Chapter III: Section I: Be it enacted, etc., That the active or visiting (2)

“The prison chaplain, in his work among prisoners, should thoroughly believe that these great Christian forces which have done so much for the world are applicable to the men under his charge and are as efficient in their lives as in the lives of other men; and any Christian clergyman, desirous of helping his fellow men and entering into the service of the Lord and humanity, and of placing himself where he can do the most good, should not hesitate to accept a prison chaplaincy; and a call to such a place should be in his mind equal to the call to one of the best churches in the land.

“It is not my purpose to give a detailed outline for the work of a prison chaplain. No two men can perhaps be successful and do their work in the same way; but every person connected with the prison, be he superintendent, warden, or chaplain, or other officer, should seek every inspiration and good example and ideal within his possibilities, and then simply be his natural self in dealing with the prisoners’ needs.

“When I was superintendent of the Massachusetts Reformatory at Concord, it was the custom there to avail ourselves of the services of the students from Andover Theological Seminary. One student, fresh from his work in the seminary, came into my office one day and asked me what he should do in the prison. I told him that if I were to get some one to do what I wanted done, I would probably get some one else, but that I expected him to go into prison, mingle freely with the prisoners, and find something, some place where he thought he could be of use to them, and give those qualities in himself that he thought would be of the most help. And that is what I would say to a prison chaplain entering the work. Where one is strong another may be weak, and each should work along those lines where he himself feels that he can do the greatest good. The compensation of a prison chaplain should be sufficient to command the services of clergymen of high attainments, and to support themselves and families in a comfortable way. And never should a chaplaincy be looked upon as a place for a broken-down clergyman, or one who has failed in other fields of activity. The chaplain should be given, as I have previously said, sufficient latitude and freedom of action in the prison to carry on the work in such lines as he himself feels that he can be of the greatest service. Therefore, the superintendent, or warden, should not place upon the chaplain such routine duties as will interfere with his doing this. It is recognized by all that the Sabbath is the special day for the chaplain’s work. I believe that we should go further than this, and set aside to him some portion of each day for such religious work as he deems best. He should not be burdened with such work as supervising inmates’ correspondence, the library, teaching school, or the many routine duties which are foisted upon him in many instances, unless he feels that they may be avenues through which he may do his best work.

“If there was one injunction of the Saviour which has given more impetus to Christianity in the world than another, it was His last, ‘Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations,’ or, as found in the other gospel, ‘Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.’ I believe this injunction is especially applicable to prisoners, and that the chaplain, first of all, should be a teacher, and his intercourse with the prisoners should be in the form of teaching. Most prisoners are without the truth, and they need to be instructed in the truth, and my experience is that most of them are desirous of learning the truth. And I believe that no chaplain ever failed to interest or impress prisoners when he preached to them a sermon teaching them the simple gospel. I have never failed to see, in a prison chapel, the attention of the men arrested by the simple reading of the gospel, or anything pertaining to the life or teachings of Jesus Christ, or the explanation, by the chaplain, of what those simple truths and teachings consist in. I believe that any chaplain makes a mistake when he goes before his congregation of prisoners with other subjects than the simple gospel, if he thinks thereby to awaken greater interest in other ways.

“Phillips Brooks, when he used to visit the institution at Concord, it was said, never varied his sermons one jot or tittle in presenting them to the prisoners of that reformatory, than in giving them to his cultured congregation in Trinity Church, and he never failed to instruct, impress, and move his congregation of prisoners as no other man to whom I ever listened. And that leads me to the point that I believe that all religious services in a prison should be carried through with the same care on the part of the clergyman, and with the same dignity with which he would conduct the services in any church. The ritual of the church service always appeals to prisoners. The services of the mass, or the ritual of the synagogue, never fail in receiving the reverent attention of the devotees of those faiths; and my observation is that prisoners always respond to those services in which they themselves are largely participants. Congregational singing, responsive readings, repetition of Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer are usually entered into with interest and satisfaction.

