DR. ADLER OPPOSES SEVERE SENTENCES
Austrian Tells National Prison Labor Society "Revenge" Hardens Criminals.
From the New York Bureau of the BUFFALO EVENING NEWS.
NEW YORK, April 15—That every severe punishment which grows out of the idea of revenge will confirm the criminal in thinking that he was right in his opinion that the whole world is his enemy and that he must defend himself against society was the opinion of Dr. Alfred Adler, noted psychiatrist of Vienna, held forth Monday at the 21st annual meeting here of the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor.
Every criminal, Dr. Adler asserted, can be described as a person with a great striving for recognition, for superiority. The point at which the criminal life begins is the point at which a person was confronted with problems which seemed too difficult of any solution in a legal way, he pointed out. Children with imperfections, unwanted children and others who are treated with less consideration from their early childhood compose the majority of criminals, he declared.
Dr. Walter N. Thayer, superintendent of prisons, Baltimore, Md., advocated the assignment of psychiatrists and sociologists by the Department of Education to the various schools who would make a careful study of the problems of each child in order to prevent the formation of anti-social habits.
Among those elected to the Board of Directors were:
Col. William J. Donovan, of Buffalo; Glenn Frank, president of the University of Wisconsin; John Hamill, governor of Iowa; William Grier Hibben, president of Princeton university; R. M. Hutchins, president of the University of Chicago; Gifford Pinchot, former governor of Pennsylvania, and Francis B. Sayre.
Fuente: "Dr. Adler Opposes Severe Sentences", Buffalo Evening News, 15 April 1930, p. 7, col. 1, from the paper's New York Bureau, unsigned. Transcribed from the page image at fultonhistory.com (Buffalo NY Evening News 1930 03262 (2)), rendered at 300 dpi; the platform OCR was used only for orientation. The whole piece is legible. The print has "William Grier Hibben" for John Grier Hibben. Only the report is transcribed; the advertisements on the page are omitted. Another report of the same session, with different text, is The New York Times of the same day ("Debate Psychiatry as Cure for Crime").