Continued from page 141 trators, yet clings to a simplistic rigidity preventing parole consideration until service of two-thirds of a maximum sentence. To recapitulate the dangerous errors of our handling of corrections in this country would take a very long time indeed, and it would be a futile exercise. Reform I could tell you of two recent Attorneys General of the United States, Ramsey Clark and John Mitchell, who agreed (and they never agreed on much else) that the most immediate possible attack on crime was improvement of our correctional system. What did they mean? In Delaware, a progressive Governor encourages work release programs involving one-fifth of the State Prison inmates, - result - a 20 per cent recidivism rate as compared with a 60 per cent general recidivism average. In Illinois, a brilliant Corrections Commissioner, Pater Bensinger, incidentally a member of our Commission, brought about enactment of a reform correctional code that will place his state in the very vanguard of intelligent corrections. These examples of hope are endless - the Pennsylvania furlough
system, the D.C. diversionary program "Crossroads," our New Jersey Governor's emphasis on correctional reform as a priority in his recent legislative message. There is hope - there is movement, - and much of it inspired by an insistent advocate of correctional reform, Chief Justice Burger, who once said: "When a sheriff or a marshal takes a man from a court house in a prison van and transports him to confinement *** that is our act. We have tolled the bell for him, And whether we like it or not we have made him our collective responsibility. We are free to do something about him; he is not." "Human Pollution" Lawyers at least should have no difficulty in understanding that the bell which the Chief Justice describes as tolling for the prisoner, tolls also for us. Since we do not execute most of these prisoners, it is inevitable that some day, after two or six or ten years, they will be coming back to us, degraded, brutalized, embittered, uneducated, unfit to join the mainstream other than to do it hurt and violence. This then is the issue at trial. On one side is an imbedded public apathy which has encouraged the slow breakdown of our corrections
system and counted out with false economy the dollars needed for adequate probation and parole services, community programs and many other improvements seen in corrections systems elsewhere in the world. On the other side, poised against this apathy, must be the efforts of concerned citizens, particularly lawyers, who must attempt to overcome it and to bring under control, as we are attempting belatedly to do with air and water pollution, the "human pollution" which we breed in our so-called correctional institutions. It was to join this issue that the American Bar Association established its Commission on Corrections, with an interdisciplinary membership and a staff of excellent professionals at our offices in Washington. We work with a grant from the Ford Foundation and other grants from the federal government and we have met several times with Chief justice Burger, who has extended constant encouragement to our efforts. Programs We began our work by deciding against a study of the problems of corrections, for this subject has been studied to death already. Rather, we devoted ourselves to action and have
The Garland County Bar Association welcomes this opportunity to honor one of its most respected and eminent members ..... •
Past-President Arkansas Bar Association
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Past-President Arkansas Enterprises for Blind, Inc.
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Past-President Hot Springs Rotary Club
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Past-Chairman, Executive Committee Arkansas Bar Association
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Special Chief Justice and Special Associate Justice Arkansas Supreme Court
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Eugene A. Matthews •
Past-President Hot Springs YMCA
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Many Other Civic, Fraternal, Religious Commitments and Honors THE ARKANSAS LAWYER