Indeterminate Sentence | Page 3

of a
man who is proved to be insane, and it is paralleled by the practice of
sending a sick man to the hospital until he is cured.
The introduction of the indeterminate sentence into our criminal
procedure would be a radical change in our criminal legislation and
practice. The original conception was that the offender against the law
should be punished, and that the punishment should be made to fit the
crime, an 'opera bouffe' conception which has been abandoned in
reasoning though not in practice. Under this conception the criminal
code was arbitrarily constructed, so much punishment being set down

opposite each criminal offense, without the least regard to the actual
guilt of the man as an individual sinner.
Within the present century considerable advance has been made in
regard to prison reform, especially with reference to the sanitary
condition of places of confinement. And besides this, efforts of various
kinds have been made with regard to the treatment of convicts, which
show that the idea was gaining ground that criminals should be treated
as individuals. The application of the English ticket-of-leave system
was one of these efforts; it was based upon the notion that, if any
criminal showed sufficient evidence of a wish to lead a different life, he
should be conditionally released before the expiration of his sentence.
The parole system in the United States was an attempt to carry out the
same experiment, and with it went along the practice which enabled the
prisoner to shorten the time of his confinement by good behavior. In
some of the States reformatories have been established to which
convicts have been sent under a sort of sliding sentence; that is, with
the privilege given to the authorities of the reformatory to retain the
offender to the full statutory term for which he might have been
sentenced to State prison, unless he had evidently reformed before the
expiration of that period. That is to say, if a penal offense entitled the
judge to sentence the prisoner for any period from two to fifteen years,
he could be kept in the reformatory at the discretion of the authorities
for the full statutory term. It is from this law that the public notion of an
indeterminate sentence is derived. It is, in fact, determinate, because the
statute prescribes its limit.
The introduction of the ticket-of-leave and the parole systems, and the
earning of time by good behavior were philanthropic suggestions and
promising experiments which have not been justified by the results. It
is not necessary at this time to argue that no human discretion is
adequate to mete out just punishment for crimes; and it has come to be
admitted generally, by men enlightened on this subject, that the real
basis for dealing with the criminal rests, firstly, upon the right of
society to secure itself against the attacks of the vicious, and secondly,
upon the duty imposed upon society, to reform the criminal if that is
possible. It is patent to the most superficial observation that our present

method does not protect society, and does not lessen the number of the
criminal class, either by deterrent methods or by reformatory processes,
except in a very limited way.
Our present method is neither economic nor scientific nor philanthropic.
If we consider the well-defined criminal class alone, it can be said that
our taxes and expenses for police and the whole criminal court
machinery, for dealing with those who are apprehended, and watching
those who are preying upon society, yearly increase, while all private
citizens in their own houses or in the streets live inconstant terror of the
depredations of this class. Considered from the scientific point of view,
our method is absolutely crude, and but little advance upon mediaeval
conditions; and while it has its sentimental aspects, it is not real
philanthropy, because comparatively few of the criminal class are
permanently rescued.
The indeterminate sentence has two distinct objects: one is the absolute
protection of society from the outlaws whose only business in life is to
prey upon society; and the second is the placing of these offenders in a
position where they can be kept long enough for scientific treatment as
decadent human beings, in the belief that their lives can be changed in
their purpose. No specific time can be predicted in which a man by
discipline can be expected to lay aside his bad habits and put on good
habits, because no two human beings are alike, and it is therefore
necessary that an indefinite time in each case should be allowed for the
experiment of reformation.
We have now gone far enough to see that the ticket-of-leave system,
the parole system as we administer it in the State prisons (I except now
some of the reformatories), and the good