WHERE DEATH PENALTY IS NEEDED.
Governor Dockery, of Missouri, in his message to the Legislature of that State, recommends a law prescribing the death penalty for kidnappers of children for ransom. Also recommends that it be enacted in every State. It should also apply to another crime, which our penal laws do not properly reach—railroad train wrecking, which is often attended with a wholesale slaughter of life, and those who commit it seldom receive their just punishment, though abhorred and dreaded more than the ordinary murderer.
THE LOCK-STEP.
At Sing Sing prison the lock-step has been abolished for first offenders; it ought to be given up everywhere. The men are often identified as having been to N. Y. State Prison by the shuffling habit; a military step has been substituted. Superintendent Collins has noticed that the lock-step has grown on a prisoner to such an extent, that he will fall in behind people on the street unconsciously in true lock-step fashion.
A gang of convicts belonging to Class A, all carpenters or masons, were sent to work on the new prison at Mapanoch, Ulster Co., N. Y., and 250 from Clinton and Auburn. The new prison will cost $700,000. It was first intended for a reformatory, but the plan was changed to a State prison with accommodation for 1,000 convicts.
GRADING AND CLASSIFYING OF PRISONERS.
From the Report of the Board of Control, Iowa.
This is carefully done in all our reformatories, but in the State penitentiaries and penal institutions very rarely. It seems fitting now, that the public desire is not only to hold the convict, but to encourage self help, by a system of regular graded or progressive classifications of prisoners, based on character, and operated on a system of marks. Hope should be made an ever present force in the minds of the prisoner, by a system of rewards for good conduct, that carries with it a promotion from a lower to a higher grade.
In connection with this system of classification, a well regulated parole and indeterminate sentence law will be enacted by the Legislature; thereby placing the destiny of the prisoner in his own hands, and by his own exertions to continually better his condition. The object of imprisonment and prison government is for the protection of society and for the reformation of the prisoner. It is plain the State does not discharge its obligation until one or both these objects have been clearly accomplished. If the prisoner cannot be reformed, he must be held indefinitely, yet the parole system in connection with established grades may be so administered as to secure these results. It is better than a definite sentence (that does not reform) without a provision of parole; but more effective when coupled with the reformatory or indeterminate sentence, because it makes a stronger appeal to the convict for his co-operation.
It is gratifying to know that this is to be introduced into all the State penal institutions of Iowa.