the American Bar Association does act in loco parentis to the state bodies.

If it be assumed that the present associations remain unaltered to fill the rôles for which they are well calculated, and organization proceed independently on the thorough, democratic, and corporate basis, there will be little or no need of the coördination of all the state bar incorporated bodies. The need for coördination between the states, through the mediation of a central national body, is on the social, political, and voluntary sides. There is at present a strong indication that such coördination will soon exist. It is afforded by the need for recasting the American Bar Association, due to its rapid growth, which makes the present unwieldy form conspicuously inefficient. This need is reflected in a resolution adopted at the Montreal meeting of 1913 which created a committee charged with the duty of recommending changes in the constitution.

Thorough coördination with the state bar associations implies the control of the business of the American Bar Association by a congress of delegates representing the state bodies on a proportional basis.

The need for solidarity was emphasized by the recent fight against the judicial recall. The coming struggle against the recall of the lawyer from his quasi-judicial position as advocate will further call for solidarity. At present the bar has only an opportunity for agitating. Even this right is lost if the bar be seriously divided on a proposition. It is absolutely necessary that it have a means for settling questions of discipline in the only way that questions can be settled, by voting and by holding the minority to the result of the polling.

This genuine organization is likely to come about as a local movement, in one state after another. To have the idea accepted by the American Bar Association and encouraged by this parent body, would go a long way to facilitate its adoption. The American Bar Association has concerned itself with uniform legislation for the states; has framed a code of ethics; established a comparative law bureau; fathered an association of law schools, and done other things calculated to benefit the public, including the campaign against the judicial recall, but itself it has thus far not sought to benefit directly

The need for solidarity and self-government in the bar is one of the reasons for the organization in 1913 of the American Judicature

Society, the only lawyers' organization devoted frankly and exclusively to the promotion of efficiency in the administration of justice. The society proposes to draft a model act for the organization of the bar. Other model acts, looking to the reorganization of metropolitan and state courts on an efficiency basis, will be drafted, submitted to a selected council of representative lawyers in all the states, and then be presented in final form to the people and their legislatures.

Popular interest in judicial reform has outstripped popular experience and knowledge. The question is foremost among national problems. Public opinion has been aroused to such a degree that action of some sort is imminent in many states. But the bar through its voluntary associations has reacted in feeble and uncertain terms to the popular demand, or has set itself in opposition to flagrantly unwise propositions. There is obvious insufficiency of counsel based upon comparative study. The organizers of the American Judicature Society, embracing some of the most eminent minds in the profession, hope that the organization may prove to be the logical response of the bar to the present insistent need for guidance.

CRIME-FROM A STATISTICAL VIEWPOINT

BY JOHN KOREN,

President of American Statistical Association, Boston, Mass.

Let no one be deluded by the superscription. It is not intended to exhibit a statistical picture of the conditions of crime in the United States. That demands an extensive knowledge of the facts which no one may profess to have. The humiliating truth is that statistics of crime, in the proper sense of the term, are largely an unfamiliar commodity in this country. This does not signify indifference about crime matters. We talk a great deal about them. Statutes are piled upon statutes in effort to prevent and punish criminality. Huge and costly experiments are undertaken for the reformation of offenders. There are even some who fearlessly, if not always wisely, seek to probe the crime question in its causative relations. Yet the fundamental facts in regard to the whole situation are lacking; we are not in position to take adequate stock of the problems we set ourselves to meet.

In general the purposes of criminal statistics are: (1) To furnish a measurement of the volume of crime during a given period; (2) to present the facts in regard to the different manifestations of criminality and the different classes of criminals; (3) to exhibit the judicial methods by which crime is dealt with; and (4) to serve as a basis for intensive study of specific phases of the crime question. The ultimate aim is to acquire a solid body of facts upon which to base intelligent action. Now let us examine in some detail the available statistical evidence about crime and see how far it meets the modest requirements stated.

