OCR Text |
Show CRIME IN THE UNITED STATES. Judge Thomas of Alabama delivered an address in Nashville, Tenn., the other day on the reign of crime in the United States. He showed from figures that in 1905 in Australia Aus-tralia there were 20 homicides per 1,000,000 inhabitants inhabi-tants ; in England and Wales, 8.4 ; in Japan, 14, and in the Dominion of Canada, 12.4 ; in Germany in 1899 the number . was 4.5, while in this country the number num-ber of homicides per 1,000,000 inhabitants was, in 1905, 115; in 1906, 118. ; That does not mean that the people of the United States are worse than in other countries, but it means that there is a wonderful lacking of pun-y pun-y ishment for crime. Judge Thomas gives as one reason "excessive individualism," and says where people are unrestrained unre-strained by what may be called "social conscience" and are swayed by personal consideration, homicides are numerous. Jurors are often swayed by sentimentality. sentimen-tality. He ascribes a great part of it to the "pistol habit" in the South and in the West. Our own belief is that if the death penalty were to be changed' to imprisonment for life there are thousands of acquittals .every year that would be t convictions. Most of the acquittals in the murder trials of the country come through the benefit of the doubt- ; N Then the criminal practice in the United States otght to be revised. A case has been running in New York for six weeks. We think in an English court, it would have been decided at the very most in six days. It is getting to be so that prisoners, when arraigned, feel reasonably sure that with the use of a little money they will get away. That feel-: feel-: ing has never been engendered in England . There, when a man is arraigned on a criminal charge the court swiftly searches the facts and the judgment ; is obtained. In this country the counsel continues day after day, and week after week making a spec-i spec-i tacle to satisfy the morbid tastes of people. News-! News-! papers are filled with it and 10,000 weak minds take up the idea that it is a kind of fame to be charged with some crime. , Homicides will continue until there is a more direct enforcement of the laws.' |