Naturally theft was considered a more serious
crime than it is in ordinary communities. As there were no jails or
jailors, flogging and expulsion were the usual punishment, but in
aggravated cases it was death. Even after the state government had been
organized, indeed, the law for a short while permitted a jury to
prescribe the death penalty for grand larceny, and, in fact, several
notorious thieves were legally executed.
The testimony of all observers is that the camps were surprisingly
orderly, that crime was infrequent, and that its punishment, though
swift and certain, leaned to mercy rather than rigor. Bayard Taylor, for
example, who was in the mines in '50 and '51, writes: "In a region five
hundred miles long, inhabited by a hundred thousand people, who had
neither locks, bolts, regular laws of government, military or civil
protection, there was as much security to life and property as in any
state of the Union."
As these "miners' courts" were allowed after the organization of the
state to retain jurisdiction in all questions that concerned the
appropriation of claims,the miners but slowly appreciated that they had
been shorn of their criminal jurisdiction.
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