The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1897-09-25
The Treatment of Convict..

In his charge to the Quitman county
grand jury few days ago, Judge Shelf
held, among other things, is reported to
have said: There has been a great fu-
rore raised in Georgia the last few weeks
about the convict question. Why this
recent hubbub has been raised I do not
understand, but some people have recent
ly taken an idea that chicken thieves and
other breakers of the moral law should
be furnished with feather beds and car.
pets on the floor and chicken pie. My
own idea is that breakers of the law will
and ought to be punished. Senti-
mentalism has grown in this state until
thieves and burglars and murderers are
raised to the plane of heroes instead of
ordinary law breakers. To raise the
violators of the laws from that plane of
life to which they belong, to where they
are treated as gentlemen, we may become
accessories to the crimes they commit"
Is this a fair statement of the trendof ar
gument upon the convict question ad-
vanced by those who are in favor of re-
forming the Georgia penal system? We
do not think it is, and we feel quite sure
that Judge Sheffield himself, when he
reads in cold type the report of his charge
to the grand jury, will agree with US. We
have not heard anybody, or of anybody,
advocating feather beds, and carpets and
chicken pie for convicts. We have not
even heard of a proposition to furnish
them with excelsior mattresses, straw
mating and "hopping-john" But we
have heard and joined in a protest from
the state at large against the ihfliction Of
cuelty, starvation and death upon the con-
victs.
There is, or should be, a wide line Of de-
narration between the punishment under
the law of persons convicted of INSIDE
meanors and felonies, and the cruel and
inhuman treatment of such convicts be-
cause their hands are shackled by the
law. We have passed out of the age of
galley slaves. and inquisftions, and tor
lures for moral lapses The Chinese
cling to torture for crime. Our news dis
patches of day or two ago contained an
item about a man being condemned to
death by having his flesh sliced from his
bones while alive, for the murder of a
relation. We Americans. however. boast
a higher civilization than that We pun
ish crime more for the benefit of society
than for the sake Of revenge for the crime
committed. Our civilization cries out
against cruel and unusual punishment
We are inclined to agree in part with
what Judge Sheffield says of the lauding
of thieves and murderers, in certain in
stances. We have lately seen Perry, Tom
Delk, Bud Brooks and other murderers,
and a great variety of thieves and swind-
lers, made heroes of by certain Georgia
newspapers, to the disgust of law-abiding
citizens and self-respecting Journalism.
But 1t must not be supposed by Judge
Sheffield or anybody else that the "senti-
mentalism" more properly sensational
ism) of such publications represents the
feeling of the public with regard to the
matter. The people desire, and intend.
that the convicts shall be punished, but
not beaten and starved. They have no
intention of providing them with feather
beds, carpets and chicken pie; they mean
that the beds shall be hard, the food hard
and the labor hard But they draw the
line at cruelty.