CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Defeat of an attempted bank robbery--American style--in Liverpool has resulted in odious comparisons. One gathers that the British press believes the police system of the United States to be an object of both tears and laughter. They do these things, say the Englishmen, much better abroad. American police are well trained they admit, and they admit, well equipped; but with half the equipment the British manage to get twice the results. Somewhere, somehow, there has been a mistake.

Granted the possible weakness of American law forces; granted the success of those of England; not granted, however, that the American criminal--especially of the bandit gunman genre--is the average criminal. Perhaps even the Liverpool police would be some what disconcerted, if stationed, for instance, in Cicero, III. In Cicero men are not only men: they are gunmen. And similarly in other communities--in bloody Herrin, in Canton, and of course in the metropolitan centers. It would and it will when the time comes--take a better system than the present one to wipe out the invisible ring of crime which encircles this country. Such citizens as Scarface Al Camponi and his ilk are unfortunately a product of American legal and judicial conditions. So the logical deduction is that they will be removed only by change in those conditions.