I’m with you on number 5.
I love to listen to Dragnet radio (http://www.archive.org/details/Dragnet_OTR). Not only is it conservative, but they didn’t mess around with 20 yrs on death row back then.
If someone got the death sentence, the narrator always says, ‘X was executed...’ Yeah. No sense in handing down the penalty if you aren’t going to carry it through.
Another interesting aspect is how they treated young people. If you were wrong, they were going to nail you, but if they saw a reason or if you needed help, they helped. I’m not sure police would do the same thing today.