Curing Crime
To the Editors:
TIME'S report on crime [June 30] reminded me of the day a number of years ago when I went over to Alcatraz prison to visit my client Mickey Cohen. I asked Warden Johnson what program he had for rehabilitating these toughest of all convicts. He replied: "We don't rehabilitate; we just warehouse!"
Now, when I thought we were making progress in penology, we are back to this medieval dungeon system of warehousing. At least that is what most penologists in most states will tell you. Rehabilitation has been a failure, so let's keep them in to do their time.
I think we have in our prisons the greatest captive student bodies anywhere in the U.S. I think a man should earn his way out of prison by education. If he wants to go to night school and learn more and learn faster, then his time should be cut down. I think there is a good correlation between good citizenship (if that is the antithesis of criminality) and education. I know there are a number of extreme opposite examples: Bill Sands, Caryl Chessman (both of whom I represented) and others who had high IQs and became criminals. But the usual criminal is part of an ethnic minority, economically distressed and uneducated, or, if you will, untaught how to tell right from wrong.
I'd make all sorts of classes available at good old Convict U—certainly the humanities, language, music, not just machine shop and woodworking. The latter wouldn't do the job.
But if you think me "too soft on criminals," I also think that psychiatry and psychology have progressed far enough so that we're able to tell those who should never be let out, once we can put our finger on them. We might even be able to do this before they run afoul of the law. Some people because of serious mental problems have just as much a constitutional right to be kept in custody as we on the outside have the right to have them kept from us.
Melvin Belli San Francisco
Your story attacked the frightening state of crime in America with pillows and those never-say-die cliches. Oh, you mentioned those nasty words like deterrence and punishment, but your obvious desire to quickly return to the womb of "humanism" had me laughing through my teeth.
As you wait in the rubble of a lawlessness that begets anarchy, will you, along with all those other fine folks who brought us the "goodness" of liberalism, have any second thoughts?
John F. Bye Dade City, Fla.
Your story incorrectly stated: "Despite signs of growing grass-roots support for tougher gun laws, Americans will apparently have to settle for the President's proposed ban on 'Saturday night specials,' an idea even the N.R.A. endorses."
The National Rifle Association opposes any proposed legislation, at any level of government, which is directed against the firearm rather than against the criminal misuse of firearms.
Maxwell E. Rich
Executive Vice President
The National Rifle Association
Washington, D.C.