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.

Why not sell revolver bullets in the same way we sell dangerous drugs: by prescription only, and in strictly limited amounts? Non-renewable prescriptions, of course. If more are required, one will have to ante up a new R. In this way, store owners and messengers and private eyes and others who feel the need for protection of a hand gun will be able to shoot if they must; but will have to account to their local precinct.

(Mrs.) Marie Berler Syosset, N. Y.

As TIME has pointed out so succinctly, the crime problem in our nation today is serious and there are no easy solutions. Yet one theme runs throughout any comprehensive report on violent crime: the frequent use of handguns to commit these despicable acts.

Although we know that handguns kill 10,000 Americans each year, that they are used in one of every three robberies, and one of every four aggravated assaults, and that they were used to murder 73% of the police officers killed between 1962 and 1974--still we tolerate the presence of at least 40 million of these lethal weapons in our midst.

It is my conviction that we must act now to eliminate the unnecessary nightmares that come out of the barrels of these easily obtained handguns. They are clearly public enemy No. 1, and must be dealt with through legislation to effectively control their manufacture, distribution, importation and possession.

Tom Bradley

Mayor

Los Angeles

I tend to think the escalating crime rate in this country is merely a symptom of a spreading disease within our society. The sickness, and therefore the problem, lies in our growing affluence. This places an unbearable burden on many people to successfully compete and attain the so-called good life. The rising crime rate is an indication that an increasing number of people cannot compete successfully within the system and so must resort to outside means.

William S. Grogan Natick, Mass.

What ever became of that favorite expression "as old as sin"? A candid recognition of sin as the root of all crime goes further toward identifying, with honesty and forthrightness, the causes and consequent remedy than does your euphemism "trampling the rules."

Donald P. Kirkwood Beaver Falls, Pa.

You've ignored the lesson taught us by Dostoyevsky in Crime and Punishment, in which the motivation, not the murderer, is the elusive element. Prisons are full of lawbreakers who want to get caught. Those who don't want to get caught generally don't. If you fail to punish a criminal you are probably frustrating his most basic human need.

Nobody ever expiated sin listening

to hifi. The criminal needs to pay a debt

to society. That's what crime is all about.

Alfred Sundel

New York City

In order to eliminate half of the crime problems, we must ask our legislators to repeal half of the laws that arbitrarily and unnecessarily attempt to legislate particular versions of morality.

William B. Hackett HI Santa Barbara, Calif.

Cry Wolfe

Robert Hughes says that Tom Wolfe's book, The Painted Word [June 23], contains so many "elementary howlers" there's not room enough to list them; but, he assures your readers, "one example will do for all."

His one example: a sentence in The Painted Word mentioning that Franz Kline once painted such social-realist subjects as "unemployed Negroes, crippled war veterans and the ubiquitous workers with open blue workshirts and necks wider than their heads." Hughes says, "In fact, he never painted such pictures. Either Wolfe is making them up or he cannot distinguish between Franz Kline and Ben Shahn."

A look at Kline's work suggests a third possibility: namely, that the museum mail-order art survey course your man Hughes took included only one line about Kline (probably "Franz Kline --20th-cent. Am. abstract expressionist"). It's no doubt news to Hughes, but Kline went through a period of realism, including social realism. This is a painting by Franz Kline (not Ben Shahn) called Ex-Servicemen and the Unemployed (1941). As your man says, "One example will do for all." I'm afraid that leaves us with just one elementary howler: the one named Robert Hughes.

Tom Wolfe New York City

Robert Hughes comments: "Kline was a figurative painter to the end of the 1940s. The point, however, is that Wolfe presented Kline 'in the '30s' as a party hack, 'dutifully cranking out' paintings of social-realist cliches at the dictation of unnamed 'drillmasters.' No such body of work by Kline exists. To support his thesis, all Wolfe can produce is one picture from the 40s--and even it is too expressionist to fit the strict canon of social realism."

Why No Clamor?

By its own formularies, the Episcopal Church [July 7] is described as the "mystical body of thy Son," not as an arena for the joustings of feminists. The altar is consecrated to "the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving," not to mock celebrations of Holy Communion by in-validly ordained women priests.

It is noteworthy that we hear no clamor from these women to enter an Episcopal convent, where the work is total self-sacrifice and unceasing prayer --never with public display and constant news media coverage.

Harold E. Carter Huntington Station, N. Y.

A Marshall Plan for Abe

The most realistic approach to a solution of New York City's financial crisis [June 23] would be for the city administration to declare war on the U.S. --and lose. Washington could then pour millions of dollars into the city to reconstruct it. Vive "the mouse that roared!"

JeffDexter Beacon, N. Y.

Shake, Bake and Bite

After Poseidon Adventure, I fear cruising on an ocean liner. After Airport and its followup, I cringe at the thought of flight. Towering Inferno gives me indigestion before I arrive for dinner at my favorite restaurant on the 62nd floor of the U.S. Steel Building. Jaws [June 23] now forces me to abandon my vacation spot on Cape Hatteras in favor of the safety of the Allegheny River. Ah, the brilliance of Hollywood! In one short year it has transformed Americans into cowering paranoids whose only security is found in the tenth row of a darkened cinema.

Tom Steiner Pittsburgh

Yes, Director Spielberg should have used the tank rather than the open seas, for, as anyone knows, pool sharks seldom forget their cues.

John H. Esperian Vienna

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