the penitentiary, and seek some reliance in his sentencing on the warden's report?

That way you would have the whole story. Is there any provision under this act to retain the court's jurisdiction over the prisoner's sentence at the end of his incarceration? Let us assume the following situation: He has left the prison now. Sentence is fixed on minimum and maximum limitations, and it would certainly be very important in fixing that period, as Judge Walsh stated, when the prisoner is ready to be returned to society; and maybe all necessary arrangements for receiving him have been arranged by his family and his friendssurely, while he is serving this sentence, an important part contributing to the judge's attitude would be supplied by the warden, if a report could be received by the judge and the sentence could thus be terminated or shortened.

Judge BIGGS. Of course, a judge constitutionally can reduce a sentence. I am not speaking about some power conferred by the law by any limitation that might be imposed by the Constitution.

A judge could reduce a sentence, but he could not increase it.

As I get your question, Mr. Congressman, you say, Does this statute permit the judge to retain jurisdiction right up to the end of the period of incarceration?

Mr. LIBONATI. Yes.

Judge BIGGS. No. It does not.

Mr. LIBONATI. Then the warden's information, which is the most important information, is never considered by the judge at all, is it? Judge BIGGS. The defendant goes to the parole board. The defendant goes to the judge in some instances. If, for example, there were a tentative sentence-if the judge sentenced tentatively, under those circumstances the Attorney General would, of course the Department of Justice Division, Bureau of Prisons, headed by Mr. Bennett, would be very closely in touch with the warden in Atlanta-I was in the Atlanta prison, Mr. Chairman, very recently.

Mr. WILLIS. I was there at the same time.

Judge BIGGS. The warden would undoubtedly report to Mr. Bennett the attitude of the prison in extenso.

That is, I say the warden. I mean the warden or the prison staff; and the act provides in substance that the information so garnered should be sent to the judge along with other reports, if the judge is to impose a tentative sentence. That would be there.

Mr. LIBONATI. Thank you very much, Judge.

Judge BIGGS. Just one other thing, Mr. Chairman, on this bill that I have been talking about, House Joint Resolution 425.

Mr. WILLIS. Of course, Judge.

Judge BIGGS. Thirty-eight States out of 48 employ a substantially similar sentencing system. I'd say it is substantially the same. It is almost identically the same.

Now, coming to House Joint Resolution 424, I think I might say only this: I have never encountered a Federal judge or a State court that did not think he needed some help on sentencing.

All that he has at the present time is a probation officer's presentence report. The FBI file, if he wants it. The information given to him by the prisoner or the prisoner's attorney, and by the United States attorney, or the Deputy Attorney General that may be in charge of the case. And I am not decrying that fact. That is honestly done.

As a matter of fact, the probation officer spends 3 times the amount of time on preparing the presentence report that he does in supervising the probationers, because it takes 3 times as long; but that really is not enough, in my judgment.

There should be some method whereby judges could be counseled and could counsel each other.

This House Joint Resolution 424 supplies that method. There would be a group from the Attorney General's office and a group of judges that the Judicial Conference has suggested, and the chief judge of the circuit can add members to those groups, as he sees fit.

The judges, of course, who attended these conferences, the maximum that they could receive by way of reimbursement for their out-ofpocket expenses, under the present section of title 28 would be $15. That is not a per diem, though it is sometimes referred to as such.

It actually is reimbursement of out-of-pocket expenses. As a matter of fact, I hope, though this has nothing to do with this subject, that it may be increased.

The truth of the matter is that when the judge is not away from his official residence overnight, he spends less than $15; but if he spends the night away from home, he is very frequently forced to spend out of his own pocket probably $10 or $12 a night.

In any event, the judges who attend these conferences would attend at what ever rate of reimbursement Congress itself saw fit to sanction. Mr. WILLIS. I am glad you are bringing that out because I asked the question of Judge Walsh about the very practical proposition if this subcommittee approves these bills, and the full committee goes along, we are going to be asked that question, and we might as well face it, "Well, these symposiums or conventions are simply an excuse for the judges to travel at the taxpayers' expense.”