For the United States as a whole, the decennial census enumeration of prisoners is the main source of knowledge. But no matter how painstaking such an enumeration is and how intelligently the results are presented, only that portion of crime comes under view for which men are finally convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. Manifestly, such a census reveals nothing in regard to the thousands who, although found guilty, escape further penalty through the payment of fines, by suspension of sentence, by being placed on proba

tion, etc. Nor do statistics of prisoners afford the slightest inkling of the multitude of criminal cases coming before the courts in which the accused are not convicted; yet these must be considered in any effort to measure crime quantitatively. The truth that a countrywide census of prisoners does not provide the facts needed is particularly forced home when the census report through various untoward circumstances is published several years subsequent to the period of time it covers. Statistics of prisoners have their important place, of course, but are diminishing in value unless supplemented by other information, owing to the modern tendency of substituting new methods of dealing with crime for incarceration.

The field of criminal statistics does not promise a richer harvest within the area of single states. Most commonwealths have nothing to offer beyond wholly inadequate returns of prisoners to be found in institutional reports or brought together in some publication of a state board. Here and there effort is made to supplement such fragmentary information by certain facts obtained from the records of the criminal courts. But the scheme followed is either so crude or the facts are so badly put together that the whole output is of little use. One reason for this is that the duty of collecting and publishing statistics of crime is placed where it does not belong. Why, for instance, should it be assumed to be the proper function of a secretary of state, as in Ohio and New York, or of a board of charities, as in Pennsylvania? Only two states have so far provided special machinery for the purpose. Illinois has its new bureau of criminal statistics which, however, has only been in operation a short while. In Indiana, the long established bureau of statistics should prove equal to the task because it is backed by ample authority in law; but it suffers from that inefficiency which is almost necessarily associated with an office demanding technical training and skill, but whose head is elected by the people like any other political candidate!

With rare exceptions, the criminal courts do not attempt to enrich our knowledge about the crime situation. Apparently, they do not feel the need of informing themselves by bringing together and studying the results of their own work, much less do they recognize the general utility of enlightening the public with the facts. One court forms such a notable exception to the general rule that it deserves special mention, namely, the municipal court of Chicago.

Once in a while, under stress of special circumstances, officials may be forced to institute a statistical self-examination, as, for example, in the case of the municipal courts of Boston, and the results are singularly illuminating.

But, by and large, officials of the criminal courts seem to regard it as something akin to impertinence that students should wish to utilize their records as an educational means about matters of crime. Anyhow, these precious sources of the most fundamental knowledge generally remain sealed.

In a well-ordered community, the statistics derived from the records of the criminal courts should be supported by those pertaining to the work of prosecuting officials; but how reluctant these elective functionaries are to take the public into their confidence is well known. Very few of them vouchsafe as much as a superficial account of their work in the form of an annual report. Exceptionally, the report of an attorney-general may be found which, in obedience to some statute, presents fugitive and undigested facts about criminal prosecutions in specified criminal courts. They are raw totals, not qualified statistics.

There remains to be considered one other possible source of information of a general nature about the conditions of crime, namely, the records of the police. These are ordinarily translated into tables given out in annual reports, but not always. There are cities in this country of more than 200,000 population which do not publish any police reports whatsoever, or do it irregularly, or are content with a few typewritten pages of tables that are hardly intelligible even to the initiated. There is, of course, no standard for our police reports. Many of them are so questionable as to matter and so impossible as to form that they are robbed of the most primitive utility. An exceedingly small number offers material so complete that it can be used and interpreted without misgivings.

Let us therefore admit however reluctantly that statistics of crime in the true sense of the word we have not. This condition may not deter adventurous minds from parading figures purporting to show the "movement of crime" and many other things. If they are content to argue on such slender evidence as prison reports, newspaper clippings and the like, let them take the responsibility. No one who has mastered the rudiments of the application of the statistical method to the general crime problem can have the temer