Appendix No. 17: Statistical Observations and Comparisons

*Although not specified by Tocqueville and Beaumont, here “c” might be shorthand for condamnés, or, convicts. I have left the shorthand as it was recorded in the original.

We have not been able to obtain the table of convictions in the State of Massachusetts; but we found at the prison, alongside some names of the individual inmates in 1820, 1824 and 1830, the mention of crime that they had committed; which is more or less the same.

It is probable that in Pennsylvania the proportion of black men in the prisons in a little less considerable than it seems to be here. The number that we give above is that of one year only, and chance could have contributed to form it. We believe this even more, as in taking the number of all convicts, white and black, arriving at the penitentiary from 1817 to 1824 (number which is raised to 1,510), one finds the average of 1 black man out of 2.61 convicts. Now, the number of black men must rather tend to diminish than to grow in the prisons of Pennsylvania, since it ceaselessly diminishes in society.

It has been seen previously ([Appendix No. 16] statistical notes, no. 3) that when we say some black inmates in the Maryland prisons, it is a matter only of freed black men; slaves can never appear.

Since only free black persons enter the prisons, it falls to us in society to equally count only the free black persons. Without this, the argument from the comparison of two reports rested on a corrupted base. All black persons who inhabit Massachusetts, Connecticut, the State of New York, and Pennsylvania, are free, except for a very small number. Slavery is entirely abolished in these States.

1 convict originally from Maryland out of 3,954 inhabitants.

1 convict originally from Pennsylvania out of 11,821 inhabitants.

The minimum punishment necessary to be carried into these three penitentiaries is 1 year.

Minimum 2 years.

Mostly if one considers the difference in the minimum punishment.

We have not been able to place our point of departure until 1795, although the Walnut Street prison had been created several years before. But earlier, only the convicts of the city and the county of Philadelphia were contained therein. Only on 11 March 1794 was a law introduced permitting the judges to send all criminals sentenced to more than one year in prison to Walnut Street. It can be remarked that the law of 12 March 1794 authorizes judges to send the convicts to the Walnut Street prison, but it did not oblige them. It is then possible that some sentenced for more than one year were retained in the county prisons. However, the thing is not probable.

This war has exercised a great influence on the number of crimes in America. It will be the same of all those undertaken by the United States. The Americans, strange as it is, have conserved in their arms the old usages of Europe. The soldier is a mercenary paid in pounds of gold, who fights without chances of advancement. Honors and glory belong to the privileged class of officers. When a war is ended, the greatest part of the American army is disbanded. The soldiers, who generally have neither homes nor industry, disperse in the country, and soon the number of crimes increases with rapidity. In 1814, more than two hundred thousand French had, one said, quitted the military career without having seen the costs of criminals in France grow. These names belong to the honest population of the kingdom; they have almost all an industry or some means of existence.

*The discussion of race throughout On the Penitentiary System seems to outline the preliminary principles behind Tocqueville’s chapter on race relations in Democracy in America.

It is not necessary to clarify that these are those sentenced to prison who serve as the basis to increase the number of crimes in America.

See the Table at the beginning of this chapter.