Judge BIGGS. I realize that. Judge Walsh stated that they could do so now. It is quite true that if there were sufficient money in the appropriation, and the judges saw fit to hold sentencing sessions that is, sentencing symposiums-it could be done at the present time, if there were money available in the judiciary appropriation.

As a matter of fact, it is of great value to Federal judges to have symposiums on some of these more difficult problems, of which sentencing is one. I know of no sentencing symposium outside of the respective circuits; but in our Third Circuit Conference some years ago we used to meet and had on our programs, in some respects, methods of sentencing.

Mr. WILLIS. Let me ask you this question, and perhaps Mr. Olney would be the one to answer it. Would these bills entail additional personnel? For instance, in Mr. Olney's department, or Mr. Bennett's department?

Judge BIGGS. I would rather have Mr. Olney answer that, Mr. Chair

man.

Mr. OLNEY. Mr. Chairman, I do not feel that it would entail any additional personnel for the administrative offices.

Mr. WILLIS. You say you do not think so?

Mr. OLNEY. I do not think so. I see no need for it.

Judge BIGGS. That would be my view. I would not think it would be necessary, either.

Mr. WILLIS. We are going to be asked that question.

Judge BIGGS. I think it is an important question, and I have watched the administrative office operate ever since it has been in existence, and I do not think it would be necessary.

Mr. WILLIS. Mr. Bennett, if these proposals were adopted, would that necessitate more personnel in the Bureau of Prisons?

Mr. BENNETT. I think not, sir. We already have these committees and doctors, and so on, that could make these reports.

Judge BIGGS. I think there is no need for me to talk specifically about H. R. 8923.

Mr. WILLIS. It will pass out of the picture if we adopt these others. Judge BIGGS. Yes.

Mr. WILLIS. You would have a hard time trying to explain that a person 26 years old is a juvenile.

.

Judge BIGGS. May I speak off the record?

Mr. WILLIS. Of course.

(Discussion off the record.)

Mr. WILLIS. Back on the record.

Judge BIGGS. I think I have covered this.

Mr. WILLIS. Actually, as I understand it, others will go into detail on the language.

Judge BIGGS. Thank you so much for hearing me.

Mr. WILLIS. The committee will stand in recess until 2 p.m.

(Thereupon, at 12:15 p. m., the committee stood in recess, to reconvene at 2 p. m., the same date and place.)

AFTERNOON SESSION

Mr. WILLIS. The committee will come to order, and we will be glad to hear from Judge Laws, Chief Judge, United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

We are honored and pleased to have you with us, Judge.

TESTIMONY OF HON. BOLITHA J. LAWS, CHIEF JUDGE, UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Judge Laws. Thank you, sir.

Mr. WILLIS. We would appreciate your views.

Judge LAWS. I may say to the committee that our court, unlike any other United States district court in the Nation, tries criminal cases that are customarily tried in State courts of major jurisdiction, as well as the cases customarily tried in the United States courts.

By virtue of that, we have a very extensive jurisdiction. So much so that beginning next Monday we shall have as many as seven judges assigned to try criminal cases alone.

I appear before you principally in my capacity as a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States Committee on the Administration of the Criminal Law. As you have been told earlier today, we were to hold our meeting under the leadership of Chief Judge John J. Parker, and on that day we found that he had d'ed at 7:30 that morning.

The committee designated me to act as temporary chairman. I did act as chairman and presented the proposals to the Judicial Conference of the United States.

Before his death Chief Judge Parker had designated me as chairman of a subcommittee of judges to study the particular subject of disparity of sentences.

He had also appointed to the subcommittee former United States Senator, now Chief Judge Ryan Duffy; former United States Senator Carl Hatch, now United States district judge in the 10th circuit; and Judge Frank Picard, United States district judge in Detroit. We engaged in an intensive study of the subject matter in collaboration with a subcommittee designated by the Attorney General of the United States to deal with the same subject.

