The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 18??-1935, 1899-01-13

Ii LIZA 81 n IN " "A Ii 4 tOs
the Goth century will provide houses of
detention where as pleasantly as posi-
Bile and more protitably than If free, the
days and years shall pass, giving some
measure of physical happiness and com
fort; and at the same time protecting
society from alta ks that are mere i'm
pulse, and from the deferred but insid-
ious danger that comes from permitting
people of decided criminal bent to re-
produce their kind at will. The moral
imbecile of the future will be considered
a filter subject for the verdict of a com
mittee of skilled physicians, than the
verdict of twelve unskllled jurymen,
who are called on to decide merely
whether the deed of evil was committed
or not, and are not at all equal to under
standing why the wretched human
creature before them had the impulse
and yielded to it. The new century
will see much more discrimination in
relation to wrong doing and the whole
tendency will be to set apart by them
selves those who are filled with accursed
impulses from the womb. They will be
regarded more as objects of pity than
subjects of punishment; and their
proper treatment will, like every good
deed, react upon society in hundred
ways, lessening the number of crimi-
nails, reducing the constant legal cost of
looking after their defendants, and at
the same time throwing around these
pitiable creatures some of the comfort
and regularity and self-repression that
belong to those who have no heritage of
woe to carry.
Some people fall under the ban of the
law and become criminals by happen
ings that are almost accidents.
A pinch of the pocket, a crowding by
obligations, favorable opportunity and
the hitherto respectable member of So
ciety is arraigned and sentenced and
confined.
A little quarrel, harmless enough at
the outset-and liable to occur with the
best of us-fires uncomfortable passion
and bodily injury is done to the oppo-
nent. Then the culprit, possibly less
guilty or at any rate less annoying than
the one he knocks down, is put where
he can do no further harm.
Or perhaps the complaining voices of
hungry children and the wistful woe of
a suffering wife make man lend ear to
the tempter who urges him to take from
those who we'll can spare to give to
those who need; and society's organized
protectors descend upon the unhappy,
needy, bewildered being and he is put
where the immediate result is to reduce
his family to still greater need.
Society of the century yet to come
will be found more willing to set free
such as these than to shut them up
The system of suspending sentence
over first offender, and enforcing il
only after the commission of a second
misdeed will be found much more in
vogue forty years from now by those OF
us who survive so long. No prophecy
can be surer, for such action will only
be along the line of common sense to-
wards which the Interpretation of law
is beginning to tend more and more
The wisdom of the act consists in un.
ders standing human nature and there.
fore knowing that to an unharden ed
criminal the dread of sentence still in
suspense will be punishment and de.
terrent enough. Society will have had
all needed protection and the human
creature that society is dealing with
will have been given chance to show
that his wrong-doing was not the result
of evl tendency; and the eyes of our
grandchildren will be saved from the
shameful sight of remedial institu'
ton "eing filled with those who are
damaged in self-respect by the associa.
tions to which mischance has subjected
them.
~
Some people are made criminals by
the harshness and permanency of theiI
punish ment, and for these society has
to answer. Unfortunately prison walls
cannot speak and society as whole has
no time to heed things or persons thai
are out of sight; were 1t otherwise oul
ears would Jingle at the maledictions
upon us by those who in the first in
stance wronged society, but at the last
were wronged themselves and that fol
life. Many well intentioned lad, for a
serious offense has been placed where
those long III the way of crime could in
fluence him, or where he himself wa;
so lacking in demands on his mind AND
hands that he brooded over evil unit
he lost sight of his own misdeed and
saw only that organized society was his
enemy. For such society is to blame