Evening Star Newspaper, September 8, 1929, Page 107

i 8 1929, THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SEPTEMBER 8§, Crime Vital Necessity to Progress, Says Science- Dr. Knight Dunlap, Johns Hopkins Psychologist, Here Puts Forward the Amazing Theory That Law-Breaking Is a Healthy Sign of Advancing Civilization, for the Most Law-Abiding Races Are the Most Backzward. BY EMILY C. DAVIS. GG MERICA must try to repress crime, and yet if America suc- ceeds wholly in repressing crime the country will be lost.” It is a psychologist speaking— Dr. Knight Dunlap, noted head of the depart- ment of psychology at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. The American public has been hearing doc- tors of mental disease explain the crime situ- ation in terms of unfortunate personalities that run amuck in uncontrollable emotion, and in terms of personalities so skewed and distorted in their perspective on life that a career of wanton lawlessness is set going. Judges and welfare workers and statisticians have all had their say about “the American crime wave.” But what does a psychologist think of Amer- jean’s problem when he looks over the broad panorama of motives and trends that sweep races and tribes along for better or worse? “Of one thing we may be sure,” says Dr. Dunlap. “Without crime there is no human progress. We may take warning from those groups of human beings who have practically eliminated crime from their midst. Such com- munities are not looked upon as models for a great civilization. Their success carries a deadly penalty.” Are you wracking your brain at this point 1o think of any place on this imperfect earth where crime is unknown? Can you see how crime figures as an important ingredient in the formula for a nation's progress? Here are the steps of Dr. Dunlap’s reasoning: ROGRESSIVE society, he explains, lives in a paradoxical situation, It must have its rules and these rules must be obeyed, because no group of individuals can live otherwise. In a family or in a city the rules are like a set of balances which weigh rights and privileges s0 that some degree of gratification is possible for every one. Without this delicate balancing of justice there would be such strife among individuals, each seeking to make conditions entirely satisfactory for himself, that no grati- fication for anybody could result. After showing that laws are necessary, Dr. Dunlap turns to the less obvious side of the paradox: “The spirit of law-breaking must be kept alive cr society stagnates, and in most cases even slips backward. For if the laws are suc- cessful in holding a group of individuals to a rigid course, their civilization becomes crys= tallized in a fast mold.” History of other races furnishes impressive evidence of what happens when laws are com- pletely deminant, he declares: “We have many lessons from primitive tribes. 3 Groups in Africa and other inaccessible regions have gone on living in an arrested state of de- velopment for centuries. Some of these tribes have walked in the steps of their fathers for a Jonger period than it has teken our whole complex civilization to be built up. “An easy explanation of their lack of progress has been that such human beings rate very low in intelligence and are therefore incapable of inventing labor-saving devices or of acquiring better knowledge of treating the sick or of de- vising ways of improving their political system. Some of the tribes are perhaps so.. Bui it is the sheerest nonsense to assume that the Afri- can blacks who discovered the smelting and working of iron and who made iron articles of magnificent workmanship with the crudest sort of forges and bellows would have been in- herently incapable of further mechanical de- velopment. “THE significant thing about the savages, before the white man or other alien races came among them to cause their disintegration, is the high percentage of law obedience among them. Among some tribes, explorers have been unable to find any definite punishments assign- ed to the breaking of the complex systems of taboos, or forbidden acts. When a tribesman was asked what would happen to an individual who transgressed, the answer has been, ‘We do not know. No one ever transgresses.’ “In other cases there were no penalties ex- - Carrie Nation, who helped bring » prohibition. acted by a primitive group, but the belief that dire magical results would follow a broken taboo was so strong that obedience was practically certain, In still other cases, the laws or cus- t-ms were known to be occasionally broken, Lut the punishment by the group was so sure and terrible that the mass of the population was awed into submission.” Over against this picture of the law-abiding, unchanging primitive tribe may be set the very different picture of the American Revolution with its illegal Boston Tea Party. It is an osbvious and striking example of the moral benefits of American law-breaking. But Dr. “Prohibition will doubtless be overthrown within five years through persistent violation”—An illicit still, 19 | Even “pulling over to the curb” helps bring piogress, jor enough arrests mean new treffic laws. - Dunlap points out that this was no great, iso- * lated outbreak of popular law defiance, and that less spectacular instantes may be found on every hand as evidence that social condi- tions have progressed. “Prohibition was put over through years of agitation and work, much of which, from the bar-smashing activities of Carrie Nation to the virtual confiscation of distilleries and breweries, was in direct violation of law,” the psychologist says. “Prohibition will doubtless be overthrown within five years through the persistent viola- tion of the Volstead act. It can be overthrown and replaced by more enforceable legislation in no other way.” The traffic situation provides plenty of every- day examples of how disregard for unsound regulations has brought about progress, and has eliminated unenforceable laws. Chicago