time. The new indeterminate sentence law has gone into
effect, and half of the population have indeterminate sentences.
It is up to them to be good and their sentence will be a short one.
About one hundred and fifty have sentences from between one and three
years. Eight have five years, seven have seven years, etc. Six have
fifteen years, three have twenty years, two have twenty-two years,
and there were fifteen received during the biennium with life sentences,
making forty-eight life time prisoners altogether. One, the murderer
of our beloved deputy warden is under a death sentence.
As stated
before there are men of all occupations at Lancaster; and is it not strange
that one-third of the boys are farmers? There are one hundred and six laborers
and twenty-five cooks. The latter, might be wrong, for many of the prisoners
state that they are cooks in order to get to work in the kitchen. There are
sixteen barbers, nine bakers, six bookkeepers, eighteen paint
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ers, sixteen teamsters, one acrobat and one sailor,
the latter doing but little sailing at this time. There is one
doctor, one veterinary surgeon, and mechanics of all kinds. There
are no bankers in the prison now. And, speaking of bankers, there
are less crimes committed against the banks in Nebraska at the present
time than ever before, for the bankers are well organized, and,
like the old safeblower said to me, "It is
just impossible for an honest saleblower to work in Nebraska since
that man Johnson became chief of the bankers' secret service; and
since they got the law passed to sentence us from twenty years
to life for blowing a safe, it is another state for me." Surely
did Joe kept his word, for a week after he left Lancaster he was
caught blowing a safe in Minnesota, and being old and having served
in seven pens in his day it looks as if he will spend the remainder
of his life at Stillwater.
Of the four hundred and fifty received, three hundred and sixty
were first offenders,
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