The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1893-04-20

matOry in its nature. Here and there a
young man in the commission of for
hidden acts may come to the sensible
conclusion that it doesn't pay to be
lawless, and he may quit his course of
crime after the first detected and pun
ished act. But that is not the class
from which the prisons are recruited.
Our present penal laws fix certain
arbitrary sentence as punishment for
the commission of a particular crime
The only latitude permitted is the mini
mum and maximum limits. If you
commit burglary you are liable to a
sentence all the way from one to twenty
years. A sword of similar weight hangs
over him who commits arson. For the
larceny of SIS or mOre-money or
money value-the punishment will be
somewhere between one and fifteen
years. Now, no matter what the time
may be, when the sentence has expired
the culprit is discharged and permitted
to 60 without question wherever he
will. There is no assurance that he will
be better man than he was before. In
deed, the probabilities are that he will
be worse.
The custom, followed wherever crimi-
nais are sentenced, is to give light
sentence for the first conviction, a
sentence somewhat longer for the Sec
ond, and steady increase in the dura-
tion of the punishment as long as the
culprit shows himself willing to follow
course of crime and indiscreet enough
to be caught at it. Occasionally this
custom is slightly varied, and court
seems to decide upon certain term for
certain Offense, no matter who COM
mitS it, no matter how often he may
have committed it or similar offenses
in the past, no matter what. threat his.
discharge from prison implies, Profes-
sOr Wayland, of Yale law school, tells
of one man who served five successive
terms for burglary each term of three
years duration. He tells of another
who served six sentences for the same
grade of crime, five varying from two
and half to three years each, the sixth
and last, for some inScrutable reason,
having been fixed at six years. The
maximum limit all the time was twenty
years. After his first sentence the man
committed five OffenSes in which he was
detected, besides others, no doubt, which
were never found out, and he served
twelve years. Society assisted in keep
ing him in the criminal class. And he
scourged society to the limit of his abili-
ty tor its failure to rise to its require
ments.
So long as man is sent to the peni-
tentiary for certain definite term he
knows just what arrangements to make
for the future. In making these ar
rangementS he need take rectitude into
no sort OF account. He stands in the
position of man who owes certain
sum, and when his term shall have ex-
pired he will be discharged, acquitted
even, again. He owes nobody anything.
1t he be man dangerous to society he
will almost surely be wise enough to
take the benefit of all good time offered
him. So that his sentence of one year
may be shortened to ten months. His
sentence OF three years may be shortened
to thirty months. The better he is in
and acute he is in prison, the sooner he
may get out and begin again just where
he left off and proceed to the commits
sion of crime or the earning of an hon
est livelihood The society which he
outraged in the crime for which he was
punished has no assurance that he will
do better The probability is that he
will do worse.
AS against this system, which is pure
ly penal and not reformatory one,
there is the plan of the indeterminate
sentence. Simply stated, it is to give
each convicted person the maximum
sentence provided for his crime and
then let him show by his work during
confinement that he is worthy of re-
turn to the world of which he was one
day unworthy. If he cannot show such
deserving then let him remain locked
up and at labor for the whole of the
term Chicago Herald.