Nebraska, Colorado, and Nevada commit them to hard labor in jail.[1] The ten states of New Hampshire, North Carolina, Florida, Mississippi, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and California commit them to jail, but no provision requiring them to be employed has been found. Whether or not they are employed there depends upon the practice in the several institutions.
In Pennsylvania tramps are to be committed to hard labor with solitary confinement. Wisconsin and Iowa provide short terms in jail with solitary confinement for shorter terms at hard labor.[2] Arkansas still prescribes the "bread and water diet" for half of a sentence of from thirty to ninety days.[3]
But little need be said concerning the length of sentence. Usually the maximum sentence is fixed. In some cases a minimum is also fixed. The one noticeable feature about the length of sentence is that it is quite long in the North and East and gradually becomes shorter as we move south and west.[4] But this is only one instance of the greater strictness of the law in the North and East a fact so obvious from the details already given that attention need not be called to it.
As has already been stated, commitment is for a definite term the sentence is "determinate." When the sentence has
- ↑ 17, ch. 288; 3, p. 2066 ; Act of 1861; Act of December 22, 1893 ; 6994 ; 15472; 6908; 5527; 1362 ; 4768. In Maine tramps are to be required to work for ten hours per day for not less than sixty days.
- ↑ The punishment of tramps in Wisconsin is a sentence to hard labor in jail for not longer than sixty days, or solitary confinement for from three to ten days. In Iowa (Act of May 3, 1890) vagrants are to be sentenced to not more than ten days' hard labor in jail or to not more than five days' solitary confinement.
- ↑ 31919.
- ↑ The length of sentence to jail, state's prison, workhouse, house of correction, or almshouse, as the case may be, in the several states is as follows: in Massachusetts, from six months to two years; Rhode Island, one to three years; Maryland, two to twelve months ; Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois, one to six months ; Tennessee, ten days to twelve months ; Arkansas, thirty to ninety days ; New Mexico and Arizona, one to ninety days. In New Hampshire it is not longer than fifteen months ; Connecticut and Michigan, one year; New York, Florida, Washington, and California, six months; Winconsin, Nebraska, Montana, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada, ninety days ; Delaware, sixty days ; North Carolina and South Carolina, thirty days ; Iowa, ten days at hard labor or five days in solitary confinement. In Maine it is not less than two months.
