Yours very truly,
Alfred I. Souder,
Captain of Detectives.
I most cheerfully endorse the above letter and can vouch for the good work Mr. Pooley does in connection with this Court.
David S. Scott,
Magistrate Police Court, City Hall.
PENAL LEGISLATION IN PENNSYLVANIA.
After the hopeful beginning in improved penal legislation made by the Legislature of Pennsylvania two years ago in the enactment of a probation, indeterminate sentence and parole law, the work done and left undone by the recent session is, to say the least, most discouraging. Not only did a number of admirable bills receive no consideration whatever, but the law referred to above, which the Committee on Criminal Law Reform in its report at the last Prison Congress (Washington, 1910) pronounced “admirable,” was so amended as virtually to eliminate from it the vital principle underlying the indeterminate sentence and parole.
The act of 1909 was based on a very careful study of the writings of the most advanced penologists, and of the statutes of those progressive states that have introduced the indeterminate sentence and parole with the largest measure of success. Its viewpoint was that of those who seek the reformation of the wrongdoer, and not of those who still have in their minds the old idea of retributive justice only; it made a break with the old codes, aimed to deal with the man and not with his crime, and had regard to his future rather than to his past; and possibly this radical departure from the traditional mode of thought and procedure, and the introduction of something evidently so new to many legal minds in Pennsylvania, though no longer so in some other States, was responsible for the hostility which the law encountered here and there.
Section 6 of said law reads as follows:
“Whenever any person, convicted in any court of this Commonwealth of any crime, shall be sentenced to imprisonment in either the Eastern or Western Penitentiary, the court, instead of pronouncing upon such convict a definite or fixed term of imprisonment, shall pronounce upon such convict a sentence of imprisonment for an indefinite term; stating in such sentence the minimum and maximum limits thereof; fixing as the minimum time of such imprisonment, the term now or hereafter prescribed as the minimum imprisonment for the punishment of such offense; but if there be no minimum time so prescribed, the court shall determine the same, but it shall not exceed one fourth of the maximum time, and the maximum limit shall be the maximum time now or hereafter prescribed as a penalty for such offense: Provided, however, That when a person shall have twice before been convicted, sentenced and imprisoned in a penitentiary for a term of not less than one year, for any crime committed in this State, or elsewhere within the limits of the United States, the court shall sentence said person to a maximum of thirty years: And provided further, That no person sentenced for an indeterminate term shall be entitled to any benefits under the act, entitled ‘An act providing for the commutation of sentences for good behavior of convicts in prisons, penitentiaries, workhouses, and county jails in this State, and regulations governing the same,’ approved the eleventh day of May, Anno Domini one thousand nine hundred and one.”
This section has been amended to read: