Something must be said in closing of those portions of the law where change has been most necessary. Of these our criminal law is easily the most disgraceful. Its complete inability to perform its task has been exhaustively demonstrated by the opening chapter of Raymond Fosdick’s “American Police Systems.” The lawyers and judges are only partly to blame, for their work forms only the middle of three stages in the suppression of crime. The initial stage of arrest and the final stage of punishment are in the hands of administrative officials, beyond the control of the bench and bar. Many criminals are never caught, and the loss of public confidence in the justice or effectiveness of prisons makes juries reluctant to convict. Yet the legal profession is sorely at fault for what takes place while the prisoner is in the dock. The whole problem calls for that co-operation between lawyers, other experts, and laymen, of which I have already spoken. Unless something is soon done, we may find crime ceasing to be a legal matter at all. Even now, many large department stores have so little belief in the criminal courts and prisons that they are trying embezzlers and shoplifters in tribunals of their own, and administering a private system of probation and restitution. The initial step is a reformulation of the purpose of punishment. Twenty-five years ago, Justice Holmes asked, “What have we better than a blind guess to show that the criminal law in its present form does more good than harm?” One serious reason for its breakdown has been the creation of innumerable minor offences, which are repeatedly committed and almost impossible to suppress. The police are diverted from murders and burglaries to gambling and sexual delinquencies, while the frequent winking at such breaches of law destroys the essential popular conviction that a law ought to be obeyed just because it is law. The Chief of Police of New Orleans told Raymond Fosdick, “If I should enforce the law against selling tobacco on Sunday, I would be run out of office in twenty-four hours. But I am in constant danger of being run out of office because I don’t enforce it.” So they were hanging green curtains, which served the double purpose of advertising the location of the stands and of protecting the virtue of the citizens from visions of evil.