Van Waters Asks For Law Reform

Dr. Miriam Van Waters urged reform of two criminal laws at a meeting in Phillips Brooks House last night.

Speaking before the local chapter of Pi Lambda Theta, a women's educational sorority, the director of the Framingham State Reformatory for Women demanded smaller sentences for petty thefts and permission for the reformatory to put prisoners on parole.

Dr. Van Waters pointed out that women serve longer than men for petty theft in Massachusetts, and cited a girl in her prison who was sentenced to five years for stealing a 15-cent bottle of milk.

"We must become allies of the scientific method if we are to reform our criminals," she said. "All our laws have not lessened the number of persons who cross prison doorways."

"If we find spots on the lungs of a child with a tubercular mother, we are immediately concerned. But when we see signs of delinquency in children, we never pay any attention to them. We give all the freedoms to youth with little inculcation, and then we punish with the greatest severity."

"Whenever we read stories about crimes," Dr. Van Waters concluded, "we always find that nothing was done in the beginning, when the criminal attitudes were being formed."