Lunden, Walter A.

English

Yale Law School Legal Scholarship Repository

THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
relations is encouraged to flow through the grievance procedures and transform
the automaton-like railroad worker into a dignified human being with spirit
and soul.
Dr. Kaufman seemingly equates free collective bargaining with the
process of reaching agreement in direct and unhampered across-the-
table bargaining between the parties. This view seems not to accord
proper weight to the ultimate goals of collective bargaining-the enhancement
of individual worth and self-determination within the framework of values
embraced by a democratic society. Success or failure of collective bargaining
in any industry must, then, be measured by the direction and degree to which
such values are realized. The establishment of institutions of consent under
the Railway Labor Act, safeguarded by constitutionally protected concepts of
due process of law, reflects the genius of the democratic society and should
offer Dr. Kaufman strong assurance that continued federal involvement in col-
lective bargaining in the railroad industry is in the direction not of serfdom
but of human freedom.
JosEpH LAZAR i"
CRIME AND THE SERVICES. By John Spencer. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul Ltd., 1954. Pp. xii, 306. 28s.
HERE is a book about the criminal behavior of British servicemen which
may be read with profit by criminologists and staff officers in the military of
any nation. Heretofore, the general area of war and crime has been studied
by a number of European and American scholars such as Novicow,' Ferrero,-
Steinmetz,3 Constatin, 4 Le Bon,5 and Sorokin,0 but this book is one of the few
to deal both with offenses within the armed forces and with deviant behavior
of soldiers after demobilization. Stereotype thinking and folk judgments that
"soldiering is brutal and licentious" die hard. But Mr. Spencer demonstrates
that military service does not make criminals out of good men, although neither
does it rehabilitate civil offenders or the seriously maladjusted. Many of the
same factors which cause criminal behavior in civil life are operative in the
army. The most that military duty does is to accentuate them. Crime and He
Services leaves no cavil that military duty itself is not the primary cause for
the high incidence of crime in the services or in the post-war years.
tLecturer in Business Law, University of California at Los Angeles.
1. Novicow, WAR AND ITs ALLEGED BENEFITS (1911).
2. FERRERO, EUROPE'S FATEFUL HOUR (1918).
3. STEINMETZ, ETHNOLOGISCHE STUDIEN ZUR ERSTEN ENTWCRLUNG DER STRAF"
(1894).
4. Constantin, Observations relatives d l'influence de la guerre sur la crilnlialite et
la vsoralitg, 10 ANNALES DE M DICINE LEGALE 89-124 (Paris 1930).
5. LE Bo.-, ENSEIGNMENTS PSYCHOLOGIQUES DE LA GuERRE EUROP(LENNE (Flane-
marion ed. 1916).
6. SOROKIN, MAN AND SOcIETY IN CALA ITY (1942).
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REVIEWS
.Mr. Spencer finds that modem warfare has little use for the dull, the im-
mature, and the unstable man. The infantry can no longer be used as the
"dumping ground" for misfits. The British Military has come to learn the
hard way that delinquency in the army is very largely a matter of morale
among troops-where morale is high delinquency is low and -ice versa. Men
who cannot identify themselves with a group in civil life, or in the military
and thereby contribute to and be embued with high morale are the very men
who are most apt to commit offenses in the service.
Crime and the Services suggests certain means whereby the manpower of a
nation may be more effectively utilized in war time and in peace. Criminal
behavior among soldiers can be reduced by (1) more effective methods of
selection by conscription agencies, (2) the elimination of unsatisfactory men
once they have entered the service, (3) the maintenance of high morale in
training units and combat forces, and (4) the use of rehabilitative methods for
the more trainable men. And a nation should give as much attention to
demobilization as it does to mobilization. Readjustment to civil life needs to
be examined exhaustively in terms of the soldier himself, his family, and the
community to which he returns. The military and civil authorities must face
criminal behavior in and out of the service as a single overall social problem.
The author brings to his problem the insight of a trained criminologist with
unusual practical experience in civil and military life. During World W ar II,
Spencer served as a field gunner in the Royal Artillery in Burma. After the
war he served the British government in the repatriation of prisoners of war
in England.
