A Psychiatrist Views Crime

THE CRIME OF PUNISHMENT by Karl Menninger, M.D. 305 pages. Viking. $8.95.

The current American concern about law and order is understandable--even though the issues are often misunderstood. Facts and figures can be misleading.* Even more misleading can be the emotions involved. So argues Psychiatrist Karl Menninger in this libertarian critique of American criminal justice. Menninger advances some notions that will anger many laymen. As Menninger sees it, Americans actually like crime: "We need criminals to identify ourselves with, to secretly envy and to stoutly punish. Criminals represent our alter egos, our 'bad' selves--rejected and projected. They do for us the forbidden, illegal things we wish to do and, like scapegoats of old, they bear the burdens of our displaced guilt and punishment."

Certainly, Americans do often seem to encourage crime. They refuse to pay higher taxes for better police and adequate courts. They decry rising crime, but consider what they tolerate: roughly half of all crimes are never reported; of those reported, 11% are never solved. As for "correctional" prisons, 30% of all released inmates (and 75% in some areas) are reimprisoned within five years, usually for worse crimes. Why such incredible inefficiency?

Helpless and Hopeless. A likely answer is that people are just plain scared of crime, and so, as a result, they either ignore it or else demand harsh retaliation. In turn, the U.S. penal system punishes criminal symptoms rather than cures criminal causes. The product is more crime.

The beginning of public wisdom is to understand the criminal's mind. On this score, Psychiatrist Menninger is a persuasive teacher. After studying criminals for almost half a century, Menninger, 75, has concluded that most of them are "helpless" people who seem to have had fouralternativesinlife: activism,conformity, insanity, criminality. The criminal, who may be escaping madness, commonly seeks vengeance against real or symbolic tormentors. He is sure that society is wrong, not he. Ironically, the whole legal system tends to confirm his notion. For one thing, trials are mainly contests between lawyers, not impartial efforts to diagnose misfits. The very fact that most criminals are not caught makes the caught ones feel that getting captured was their only mistake. Worse, they learn that money talks: most defendants cannot afford the skilled lawyers who spring rich clients. So the defendants plead guilty without trial and are sentenced by judges who cannot tell how many years will suffice for "rehabilitation." The criminals are caged in prisons without job training, suffer sexual deprivation, and eventually are dumped back into a society that hates "convicts."

Community Treatment. The real way to change criminal behavior is to goad losers into earning the self-respect that they lack in the first place. Menninger would abolish today's moralistic "punishment" for the few, which simply deepens their hostility. Along with far swifter police work, he favors a therapeutic approach. Trials should mainly determine the facts of a crime, ignore the defense of "legal insanity" and bar the squabbling rival psychiatrists who now only serve to confuse the proceedings. Instead, judges before sentencing should be provided with psychiatric reports and (as in California) hand out only indeterminate sentences, the ultimate length to be decided by skilled penologists according to each prisoner's response to treatment.

Penologists already agree that only about 15% of convicted people are so dangerous or hopeless as to require imprisonment. The new consensus is that many offenders should remain either in or close to their communities and be taught how to cope with life and work under close supervision. Toward that end, Menninger's most intriguing idea is the establishment of psychiatric-help centers for criminally inclined misfits. Unfortunately, he is quite vague about it. If the centers resembled public mental hospitals, which often lack procedural safeguards, the "treatment" might be worse than imprisonment. Menninger's book deserves a wide audience. The pity is that his passionate, unprogrammatic advocacy may serve only to convince the already convinced.

* For example, the recent headline idea that the nation's courts should double the conviction rate--a sheer impossibility. Reason: 90% of all defendants already plead guilty, are thus convicted without trial. Of the 10% actually tried, more than half are convicted. Obviously, a rate of roughly 95% cannot be doubled.

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