XII
SUMMARY
Suspended sentences; probation; discharges; quashing of indictments; bail under bond, pending trial for ominous crimes; and early paroles from prison houses are now stretched far beyond the practice of previous years.
Schemes for lifting social blight from backsliders have been broadened and quickened notably during recent decades.
Children’s courts of probation constantly have risen in numbers, and the gratuitous offices of ever-increasing thousands of laymen and women nobly second service for children haled to those courts.
From the mode of operating most of America’s prisons has been deleted all but the semblance of repression and compulsion: and in their stead, powers-that-be boast of having capitalized activities which fit for the sporting limelight, rather than for saving averages at bread-winning work.
After-parole efforts for, and supervision over, ex-prisoners, are vastly more inclusive than like endeavor of any foretime. Moreover, the public at large has been minded to do its duty: fact adumbrated in the vital circumstance that a prisoner is seldom held long in duress for want of a free-life job, albeit millions of crime-free hands remain idle.
In every conceivable way—inclusive of political pull, chicanery, graft, and criminal participation that remind of rottening fruit—the legal paddle has been padded for application to the predal felon; the same, until he construes criminal law in execution to be written agreeably with such interpretation as his nefarious necessities dictate.
Self-adjudged reformers of both sexes and of all stripes baldly palliate the chosen occupation of the thief, while him commiserating beyond the period placed by the Saviour.