The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-06-15
IMPRISONMENT FOR LIFE.

From the N. 4. World
The late praiseworthy severity of courts
and juries throughout the country in adjudg-
ing murderers to the galiows has at last
walked into renewed activity the cant against
capital punishment. For time succeeding
the indignant outburst of the popular voice
demanding q rigid enforcement of the law
the philanthropists who think it better the
assassin should knife the citizen than that
the State should rope the slayer kept quiet,
but now their murmur is heard. Why, they
put it, not substitute Imprisonment for life?
There is something to be said on both sides
of this question; much on the one side in
the way of rhetoric, fancy, tears, pathos, and
sentimentality; not little on the other
in the nature of figures and
facts. Taking up the prison statistics of
Wisconsin, it appears that in the ten years
from 1856 to 1S68-our present information
not coming below the latter date-there were
thirty-six convicts received into the peniten-
tiary under life sentences, and twelve of them
pardoned out. In the Ohio penitentiary for
the same period fifty-nine life convicts were
received, and twenty-one of them pardoned
out. In the Massachusetts State prison, of
which we have fortunately statistics from
1928 to 1866, there we're 1876 life convicts re-
ceived, and ninety-six were pardoned out.
Or, in other words, one life convict in every
three was pardoned out in Wisconsin, two in
every HVe III Ono, anu every otner one IN
Massachusetts. The average time served by
the Wisconsin life convicts was only six
years, by the Ohio criminals seven,
and by those in Massachusetts eight.
From this appalling exhibit it will
be seen that Imprisonment for life is not
imprisonment for life; that it is less in the
long run than the ordinary term of ten years
meted out to swindler or robber. The
working of the system is such as tempts the
hur fo a1H RI if
covered; for if life sentence can only be OBJ
tanned on an indictment for murder, he
| stands a fair chance of receiving pardon in
some six or eight years, while if ten or fifteen
years be given him for the burglary alone he
| is quite likely to serve out every day of it.
In the figures we have given, taking it for
granted that the number of life convicts was
even year by year in Massachusetts, we find
that in the space of ten years in that and the
other two States mentioned 143 convicts
under sentence of imprisonment fer life were
received in the several penitentiaries and
ffty-eight of them pardoned out-equiv-
alent to two in every five set free
the first ten years, with two more,
| of course, to receive pardons in the next
decade No wonder that it has been officially
certified to the Legislature of this State that
''the convicts for life would seem to form in
some respects privileged class, and the
chances are that they will have a shorter
imprisonment than men sentenced for twenty
or even fifteen years. The pardoning power
much more frequently chooses these men,
in proportion to their number, as the objects
of its clemeney than it does the general
mass of prisoners; and it would hence seem
to be the interest of the criminal to have
meted out to him the heaviest punishment
which the law accords to his offense.
The gross average of pardons on all convicts
confined in American prisons will be from
fifteen to twenty per cent. while
that on cenvicts sentenced for life reaches
the enormous proportion of forty to fifty per
cent" If imprisonment for life were i'm.
prisonment fer life its propriety might be 9
subject for discussion, but as the facts and
the figures are, it means even less deten'
tion for a murderer than for a mere thief-s
short sojourn for the blood-stained wretch in
prison, and then q license to him to handle
his weapons anew.