By CHARLES B. CLEVELAND Chicago

What's the sentence for a crime? It depends on the judge

TODAY one of the big topics of public concern is crime and, among the experts, what to do about it. An increasing number of authorities are shifting from emphasis on reform to get-tougher standards on criminals.

One person who sees crime close up on a regular basis is Marvin E. Aspen, a judge in the criminal court of Cook County.

Aspen: Sentencing of the guilty person is the end product of the criminal justice system. It is the statistic by which our system is judged. There's a lot of dissatisfaction: that it isn't doing what we had been led in the past to believe it would do, that it would deter that person from committing another crime or deter others. There are elements of truth in all that, but it has not proved the panacea.

Q: Isn't the problem that we're not sure what we want to do — punish the criminal or rehabilitate him?
A: We're trying to do several things — punish the criminal, try to return him to society, deter others. Some of these things are contradictory. How do you punish somebody and, at the same time, rehabilitate him? The answer is that sometimes punishment is more important, sometimes rehabilitation is more relevant. These all go into the pot, so to speak, that brews the sentence.

Q: How do you decide on the sentence?
A: There are no set rules. A judge must sift through the facts to decide what is best for each individual case: the goals, facts in the case, background of the defendant, what kind of penitentiary system we have, what leeway do the statutes allow.

Q: Doesn't that produce another problem — one defendant gets off easy, another with the same crime gets a stiff sentence?
A: Judges are all individuals; we all have our own hang-ups. I may have a particular view about sex or religion; somebody in my family may have been the victim of an armed robbery years back. Locale plays a role.

If you go to the penitentiary, you'll find the toughest sentences are being imposed outside Chicago; the persons who are getting the bigger sentences are rural whites as compared to urban blacks. I have hundreds of cases of armed robbery that go through my court every year; unfortunately, that's a part of urban life. It is not a part of rural life; if somebody goes into a small town and holds up the filling station that's run by a well-liked person and the robber is a outsider, he may wind up with 10-to-30 years in the penitentiary. In Chicago that same crime may only mean four years. When those two defendants get together and compare notes, you've got trouble.

Q: What's the answer then?
A: Perhaps we should have an appellate review of all sentences automatically or empower the parole board to review all sentences before they become final. When I went to law school there were no courses in sentencing — there still aren't — but now there are conferences and literature on sentencing that help. Judges are taking greater interest in the subject.

Specific sentences
Q: What about specific sentences for specific crimes, say four years for armed robbery?
A: At first blush that sounds attractive, but there are other factors: youth of the defendant, was it his first offense, what are the chances of rehabilitation? You'll find that if you treat all defendants alike, you are causing more injustices than the one you tried to correct. Let me illustrate with two cases from my court. One man goes into a currency exchange with a sawed off shotgun, terrorizes everybody, walks out with $20,000; he's been in trouble with the law before, a pretty bad actor. Another, a 19 year old celebrating the birth of his first child, drinks with an old friend until two o'clock. Driving home, his friend gets out of the car, stops a man jogging in the park, threatens him with a lead pipe and gets $1. The friend then disappears, but the victim gets the license number. Under Illinois law, the accessory is just as guilty as the person who committed the crime.

Caseload differences
Q: What other factors differ between Chicago and downstate?
A: Backlog of cases. In a rural area there may be no problem; in Cook County we must plea-bargain 85 per cent of the cases just to make sure they don't go free just for lack of a trial. We must try a case within 120 days (180 if the man is on bond) or the defendant goes free. And plea-bargaining means the defendant is getting a lesser sentence than he ought to.

Q: Why doesn't the present system work? On paper, at least, our system of parole which judges when a man has been rehabilitated makes sense.
A: That assumes rehabilitation. Rehabilitation does happen, but in spite of the system. Penitentiaries serve only one purpose: human warehouses. And they're needed to keep people locked up whose past history shows them to be dangerous on the street. But what about first offenders? For them, we need alternatives. 
  OIL IN ILLINOIS
A new oil well, estimated to produce up to 100 barrels of oil a day, was reported Septembers near Waterloo, Ill.., and within the area designated for the new St. Louis airport.

30 / November 1976 / Illinois Issues