In a crime-beleaguered age that cries out for both tougher crime control and greater personal responsibility, the new book by New York Judge Harold J. Rothwax carries a title that is sure to be greeted with public approval — Guilty: The Collapse of Criminal Justice (Random House, 238 pages, $ 22). Finally, or so it would seem, a judge with important credentials on the left is prepared to assign blame for the erosion of Americans’ most important right, personal security, over the last 30 years. Before his elevation to the bench, Rothwax was the senior trial attorney for the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society. He was also, the publisher informs us, “a card-carrying member of the ACLU” — indeed, a vice chairman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. The reader is encouraged to learn that, despite these affliations, this New York City judge takes pride in imposing stiff punishments and criticizes many of the Warren court decisions that have made his job of dispensing justice so unmanageable.