Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/709

 PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE CRIME.

WITHIN recent years lynchings in the United States have been the cause of much discussion and alarm, not only in our own country, but throughout the civilized world. The want of police protection in rural districts, the slowness, uncertainty, and expense of the courts in dealing with criminals, on the one hand, and the practical certainty of the failure of the state to prosecute and punish the lyncher, on the other, are the most prominent of the reasons that have been brought forward to account for the prevalence of lynching. Editors, lawyers, preachers, have appealed to the people, have denounced the practice, and have prophesied direful things as the result of such lawlessness. In spite of everything, however, the fact remains that lynchings continue to shock the moral sense of the world ; but, what is even more alarming, lynch law is being resorted to, not only in communities newly organized, where it originated, but in com- munities where courts of justice have been established for gen- erations.

Attempts have sometimes been made to justify lynching as the expression, on the part of decent and orderly citizens, of the instinct of self-preservation, but those who are familiar with communities in which lynchings have occurred know that decent and orderly citizens are rarely a part of the mob. But whether the mob is swayed by the orderly or by the vicious element of the neighborhood, in either case the lynching is the outgrowth of a feeling that the state does not punish the criminal accord- ing to the atrocious nature of his crime. Lynching is only one form of the expression of a widespread opinion that the punish- ment inflicted by the state often bears little relation to the nature of the offense. It is the purpose of this article to con- sider the crime of murder and to advocate the punishment that fits it.

In every case of lynching the methods of law and order, established by organized society for the punishment of crime,

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