how much may be expected from such projects.

In insisting, as Professor Glueck has done, that the work of the prison official should be dignified, recognized as one requiring considerable technical training, and amply compensated, the Law School has taken a significant step. The superintending of a large prison demands, as an initial requirement, executive ability; in addition the care of criminal involves problems of measurement of mental capacity, anthropological knowledge, and psychological diagnosis. Citizens who would not entrust themselves to the care of an incompetent psychiatrist can not expect that the criminal classes, all in need of mental care to a greater or lesser degree, will be much benefited under the care of wardens trained only to pass the civil service examinations. Conversely, the tax-payer can consider as well spent any money used to attract academically trained men into the field of corrective administration.

The insistence of the Law School authorities on the experimental nature of the new project augurs well for its success. Society has found the crime evil a knotty problem through the ages; to give a problem new names, to classify it as sociological or a task for students of human relations, will not solve it. The Criminal Law Institute, frankly seeking the aid of other departments of the University, bids fair to turn out well-grounded and trained administrators who should be of distinct benefit to the communities in which they serve.