OCR Text |
Show Records Show Parole System Best Law for Handling Felony Comparison of the records of 825 Utah felons under the last five years of the definite sentence law from 1908-1913 with the records of 731 Utah felons under the indeterminate sentence law imprisoned from 1913-1915 1913-1915 and from 1923-1925 shows that felons in the Utah state penitentiary served 16 per cent less time under the present law than under the former one. This fact is a result of a comprehensive com-prehensive study of the indeterminate sentence and parole law conducted by President George Thomas and Dr. Adolph Ladru Jensen, associate professor pro-fessor of law at the University of Utah. The study, however, shows that the prisoners are incarcerated and on parole for 12 per cent longer time under the present system than they were under the definite sentence law, and so the state has control over convicted con-victed felons longer than formerly. The study, started eight months j ago, has just been completed and is I now being printed for distribution to j the state legislators, the supreme I court and district judges of Utah, all the law schools in the United States 1 and President Hoover's crime commission. com-mission. It includes findings upon the history, theory and practical operation opera-tion of indeterminate sentence and parole laws and the present status of these laws and the habitual criminal laws in the United States. The only other similar survey made in the United States was made recently by the joint efforts of representatives of Northwestern university, the University Uni-versity of Chicago and the University of Illinois. ' ' Some startling inconsistencies which have crept into the present system were brought out in the survey sur-vey which included a study of the j records! of a total, of 1556 prisoners. It was fopnd, for example, that in five years under the indeterminate sentence law robbery has increased I one-third in the number of prisoners : received as compared with five years under the definite sentence law, yet the time actually served by those sentenced has decreased almost one-half. one-half. But the final conclusion reached is that the determinate sentence and parole system, on the whole, is the best method yet devised for passing judgment upon crmvicts and should be retained as part of the penal systems of Utah. |