tried to make pedestrians cross the street like motor cars with traffic signals. But a short time ago it gave up the attempt and changed the ruling solely because pedestrians almost universally refused to obey it. Had the average walker tamely and patiently obeyed the un- popular regulation it would have stood on the books. ‘This does not mean that a community should not enforce its laws, he adds. But it does mean that when the laws are persistently broken, a community should take a careful look at the law and a survey of the situation and see whether the law needs more stringent enforce- ment or whether it needs to be altered or re- pealed. “Women are, in general, less given to servile respect for law as such than are men,” Dr. Dunlap says. “Women may, in certain genera- tions, follow the conventions rather mechanical- ly because they have no definite inclinations in other directions. But when women want to obtain or accomplish certain things the law or the conventions forbid, they do not let re- gard for the law stand in the way. “Conventions they can soon overturn, when a considerable minority agree to do so. Laws crash harmlessly about their heads, with but few casualties, and soon the laws are dead letters. Proof is found in the frantic efforts of dull-witted makers of city ordinances and State laws to keep women’s clothes at the ankles, just above the ankle, well below the knee, just below the knee im succession, and the vain attempts to keep the bathing suits volu- minous. If women ever decide to go naked, the law may as well accept it early as late. “In the present generation, social progress depends almost entirely upon the women; and the prospects are that a number of antique apple-carts will be upset within the mext 15 years. “IN general, when women are cautiously law- abiding it is for one of three reasons: they may have strong mworal convictions which back up the particular law; or they may have estimated the probability of punishment, and decided that infracting the law doe#n’t pay; or they may believe®that the law gives them what they want anyhow. The first two reasons are not important to many women. “Independence against authority and break- ing of rules when the rules are bad are in- dispensable features of the proper development of a child. Children who are really trained to dc what mamma and papa order them to do, whether or no, are inevitably ruined. The child who breaks rules he thinks unwise or unjust at least has a chance to become a use- ful human being. “The apparent paradox is avoided by parents who treat their children like rational beings, standing ready to help the child retrieve - his mistakes instead of scolding or punishing. I may say that this is not merely my opinion; it is the opinion of a great many skillful stu- dents of child development problems.” This professor of psychology, who is the au- thor of a textbook on the psychology of social problems, would sweep away two old, zealously maintained fallacies. One is that law-breakers in general may be set down as being of a low order personally and socially. “Most of the great reformers of the past and all of the martyrs have been deliberate law- breakers,” he points out. “Jesus was no excep- tion, but rather the shining example. Such rrogress as Christianity has made has been due to those who refused to knuckle to the ‘ PR law merely because it was the law. Our great- est and most moral citizens in the United States—like our worst—are persistent law- breakers.” 5 The other fallacy which Dr. Dunlap de- nounces is the theory that breaking an objec= tionable law leads to contempt for the more uscful laws. “This ided, that an individual develops a habit of committing crimes and becomes gen= erally lawless would be important if true,” he admits. “But such knowledge as psychologists have on the subject of habit formation and the transfer of training is all against such simple assumptions. “Traffic Jaws are so universally broken rfl 3 scarcely a motorist escapes arrest. But the man who gets a long traffic record for over- {ime parking does not also pile up a record of arson, murder and swindling in the criminal courts. “Such law-breakers do not form a habit of committing crimes, because each individual's own circumstances are important factors that determine what laws he will break and what laws he will keep. These circumstances include his opinions of different specific laws, his un~ derstanding of the reasonableness of a given Jaw, and his moral attitude toward his fellow men. His attitude toward the law enforce- ment machinery and his opinion as to whether the laws are justly enforced is above all im=- portant in determining his attitude toward the keeping of the law.” ¥ So the psychologist returns to the first half - of his paradox, the statement that America must try to repress crime: “Officials who have charge of enforcing legal - machinery have no right to set up their judg- ment as to the desirability of ignoring any law or enforcing it loosely. Their task is to see that the law is enforced, whatever the law CIM Darrow, Loeb-Leo defender. e may be, and the public should feel assured that the legal machinery will operate impartiale iy, inevitably. : “I AM under the impression that Chicago 8 suffering from the Loeb-Leopold trial more than from any other one thing,” Dr. Duniap says. “For in that trial, which focused the at= tention of the public on local legal machinery, highly paid attorneys and well fed psychiatrists enabled the plain intent of the law against murder to be defeated. “It may be that hanging is not a good pre- ventive measure. But if we have the penaity prescribed for deliberate murder and enforce *it on the poor man or on the man who ad- mits he is sane, and do not enforce it against the wealthy or against the man who enters the plea of insanity, we are encournging murder and the gangsters will not hesilate to shoot when in a tight pinch.” wiktone i« SCOPYEIERG 19200, s (1 shaae