The patrolman who wields his nightstick so as to shock the aesthetic sensibilities of an attacking marauder, is liable to be “broken” if the bandit is one of the many who make irresistible appeal to the super-emotional.
A peace officer probably will be condignly “disciplined,” shall he have dared, in self-defense, to man-handle an underworld vote-herder for them to whom the officer must either kowtow or cash in.
The chances that a lawbreaker will be apprehended, are about three to one in his favor; that he will be convicted under the wording of a charge or charges brought against him by legal agents, they are about ten to one; and that he will pay with his life if he kills, they are so nebulous as to be nearly negligible.
An escaping prisoner may count on the sympathy of at least eight of ten of the human mass, many of whom actually shield him.
Most any old alibi, offered by aids-de-camp of crooks, will serve the accused on trial.
Wrest what he will, from whom he will, by what method he will, the predal felon is not held to monetary restitution in so much as a red cent. The looted can sweat for the loot the thief “plants,” then employs in another swing around the criminal circle.
The least elastic of the predicates of penal law are held at bay in all but a temerous few of America’s secondary prisons.
Far from being the crowded-out derelict he is painted by those who are either ignorant or perjured, the ex-convict usually can go to work at honest work, if he wills to do so. If he is a skilled workman, work almost surely will be provided for him. If he is unskilled, yet of parts such as “undercover” Fagins cultivate, he can always dodge artfully and profitably as skirmisher for them. Hence, for one governing reason, “discharged,” or “sentence suspended,” is so frequently written over the faces of indictments against habitual and consecutive scoundrels.
Public opinion still makes hair-trigger response to lament over the lacerated feelings of heartless killers.
Otherwise far-seeing men applaud the frayed platitudes of criminological academicians who are primarily responsible for the low-down dance-hall atmosphere of the bulk of America’s reformative plants; and for the nauseous fact that in those plants thief-sport parasities are suffered to derail industry.