Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1907-09-26
DEATH PENALTY
FOR CRIME HABIT
ATTORNEY GENERAL BoNAPARTE
URGES SEVERITY
Says Fourth Time Offenders, Degen-
crates, Are Modern Product and
Should Be Destroycd-TaIks
to Prison Heads

, CHICAGO, Sept. 25.-Attorney Gen
| eral Charles j. Bonaparte, addressing
the delegates to the Chicago prison
congress, in session at the University
of Chicago, on punishment and Far
| don," recently proposed to extermi-
nate the "habitual criminal" by having
modern society cease to nourish and
! shelter its proved and inveterate
enemies" He favored the death pen
atty for a man convicted of major
| offense for the fourth time.
Modern civilization has developed
the "habitual criminal he pointed out
In this country. he declared, there has
been developed a class of men who
have spent much of their adult years
| in one after another prison, who use
their intervals of liberty only to per-
petrate new crimes and their PERIODS
Of confinement only to debauch their
fellow prisoners and to perfect their
own education in deviltry.
"HabituaI Criminal" New Product
THE 'habitual criminal it must be
remembered, is a product of modern
civilization. Our ancestors would have
hanged him for his first felony or IL
nv chance he escaped this fate he would
have almost surely died of some OF the
maladies then epidemic In prisons. !
would not have men hanged today Tor
a trifiing theft nor our prisons dens OF
filth and .hotbeds of disease, but would
have modern society cease to nourisn
and shelter Its inveterate enemies.
Some years since, in magazine ar
ticle on certain defects in our criminal
law / suggested that an attempt to
commit a capital crime ought to De
made itself capital when this should
seem proper to the trial judge, anu
also that when a man has been alreaoy
thrice convicted of major crimes, upon
/ g.. y do foarr n
the like grade he should be liable.
again in the discretion OF the court. to
the death penalty. At the time these
suggestions appeared to CRATE upon
the nerves of some among my critics,
but / have seen no reason to repent
of them.
How to Measure Punishment
another error is that punishment
should be always measured by the moral
guilt OF the offense, or, in other words,
that in every case the greater the crime
the greater the merited penalty. This
view overloolxs the purely utilitarian pur-
pose of the criminal law; 1t aims not to
make men virtuous, but to make them
obey the sovereign.
@The essential immortality of all crime
consists in disobedience to law; ne who
is called upon to obey any particular
statute may think 1t just. wise and ben
eficent; or he may think it oppressive.
foolish and hurtful; but his duty to obey
is no less clear and peremptory In the
one case than in the other.
Indeed, greater severity of punishment
may be, and often is, needful to assure
obedience to a statute heartily sustained
by an undivided public opinion; and it
is not infrequently true that the appro-
pirate punishment is in inverse ratio to
the generally recognized guilt OF the
crime; severe chastisement must be
threatened, and, when needful, be in
fiicted Just because so many people feel
little or no scruple of conscience In COM
hitting the offense."
Prison Population Decreasing
John Koren. the expert special agent Of
the United States bureau OF the census,
read paper on Some Facts About the
Prison Population of the United States"
He declared the prison population in
June 1890 was 1867 in each million of
the population, and in June, 1904, It had
fallen to 10O6 in a million.
Probably this does not foreshadow
want of crime" he said, but that inn
prisonment has ceased to be the sovereign
means of dealing with certain Glasses OF
Offenders
Mr.. Koren pointed out also that the
percentage OF colored prisoners has in
creased from S0.4 in 1890 to s26 in 1904 OF
the foreign born prisoners he said the
| Irish were far in the majority, with the
Germans last on the list.
1
| Everything you want you win md IN the
classihed pago-a nodefn encYciopeo'@ on'