FARMERS' INSTITUTES. 113 



. THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE FOR CRIME. 



BY PROF. C. H, COOLEY^ ANN ARBOR. 



The people of Michigan have hi ard a great, deal said this winter about 

 the Indeterminate Sentence. It may be of interest to you if 1 discuss 

 this matter briefly, attempting to show, first, just what indeterminate 

 sentence is, and second, what are the principal reasons for and against 

 its adoption by Michigan or any other American state. 



The kind of sentence which we are all accustomed to in the working 

 of our courts is the determinate sentence, that is, one whose length is 

 fixed by the judge when a man is convicted, and cannot be changed after- 

 ward, except by the allowance of a certain amount of "good time" which 

 a prisoner gets if he keeps the rules of the prison, or by pardon from the 

 governor. In distinction from this an indeterminate sentence is one not 

 fixed by the judge, but is left to be determined, within pretty wide limits, 

 by the governing board of the prison to which the man is sent. The law 

 at present fixes a maximum beyond which the sentence cannot be pro- 

 longed. Indeterminate sentence does not change this at all, but simply 

 transfers to the prison board authority to determine the length of the 

 sentence within the maximum limit. 



It is understood that where indeterminate sentence is used the life in 

 the prison shall be made, so far as practicable, educational, the prisoner 

 having a chance to learn a trade and get other kinds of useful knowledge, 

 the board judging of his fitness for release largely by his zeal and appli- 

 cation in these studies. 



It is commonly made to apply only to those who are comparatively 

 young — say under thirty — and who have not previously been convicted 

 of serious offence. 



The most heinous crimes, like murder and rape, are usually excepted 

 from its operation. In fact, if we would understand this matter, we 

 must fix our minds not upon the most atrocious crimes — as people com- 

 monly do in considering questions of punishment — but upon the ordinary 

 larcenies, burglaries and acts of violence, of which nine-tenths of the 

 men who go to our prison are convicted. The atrocious crimes are so 

 startling, appeal so urgently to the imagination, that we are likely to 

 forget that they are comparatively few in number, and that the kind of 

 crime which most concerns us, and which fills our jails and prisons, is a 

 kind that results from bad training and bad associates, and does not 

 imply any atrocious nature on the part of the offender. 



So much for our definition. I will now try to give in brief the prin- 

 cipal reasons for and against this way of dealing with the younger and 

 less hardened class of offenders. 



Perhaps the strongest of all arguments in its favor is the argument 

 from experience, that it has been adopted with excellent results by a 

 number of the more progressive states, among which are Massachusetts, 

 New York, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. Indeterminate sentence would 

 have been practiced in Michigan since 1889, had not the law passed in 

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