Sentimentality Over Crime

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 10, 1912

Sentimentality Over Crime

The growing spirit of sentimentality manifested over criminals, and the sympathy expressed for those whose crimes have brought them within the toils of the law, appeal to many sober-thinking men as a serious menace. To what bounds will this spirit grow, and what safeguards can we expect in the protection of life and property with this increasing sympathy for evil-doers? The Congregationalist and Christian World calls attention to this growing menace, in these words:—

We shall some day have to reckon with this sentimentality which smiles on the lynching mob, weeps over the executed murderers, pardons men and boys because they plead for release in bad verses, turns the offender against the public out upon the public, on the ground that his family needs him, before he has served out his sentence, and makes conviction of crime a difficult matter everywhere. If death is the wrong penalty, let us find some other. Let the life of our prisons be made wholesome and reforming. But it is high time that the wave of sympathy with criminals which puts their portraits in the papers, makes it easy to get signatures to petitions for release, and is breaking down the majesty of justice among us, should meet the opposition of every right-thinking man and woman. The lyncher and the sentimentalist at bottom are one in this attitude of contempt for law and justice. The outgo of their energy is merely by different doors.