C CHAPTER XII GENERAL CONCLUSIONS ERTAIN immediate improvements are practicable. The details will be found in the several reports, where they are discussed at length and reasons are given. I shall do no more than sum up what seem to me the salient points. (1) Mr. Fosdick's recommendations for separation of the police from the department of public safety; for a director of police, a single, civilian, administrative head with undivided authority and responsibility, charged with laying down policies and devising programs of police work and with seeing to it that his policies and programs are carried out by his subordinates; for committing the subject of promotions and discipline to the director of police, making use of the civil service tests as minimum qualification standards; for a board of promotion; for the use of motor equipment in regular patrol work, the establishment of patrol booths, consolidation of police precincts, and reorganization of patrol beats; for giving the director of police power to recruit detectives from outside the police force by original appointments where it seems advisable; for a special service division and for a secretarial division, show the way to put this part of the legal treatment of crime upon a modern and effective basis by means which are no longer experimental, but have proved their efficacy in the experience of other cities. (2) In the municipal prosecutor's office, provision of a managing clerk, systematic organization of the work and coördination with the other agencies of criminal justice in Cleveland, and, above all, control of the assistants and subordinates, and consequent responsibility for what they do and what they fail to do; in the county prosecutor's office, control of the assistants, firmer and more intelligent organization of the business, systematic modern methods of criminal investigation and preparation of cases, and, above all, continuous and systematic coördination of the work of that office with that of the police, municipal prosecutor, the administrative agencies of the courts and the courts themselves, together with the laying out of policies and organized supervision to see that they are carried out-all these things are immediately feasible improvements which will accomplish much. The further step of turning over the whole course of a State prosecution from the beginning to the county prosecutor should come next. (3) In the Municipal Court systematic, intelligent segregation of business upon the trial calendars, orderly handling of the cause list, with an established policy as to transferring cases from one session to another, a proper system of records, better methods with respect to order and decorum, stenographic records of testimony in binding over cases and in misdemeanors in which habitual, professional crime or commercial vice is involved, and better methods in the despatch of trial business, insuring sufficient attention to each case to assure a just and intelligent disposition of it; on the criminal side of the Court of Common Pleas, abolition of terms of court, provision of a permanent executive head to guide the administrative work, give continuity and uniformity to policies, and insure more intelligent and systematic use of the personnel of the court in the disposition of its business and provision of an adequate probation department, with modern facilities-these are measures of immediate improvement which are not in any wise speculative, for which we may vouch experience in other jurisdictions. The next step should be s unified court, to be secured by transferring of criminal business to one court. (4) In criminal procedure, beginning of prosecutions by summons rather than arrest in case of minor offenses, abolition of the grand jury, simplification of the bail system,' regulation, if not abolition, of the "no-papers" practice, which is not known to common law nor to legislation, provision for requiring written statement of reasons for "no papers," nolles, and acceptance of pleas of lesser offense, participation of the prosecutor in proceedings in mitigation of sentence, and a clear policy with respect to new trials, are feasible improvements about which, in the light of experience elsewhere, there can be no real contro versy. (5) With respect to the bar, abolition of admission to take bar examinations on certificate of study under a practising attorney, requirement of at least a four-year high school course, to be completed before beginning the study of law, as a necessary preliminary education; requirement of a minimum of class-room hours per week in all law schools, day or night, so as to insure that the time devoted to study in night law schools is at least approximately that required in standard day schools, and visitorial supervision of law schools and of private schools giving preliminary education to law students by the bar examiners or 1 1 Report on Prosecution, p. 212. under their auspices-this is a minimum program, less than that adopted by a six to one vote at the last meeting of the American Bar Association, and one to which the present proprietors of night law schools in Cleveland entirely agree. Ultimately, the bar should urge the standards recommended by the American Bar Association. For the rest, the Bar Association may and should bestir itself to rid the profession of an element active in criminal cases which brings the profession and the law into disrespect. This is a difficult and thankless task, and demands much sacrifice on the part of the busy, high-minded, public-spirited leaders of the bar. But it is the only resource until corporate organization of the profession provides a continuous agency for enforcing discipline and insuring adherence to proper standards, acting on its own motion, and responsible for maintaining the conduct of the profession at a high level. (6) More adequate facilities should be provided for the juvenile court. (7) The opportunities of the office of Director of Public Welfare should be emphasized, facilities should be given that officer for rising to those opportunities, and the public should then demand that he do so. (8) A statute on the lines of the New York Indeterminate Sentence and Parole Law should replace the present statute in Ohio, which is a typical product of hasty legislative striking in the dark at evils that are attracting public notice for the moment. (9) The office of coroner should be abolished and a medical examiner provided, following experience of the wisdom of this change in New York and Massachusetts. But these immediate measures of relief will not insure a continuously efficient functioning of criminal justice as something permanent, going on automatically after the excitement of the moment has gone down. Perhaps nothing will do so entirely. So far as these things can be insured, we must look to unification of police administration, with undivided authority and responsibility under a director with permanent tenure, dependent only on results; to unification of the prosecuting agencies, with permanent tenure and undivided authority and responsibility; to unification of the courts and organization of judicial business under a responsible administrative head; to unification and organization of the administrative agencies of criminal justice under a responsible administrative head with secure tenure; to the incorporation of the bar, with provision for responsible disciplinary agencies; to adequate provision for legal education, and, above all, to the taking of the bench out of politics and restoring the common-law independence of the judiciary, preferably by returning to the system of judges appointed for life or good behavior, or, at least, by some of the alternative plans proposed in the report on courts. These things must come slowly. The bar should be thinking of them and studying them, for in the end the convictions of the bar in these matters will be decisive. In the formative period of our institutions faith in the efficacy of intelligent effort enabled Americans to make over the institutions of medieval England, as they came to us in the Colonial period, into a modern, workable system for pioneer rural communities in a new world and in a wholly changed environment. Relatively, our task today is the easier. Our judicial organization is much better as a foundation on which to build than that which was left to us by the Colonies, or than the eighteenth-century English organization which was the only other model. Our law is better organized, more accessible, and much more complete than that on which Marshall and Kent and Story labored. The bar is better taught and in far better public esteem than it was at the close of the eighteenth century. If American lawyers of today have to face public suspicion, legislative indifference to the demands of legal justice because of the more pressing exigencies of politics, and the constant pressure of the advocates of specious nostrums for the cure of all ills of the body-politic, the lawyers of the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century had to face these same obstacles, and to face them with much less effective weapons than those available to the lawyer of today. The advantage which they had was a juristic optimism involved in their faith that law was reason, and hence reason law, and their belief that by sheer efforts of reason they could achieve a perfect system. A like faith in the efficacy of effort, and a like 'determination on the part of the present generation of lawyers to devote their energy and ingenuity to making over the institutions of rural America for the predominantly urban America of today, will achieve no less and will make the first half of the twentieth century a classic period in American law no less truly than was the first half of the nineteenth century. |