Los Angeles herald., 1909-07-11
CONDUCT SHOULD
FIX DETENTION
INDETERMINATE SENTENCE
METES OUT EQUITY
individuality of Offender, and Not His
Particular Crime, to Deter
mine Length of In-
carceration

Y
who has abandoned himself to a lie
of crime. and the court feels that you
should receive a sentence in this IN
stance that will serve as a warning TO
YOU and to others The sentence Oh
the court is "-McWhorter paused as
If to balance the scales of justice WIFI
all nicety, and then he looked away
He did not know exactly how many
wears in prison would eXplate Dela-
ney's crime; there was of course no
way for him to tell. He thought hrst
of the number ten, then of the mum
Der five: then, as the saying is, he spilt
the difference These proceedings were
repeated again and again. McWhorteT
twirled his gold glasses, looked out Oh
the window, made his little speech.
guessed and pronounced sentence.
The court was Impressed; the court
"did not know exactly; the court
"split the difference; the court
"guessed and pronounced sentence.
The quotation is from Brand Whit
lock's Turn of the Balance" and the
indetermnate sentence, to when TINS
number of the Prison Reform League
series will be devoted, is a protest
against this happy GO lucky method or
administering what 1t pleases certain
persons to call Justice"
Anv one who takes the trouble to
ing pitch and toss with human liberty,
and that only by the happiest of tlukes
can equity thus be meted out. More
over it is obvious that Mr. Whitlock
has not told one-quarter of the story.
He might have shown that While one
Judge was OF a philosophic MIND ana
disposed to view crime as social dls-
ease, another occupied the ancient
standpoint and regarded each act as
al n
punished and avenged He might have
shown how In an age when opinion is
largely in the making the prisoners s
fate depends on the particular school
of thought to which his honor happens
to belong. He might have dilated on
the condition of the courts stomach,
its prejudices, its subserviency to po-
litical interests and hundred and one
motives that make the prisoner at the
bar the sport of circumstances over
which he can have no control All or
which is most unsatisfactory to who
ever prizes justice and fills the heart
of the condemned with bitterness for
which there is no sweetening.
The modern school of penology,
therefore urges that the present
method of imposing sentences Is. at
the best, happy go-lucky; that 1t is
utterly unscientific; that it had it's
is saturated with the spirit of autoc-
racy. and that 1t looks only to the
punishment of individual crimes, in
stead of justice and the reformation
Of the individual criminal. In the in
determinate sentence 1T conceives that
1t is advocating system under which
each offender would be made the ar
bitter of his own destiny the question
of the date at which he shall be re-
stored to liberty being determined by
his own conduct while Under con-
straint. II claims that the decision
should rest in each case not with a
judge who has to guess on the spur
of the moment, but with a regularly
organized board. able to act with de-
liberation and justice, since ii would
have spread before II the record prior
to conviction and full data as to the
prisoners conduct throughout his in
generation Regarding imprisonment
as for the protection of society, 1t
maintains that a board so constituted
would be able to gauge with an ac-
curacy that the best of individual
judges cannot hope to obtain the date
at which the criminal may be restored
to liberty with safety to his fellow
men.
States in the Lead
In a bill introduced at the last ses-
sion of the California Legislature, and
having for its object the conversion of
San Quentin into a reformatory Col.
Griffith J. Griffith. the secretary and
treasurer of the California branch of
the Prison Reform league endeavored
to procure the adoption of the inde-
terminate sentence. In January last
he submitted to the governor of the
state lengthy argument in favor of
the proposed change, in the course of
which he showed that IL was now in
use in the following fifteen states
Iowa. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Con-
necticut, New Hampshire, Colorado, IL
linois. Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts,.
Michigan Minnesota, New Jersey, New
York and Ohio. In Connecticut and
New Hampshire it applies to state pris-
ons alone, while Wisconsin and Penn
sylvania make it applicable only to
their reformatories. In all the other
states mentioned it applies to the in
mates of both state prisons and re-
formatories. There follows this expla-
nation:
"The indeterminate sentence plan
emDodies as one OF its basic principles
that the individual offender. and not
the crime, shall finally determine the
length of confinement or detention that
is necessary to reform him. The prin-
ciples involved in the indeterminate
sentence and the patrole system are
logically one and the same, and are in
separable. Probation (fuly considered
In our last letter. or parole cannot be
scientifically applied to the convicted
person. except through the indeter-
inmate sentence"
The last reflection would seem to be
sufficiently obvious. 1t is charged
against the existing usage that the
sentences passed are of necessity
largely guesswork The convicted man
is given at haphazard So many years.
and after certain proportion of
them has been passed within the prison
walls, he may obtain his parole, pro-
vided he has not been guilty of any
serious infraction of the rules. No
adequate standard of conduct has been
exacted; no certain answer can be
given to the question, "Is it safe to
give this man his liberty?" The old
hit or miss want of system prevails,
with infinite injustice both to the con-
vict and to society.
Some of us may be able to remember
being locked in the cupboard until
we were good" AS a punishment it
may not have been the wisest in the
world, but it carried the condition
that with the assurance of satisfactory
conduct would come release This would
seem to be a sound principle Is it
beyond the reach of human ingenuity
to work 1t into practice?
Deciding at Leisure
The parole commissioners have in
finitely greater opportunities of reach
ing a Just conclusion than an indi-
vidual Judge almost invariably over
burdened with work, can possibly en-
Joy. They have before them the
record of the trial, the statement of the
judge and clerk and much other matter
that under the rules of evidence is not
:, ,5,,,tssihIa IN court IF there have heen