Crime & Punishment in Early Arizona

Crimes 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 66 men. Homicides were quite numerous, and every murder was characterized as “the most cold-blooded in the annals of the Territory,” but only 41 murders resulted in a legal hanging and only 53 men were executed over 5 decades. From July 1875 to September 1909 3,040 men and 29 women were registered at the prison near Yuma and, when that aging institution closed, 589 prisoners were registered at the prison near Florence before Arizona became a state. Lawlessness was an industry in old Arizona, but never a profitable one.