On the assumption that no civilian institution can function smoothly with
social deviates and that no branch of the services can operate effectively with
maladjusted persons in the ranks, the author maintains first that draft boards
should reject men who are known to be social deviates or maladjusted in civil
life. Here Spencer disagrees with his countrnyman Alex Comfort who says:
"It is the socially maladjusted civilian who is happiest in wartime .... [T]he
criminal can redeem himself by enlisting his delinquency on the popular side.
War is essentially the playground of the psychopath in society. 7 Spencer
argues that adjustment to military life in World War II was a far different
problem from that in \Vorld War I. The average British soldier in World
War II found himself amid a sea of strangers in the forces rather than in a
geographically selected unit. Basically, the process of adjustment in the ser-
vices was a matter of emotional orientation and interpersonal relationships.
The individual soldier became enmeshed in groups in which he lost self in the
identification with the larger organization. Lord Wavell has well said that a
man "is not a good soldier till he has become imbued with the corporate life
of the unit." This is the basis for morale which is the "inward spiritual side
of discipline." This anonymity and acceptance of discipline may not be a
7. COmFORT, AUTHORITY AND DELiNQUENCY IN ThE MVDnN: STAT. 51 (19U).
S. NV'AVELL, THE GooD SOLDIER 49 (1948), quoted by SrmE-Nca, at p. 14.
1955)
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
difficult procedure for the well integrated person, but for the self-centered social
deviate with a background of maladjustment in civil life it is almost impossible.
He fights against the discipline and the corporate nature of a command unit.
And his lack of self-discipline sets up uncontrolled antagonistic emotional re-
actions. "Emotional stability may thus be seen to be one of the most important
characteristics of the mature Serviceman." Every soldier seeks approval in
his unit while at the same time trying to preserve his own individuality. It is
the immature or unstable man who ultimately sacrifices group approval and
fights to maintain whatever personality he may have.
With ample supporting evidence the author demonstrates that the boredom
of basic training and barracks life, and not contact with the enemy, caused
men to break regulations and in turn to commit other offenses. In combat
the enemy provided an active outlet, while in barracks life men turned their
aggressiveness toward their own units. Delinquent behavior has seldom been
found among repatriated prisoners of war, perhaps because only emotionally
strong prisoners of war survive captivity. But, in any event, the popular
notion that "traumatic experiences in combat" are directly related to delin-
quent behavior cannot be substantiated.
It was some time after the outbreak of World War II that the British
Services overcame their rather polite misgivings about modern penology and
first established programs for screening out and treating delinquents in the
Armed Forces. The procedures which were developed centered about the
dual problem of selectivity and morale and were shaped by the lack of facili-
ties for treating the recidivist and the psychopath in the Services. Offenders
were divided into three classes: the immature young soldier, who could be
reclaimed by transfer to Young Soldier Training Units, the hardened recidi-
vist, who should be discharged from the Services, and the unstable psycho-
path or neurotic who should be released on medical or non-medical grounds.
Offenses committed in the Armed Forces, in the main, arose from con-
ditions encountered while the offenders were deserters or absent-without-
leave (AWOL). These two offenses themselves account for fifty per cent of
all service crimes; yet neither is a crime in civilian society. Moreover, de-
sertion or absentation was but the first step in a chain of offenses. Absenters
and deserters were forced to go "underground" in civil society during the
war, and, in that posture, accounted for the bulk of service crimes. But it
should be noted that the causes for desertion and going AWOL are not the
factors which make a man commit crimes while a deserter. During the war
the British attempted to deal with deserters and AWOLs by promising am-
nesty or at least milder treatment if the men returned to duty. The program
was ineffective because it did not include remission of crimes committed after
desertion.
Reviewing British policy of admitting men with criminal records into the
Armed Forces, the author points to the doubtful benefits to both the Military
9. P. 16.
[Vol. 64
REVIEWS
and the men themselves. A civilian cannot shed his past as easily as civilian
garb. And while some ex-prisoners have proved themselves worthy in com-
bat, the vast majority of criminals do not. Consequently, despite the necessity
for effective utilization of manpower in wartime, the chronic offender must
be rejected for military duty. Moreover, in the absence of procedures for
dealing with borderline cases, only "good risks" such as first offenders and
probationers can be reclaimed for some types of duty.
