Rhode Island American, Statesman And Providence Gazette

PUNISHMENTS.-The Journal is "inclining to approve of the punishment of whipping and setting in the pillory." This may be the cheapest mode of making rogues for life, but it is no preventive of crime. Will a hardened villain feel any shame at being set in the pillory? If he is not hardened will it not confirm him in vice, as being placed past reformation? As to the whipping, is there a rogue living who would not prefer a few stripes on his back, and a short imprisonment, with a furlough to commence business anew, to two or three years service at hard labor.

We undoubtedly have fewer crimes in this State, than in any other, in proportion to population, but our mode of punishment is the worst in the Union. We have three very recent instances where persons pardoned and released by the General Assembly, have broken open stores and stolen property. They would not have been the less inclined to renew their old practices had their necks been squeezed in a pillory, their ears cut off, their faces scarified with the iron, and their backs chequered with the lash. The increase of crime in England, where almost every offence is punished with death, is sufficient to show that the severity of corporal punishment does not deter offenders. Solitary confinement and hard labor are the best curatives of crime. They at least keep a rogue out of mischief while he continues a prisoner.