Monday, March 12, 1917
If Trojans want proof that crime in 1917 is down significantly from a few years ago, The Record reports that “It is only necessary to visit police court any morning these days to realize the truth of all this.
“All that is necessary is to be at the corner of State and Third streets any morning at 9 o’clock and look for the oldtime crowd of spectators that used to gather in the neighborhood for the purpose of watching prisoners brought over from jail and later jam a way into the court room.
“There is no such crowd nowadays. The street is deserted but for the ordinary traffic and in the court room most times the spectators are only those who have knowledge of a particular case which is going to trial that morning and are there because of their acquaintance with the parties concerned.”
There’s probably no better judge of these changes than James F. Byron, the police court magistrate since 1912. He’s seen his morning sessions shrink from one or two hours to five or ten minutes each day.
“There is no question but that crime, specifically of a serious nature, has been on the decrease in Troy for some little time,” Byron tells our paper today, “There is apparently more respect for the law for one thing, and there appears to be more soberness and more steadiness to things.”
Byron attributes the drop in crime to “several reasons which undoubtedly play a part in this change which is beneficial to the community.”
One reason the magistrate cites is the success of the temperance movement. The campaign to discourage drinking “has succeeded much of late with the result that there is not nearly the hard drinking of some years ago, and excessive drink was always productive of crime.”
Byron also credits a more humanitarian legal system. “Formerly before the present parole system was established many a man lost all chance for the future because of a slip,” he explains, “Now offenders against the law are not condemned to what might be termed lasting disgrace and banishment necessarily. The law gives them a chance to mend their ways and plenty of men are received back into the ranks of society to commence life anew.”
More importantly, the youngest offenders have a chance to reform thanks to the children’s court system. “A great many boys have been taken in hand at the right stage and corrected,” Byron says, “At the proper age they have gone to work and brought money into the home and added to the general prosperity.”