Spencer criticizes the devices which the British belatedly developed for
dealing with delinquents. Detention Barracks were used for those offenders
who could not be treated in command units. These establishments were strict-
ly punitive with no facilities for rehabilitation and ivth conditions which "no
civil prison would have tolerated." In 1943 Labour Companies for older
offenders were established after the prototype of the Penal Battalions of
World War I. In the main, they produced doubtful results except as a threat
to the potential AWOL. Only Young Soldier's Training Units achieved a mea-
sure of success, in spite of the fact that the eighteen to twenty-one year olds
with which they worked were highly illiterate, restless, resentful, and dis-
illusioned. The main features of the Units were relaxation of Army discipline,
avoidance of punishments, and concentration on informal education. More
than half of the young men assigned to the Units later made satisfactory
soldiers.
To meet demobilization problems the British developed Civil Resettlement
Units where ex-servicemen could live for a time to bridge the gap between
war and peace. In these "Transitional Communities" medical men, social
workers, and psychiatric specialists were available to those who needed help.
Offenders after demobilization were found most among those who returned
to disturbed domestic conditions. Many war marriages had been hasty and
often the women had developed a new independence in experiencing the
hazards of a total war in the air raids. Mvien who had dreamed of the day
when they might go home found that they could not "go home" because the
home community had changed and they had changed. They were confronted
with a psycho-social isolation which they could not fully understand. The
return was most difficult for prisoners of war. This reviewer regrets that
Spencer did not devote more space to the problem of these men even though
detailed investigation of the subject was perhaps beyond the scope of this
book. There are few reliable pieces of research on the repatriation of ex-
prisoners of war, and with the West confronted by a new type of ex-prisoner
of war, Spencer's experience would have been particularly valuable.
The second and larger portion of Spencer's book deals with ex-servicemen
who had committed offenses serious enough to require imprisonment. He
presents detailed information about 282 prisoners in three major prisons of
England-100 from Dartmour prison, 100 from Maidstone prison, and 82
from the Borstal Institutions, progressive rehabilitation centers for youthful
offenders. Most of these men entered the Services for what they could "get
out of it." The 100 ex-servicemen at Dartmour had an average of 5.7
1955]
THE YALE LAW JOURNAL
criminal convictions before they had entered the Army, more than half of
them for breaking and entering. After joining, these same men committed
.an average of 2.5 offenses, most of which occurred while they were deserters
or AWOL from training while on the continent. They were apparently un-
able to withstand the monotony and "hurry and wait" of routine training,
but there was no lack of bravery under fire. The 100 ex-service prisoners
at Maidstone exhibited almost the same characteristics as the Dartmour men:
in the Armed Forces they continued the criminal behavior pattern already
established in civil life, and in the post-war society, unable to face the dis-
organized conditions to which they returned, they again took the easy way
out. The analysis of the Borstal boys is of special interest. Shortly after the
outbreak of the war, about two-thirds of the Borstal boys were released from
the institutions and about seventy per cent of them were inducted into the
Army. Despite their progressive institutional life they did not respond to
army discipline. Apparently the disturbed and unstable conditions of their
childhood unsuited them for military duty.
The final portion of Crime and the Services recounts the careers of 200
imprisoned men who had entered military service after their discharge from
civil prisons. The behavior of these men follows the same general pattern as
those at Dartmour, Maidstone, and the Borstals, and demonstrates the futility
of permitting men who have long criminal records or those with marked de-
linquent traits to enter the Armed Services. They lacked that important
quality so prized by the British as "sticktuitiveness."
Mr. Spencer has shown that neither enlistment in nor discharge from the
Services is an antidote to delinquency. Civil authorities and the military ob-
viously cannot shift the burden of rehabilitating the maladjusted serviceman
to each other. If a nation engages in total war the problem of crime must be
met on a total basis, in both the civil community and the military, employing
the best knowledge and services the nation can provide.
WALTER A. LUNDENt
N.A.T.O. AND ITS PROSPECTS. By Wing-Commander J. D. Warne. New
York: Frederick A. Prae'ger, 1954. Pp. vii, 110. $3.00.
Tis small volume by a British officer who -has served with both NATO
and the United Nations is an acute personal analysis of the capacity of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization to function effectively. It is a valuable
report on inter-allied mobilization for defense, if for no other reason than that
it poses concretely the issues of resource contribution and distribution. Irre-
spective of one's agreement or disagreement with the author's conclusions, the
book is a healthy contrast to many official documents which are the product
of semantic compromise.
TProfessor of Criminology, Iowa State College.
[Vol. (1


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