That committee itself consisted of Judge Walsh, from whom you have heard today, and Mr. Bennett, whom you will hear from today, Mr. Reed, chairman of the United States Parole Board, and Mr. Warren Olney, former Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Criminal Division, now Administrator of the United States Courts. Our subcommittees conferred extensively on the bills you are considering, and we had the happy experience of concurring on all the subject matters we considered. That was an unusual event. We had two extensive meetings and studied the matter and then we also held a number of informal conferences. All of the judges and all of the Attorney General's representatives agreed on these bills with the amendments which, in effect, subsequently were adopted unanimously, as Judge Biggs has said, by the Judicial Conference of the United States.

So we do come before you, I am delighted to say, from the point of view of the Attorney General and the judges in complete unanimity. I am sure you will agree this is significant when you deal with a subject as difficult as this.

I should like to say to your committee that I have had an intense interest in the problem of dealing with those charged with crime since I was a youth. In my very early days, I served 6 years as a prosecutor in the District of Columbia. Then when I resigned and engaged in general practice of law for nearly 20 years, I defended some few major criminal cases.

When I became a judge, nearly 20 years ago, I found myself deeply concerned over the problems of dealing with criminal cases, and more patricularly the problems of sentencing; and I may say to you that in those very extensive studies of the subject matter throughout these years, my concern has not abated to any appreciable extent insofar as sentencing is concerned.

I appeared some few years ago before a committee of the Senate dealing with juvenile delinquency, and at that time Senator Hennings asked me the question, didn't I find that nearly everyone I contacted knew precisely how to solve crime and how to sentence?

I told him that was true. He said that had been the case before the committee.

However, I would like to tell you, as Judge Walsh said, that very few of us, if any, know precisely how to sentence. I can certainly say to you I do not know how to sentence, and I need all the assistance I can possibly get. It is only after the most intensive studies and conferences with others that any one of us can approach what may be termed just sentencing.

Mr. Chairman, you have asked the question about the matter of the severity of sentencing, and the effect that these bills might have one way or the other. In respect to that, you said you were going to ask each one of us about just sentencing.

We know perfectly well that sentencing requires justice to the public, quite as much as it does justice to the individual; and if these bills had in the slightest way any disposition to require mollycoddling, I can say to you that I am positive the judges who gave this matter careful thought, as well as the representatives of the Attorney General, would not have gone along with it. We recognize full well that there are occasions when long sentences must be imposed.

It has been my experience to go through a number of penal institutions, and I may say I did not do it at Government expense. I have been through them on seven occasions. I have been through the one at Atlanta three times. I have been through Leavenworth; I have been through Alcatraz; and I spent a good deal of time studying the conditions at Lorton, in nearby Virginia.

I have been through State prisons, and I have been through youth rehabilitative centers; and in those observations I was very much interested in what Mr. Libonati asked about the views of wardens.

I came in contact with them and also with the penologists who guided me through. They made the observation: "Judge, sometimes you just do not give us enough time to work on these men."

They have said that on more than one occasion.

Also, they have said: "This man might be responding for the first time, at the end of 3 or 4 years, to rehabilitative treatment. He has not quite reached the point where he has full confidence in public officials and thinks that they are working for his benefit and the benefit of the public. But he is beginning to emerge."

He gets out before he is quite emerged, and he goes back to his old surroundings and he then regresses and he is brought back to prison. "If you had given him a few more years," the man will tell me, "we could have sent him out to stay."

That is what interested me so much in your question asked of one of my predecessors.

Therefore, I came to the viewpoint, after studying different cases and talking to them, that I could get a tremendous lot of help from those penologists.

In point of fact, I have taken advantage of the 60-day provision of law which makes possible the reduction of a sentence within that time. I have sent prisoners to Lorton and have asked the penologists to advise me as to the sentence I should give them. They give me that advice. On some cases I would follow it, and on some cases I would not.

The point I am trying to make at this particular stage in my testimony is that that can be of tremendous help to a judge.

I would like to say to you that, therefore, I had definitely in mind what the chairman has in mind, that we should make it clear at every stage of the proceeding that this has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of coddling those who are connected with crime. It has to do with bringing about the proper type of sentencing, and making it possible for a good judge who may come into criminal court without