|
|
|
Crime & Punishment
in Early Arizona
Crime & Punishment in Early
Arizona
ISBN 0966502549 Published: 2004
CRIME & PUNISHMENT IN
EARLY ARIZONA
Crime committed and
punishment exacted was one defining characteristic of the Old West.
Arizona was no exception.
Forty-four times a crime so
outraged the community that citizens organized, took the law into
their own hands, and lynched sixty-six men. Homicides were quite
numerous, and every murder was characterized as “the most cold-blooded
in the annals of the Territory,” but only forty-one murders resulted
in a legal hanging and fifty-three men were hanged over five decades.
From July 1875 to September
1909 three thousand forty men and twenty-nine women were registered at
the prison near Yuma and, when that aging institution was closed, five
hundred eighty-nine prisoner were registered at the prison in
Florence. In total, three thousand six hundred fifty-eight Arizonan’s
served terms in prison during the Territorial period, and an untold
number served sentences in jail for lesser offenses.
Lawlessness was an industry
in old Arizona, but never a profitable one.
|
|
|
