In Rough Justice: Crime and Punishment on the Northwest Frontier & the Origins of Oregon State Penitentiary, Portland author James O. Long has produced a valuable study of crime and punishment in early Oregon and Washington.  Covering the period, roughly, from the 1820s to the late 1860s, the book focuses on the varied crimes and punishments that occurred in the Pacific Northwest.  Long covers the importance of such individuals as Dr. John McLoughlin, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, and Joe Meek, as they wrestled with or were victims of felonies and penalties.  The actions of these persons helped lead, eventually, to the establishment of a very few jails and penitentiaries.

McLoughlin, the Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s fort in Vancouver, Wash., receives more attention than any other figure.  Long does a good job in revealing McLoughlin’s personality, his reactions to crimes, and his advocation of crime penalties.  Parts of this information will be new to many readers.  Similarly, the author’s treatment of the murders of the Whitmans and the later hanging of five American Indians for that crime also includes material fresh to most readers. 

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Long likewise treats conflicts between Indians and whites.  His sympathies, as is true of most recent historians, lie with the Indigenous people.  He shows how legislation, territorial and community experiences, and individual actions by many whites were often illegal and usually undermining in their treatment of Indians. Laws in Oregon and Washington up to 1870 remained largely negative toward American Indians.

To his credit, Long provides rich contextual information on handling crime and punishment.  First, we get the domination of the Hudson’s Bay Company in the 1820-40 period, then the impact of the newcomers up the Oregon Trail and of the California Gold Rush in the 1840s and early ’50s, and finally the new Oregon state in the 1850s and ’60s. Alongside these chronological emphases, we learn about the origins of the urban areas of Oregon City and Portland.

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In fact, the contextual sections are more extensive than the accounts of the building of jails and prisons. Early law leaders had difficulties deciding what to do with criminals who were jailed, because no actual jails existed. McLoughlin threw up something like a jail in Vancouver, an Oregon jail came on the scene in 1845 (it was burned down the next year), and a penitentiary was erected in Portland in 1857.  That penitentiary was sold and a new one built in Salem in 1866.  Over the years, as Long frequently points out, jailing a criminal was difficult because almost no jails were in existence.

Long was a longtime investigative reporter for The Oregonian and the Oregon Journal, and his pages overflow with journalistic flavor. He captures the personalities of more than a few characters. He tells intriguing tales about many startling events. And he keeps his narrative moving at a fast pace. Long knows how to tell stories. Readers will appreciate his artistic talents.

As one example of the author’s narrative abilities, consider his story of Charity Lamb, who murdered her violent husband. Authorities were not sure how to deal with her, because no jury could include women, no penitentiary was in existence to hold her, and other problems surfaced. She was sent to an insane asylum, even though her family and others claimed she was not insane. Long hints that the prison system in early Oregon might have been much more insane than Charity Lamb.

Rough Justice is thoroughly researched. The author has dug into primary sources, published and unpublished. He has examined significant books and essays dealing with early Oregon and Hudson’s Bay Company history.  And he has included a helpful bibliography at the close of his book.

Some readers might have desired other contributions.  The book lacks a helpful table of contents and an index. In addition, the text is flooded with long, block quotes and one-sentence paragraphs.  Some topics are not completely covered before the author moves on to a new one.

But these are minor shortcomings compared to the contributions of this volume.  In his revealing treatment of crime and punishment in Oregon and Washington, the author uncovers information previously overlooked in most regional histories. He also furnishes information on a host of interesting regional characters, either omitted in earlier accounts or needing the expansion given here.  Overall, this is first-rate book on crime and punishment in the Pacific Northwest.