Prisons & Prohibition

P: Cattle-herding of U. S. convicts has reached such a pass in the last nine months that the Department of Justice hesitates to enforce criminal statutes with more than routine vigor.

P: More responsible for prison congestion than any other law-is the National Prohibition Act.

P: U. S. prisoners are being paroled at the rate of 15 per day to make room for new convicts.

P: No more criminal laws should be enacted until the U. S. prison system has been adequately enlarged.

Such was the startling testimony Attorney General William DeWitt Mitchell secretly gave the Senate Judiciary Committee early this month and made public only last week. He had been called before the Committee to discuss the advisability of a Senate investigation of Prohibition. Instead, he talked of prisons. Since last summer's riots, President Hoover has been pressing a $7,000,000 program to increase U. S. prison facilities (TIME, Aug. 19). The House passed a batch of bills to put that construction into motion. The Senate has done nothing. The facts and figures of prison congestion which "General" Mitchell gave the Committee were in reality a rebuke to the Senate for its inaction.

Declared he: "Now we have come to a point where further stimulating activities of prosecution under any law will get us into difficulties. . . . We have been overtaxing our Federal machinery [by laws enacted] in the last 19 years. It makes me feel we ought to get our house in order and increase our facilities for handling the criminal business we already have before we start passing any more Federal statutes that make things Federal crimes that are not at present. . . . We have been forced to be exceedingly liberal with our paroles because if we had not been we would have been buried. . . ."

The increase in prison population since July 1, 1929. as detailed by Attorney General Mitchell:

P: In nine months the total number of U. S. prisoners rose from 19,349 to 25,626, an increase of 6,277 which 4,284 were convicts farmed out by the U. S. to State institutions.*

P: The number of prisoners in U. S. penitentiaries and reformatories increased 1,993 in this nine-month period, of which 1,811 were Prohibition Law violators. C. Other increases: Harrison Narcotic Act, 6; Dyer Motor Theft Act, 164; Miscellaneous, 13.

Senators were left with the distinct impression that any campaign to stiffen Prohibition enforcement by the Department of Justice must be preceded by wholesale prison construction.

*U. S. prisoners whose sentence is less than a year are generally placed in State jails rather than in U. S. penitentiaries.

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