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Reviews
MONTANA JUSTICE: POWER, PUNISHMENT, AND THE PENITENTIARY
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by Keith Edgerton
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University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2004. Illustrations, photographs, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 200 pages. $22.50 paper.
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| IN THIS SHORT BOOK, Keith Edgerton of Montana State University contributes an important study of a neglected side of western life. Textbook writers have joined popular novelists, as he points out, in focusing on the colorful aspects of Montana's early quest for civil order — miners' courts, vigilance committee actions, shoot-outs — without seriously examining its intellectual and institutional fabric. Edgerton seeks to supply an antidote to the romantic history of frontier violence by tracing the assumptions that guided frontier penology in Montana and the resulting conditions, institutional development, and human costs. |
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Montana Justice provides a spare but adequate history of the development of territorial and then state prison facilities and bureaucracy. Equally important, that development is seen in the context of economic and personal rivalries that shaped Montana life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Edgerton examines the maturation of the state's prison system against the backdrop of the power exerted by the Rockefeller-controlled copper mining interests; the dominating role of long-time prison contractor and warden, Frank Conley; and the struggle by progressive reformers such as Governor Joseph M. Dixon to introduce honest administration and modern penology. Conley and his business associate, Thomas McTague, assumed responsibility as prison contractors shortly after Montana achieved statehood. They operated the prison for eighteen years, along the way amassing impressive personal fortunes that rested on the liberal use of public resources and prison labor. |
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Edgerton successfully combines an interesting account of frontier and, later, prison organization and life, which should draw general readers, with insights and conclusions that will be valuable to specialists of the history of western crime and punishment. The conditions of existence within prison walls — from the terror of solitary confinement to the filth, stench, and dietary sameness of ordinary daily life — are portrayed unblinkingly, using available institutional and governmental records. Edgerton sees the effects of parsimonious legislative funding and lax executive oversight in virtually every aspect of the prison system. He provides a brief but useful account of how prisoners were utilized outside prison walls to counter the effectiveness of organized labor in the state's mines and manufacturing centers. Surprisingly, little obvious racial bias appears to have influenced the amount and ways in which punishment was meted out. This finding is similar to conclusions reached by John Wunder in his review of court cases involving Chinese in Montana and Liping Zhu in his study of Chinese in Idaho. On the other hand, Edgerton concludes that Montana's prison system, a monument to the idea of getting "tough" with crime, has not produced a lowered crime rate. The author's conclusions are presented clearly, using effective charts and illustrative photographs, and his notes and bibliography provide an excellent basis for further research. |
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| ROLAND L. DELORME
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| Western Washington University |
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