“The prison chaplain should be keen in his appreciation of human nature, in dealing with the individual prisoner, that he may see the good that exists in each prisoner with whom he comes in contact, and work upon that side of his character. Humanity is much alike the world over. Race and condition have not so much influence upon the characteristics as we sometimes believe. In the modern American prison will be found prisoners from nearly every nationality under the sun. Their methods of evil are about the same, and they all respond to the same influences, and are actuated by the same motives, each as the other; and the prison chaplain who has learned this, and has learned that there is always something in every prisoner which he can draw out and develop, is well on the road to successful dealing with them. It is not so much the work of the superintendent, warden, or chaplain, to make over a man into something else, as it is to develop him along the lines of his better self.

“When the Saviour called the fishermen, Peter and Andrew, to be his disciples, he did not say to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you into great orators, or great preachers,’ but, ‘I will make you fishers of men.’ So, when we approach the prisoner, we should not ask him to be something different from himself, but should try to bring out and develop his better self; by holding before his vision the ideal Man, which is Jesus, and the ideal society, which is Christianity in its perfection.”

EVENING

The evening session was again held in the Senate Chamber of the Capitol. The first address was made by Mr. Frederick G. Pettigrove, Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Prison Commissioners, on “What a Central System May Do to Promote the Efficiency of Prison Methods.”

“A world-famous essayist and statesman said that a complete theory of government would be a noble present to mankind, but he added, it is a present that one could neither hope nor pretend to offer. We are forced to remember this limitation when we examine the various systems of prison government and attempt to suggest remedies for the deficiencies in them. I shall try to show that in whatever way the prisons are governed there are certain reformatory methods and agencies that can be made much more effective and available by the aid of a central system than by being left entirely to local administration. I shall make no attack upon any system, because it would be unjust and ungracious not to remember the great service that has been rendered to the State by the able and philanthropic men and women who have devoted their services to the prisons, and have striven to lift them from mere places of detention to a condition of high public service.

“If all the corrective methods that are now stamped with the approval of public sentiment could be maintained to the best advantage in a single prison, there would be no need of any central authority. It could not be contended that a general board would be any wiser in appointments than the local boards of management. Nor could there be any larger or more humane interest in the affairs of a particular prison, than is shown by the supervisors who have only one prison under their charge. But it would be manifestly impossible, in the larger States at least, to include in a single establishment all the various agencies that are needed for the discipline, the training and the treatment of prisoners; and it is therefore essential that different places should be provided to furnish opportunities best suited to the capacities and the needs of the widely differing individuals.

“The managers of one prison cannot command a knowledge of all the prisons as well as a central board, and if the methods that are now employed are to be used for the greatest good, and to be made available for the largest number of offenders, there must be some general authority to rearrange and reassign prisoners after they have been committed.

“I have no intention here of proposing that the State should take absolute control of all the penal institutions, or even that the authority of all boards of management should be measurably disturbed; but only that some central board should so far possess authority over all the penal establishments as to be enabled to make a rearrangement that would promote efficiency of effort.

“In order to show how such a degree of centrality might be sufficient for large reforms let me outline briefly what I believe would be the best method of classification of prisoners if all suitable facilities could be given by the legislature:

“I would recommend the establishment of one receiving prison for all persons convicted of serious crimes and sentenced to hard labor; in this place prisoners would be held under continual observation for a period long enough to allow the authorities to decide where the prisoner would apparently be likely to receive the most benefit, or where he could be kept with the most advantage to the State.

“As accessories to this place I would provide departmental prisons, in each of which some particular element of instruction or discipline or treatment should be brought to the highest possible degree of efficiency, such as schools for the illiterate, the manual-training school and schools for trade instruction.

“Another department should be assigned to those who are mentally weak, so that they could be put constantly under special guardianship. There are in the prisons, as we all know, many persons who, while not so far below the normal intelligence as to warrant the experts in declaring them to be insane, are nevertheless incapable of performing any useful work or of taking any benefit from prison agencies. In most States provision has been made for the removal of prisoners who are actually insane to an asylum specially provided for that class; but so far there has been no similar establishment created for the safe detention of prisoners who are found to be so far deficient in intelligence as to need the sort of treatment that is given in the schools for the feeble-minded.

“Another humane department would be a hospital prison, an establishment that should combine the needed safeguards for custody with all the essential features for the most scientific and skillful treatment of the different ailments. To be sure it would be necessary to maintain a small infirmary in each prison for emergency cases, but all cases requiring long and continuous treatment would be removed to the hospital prison.

“The last stage of all in such a plan as I outline should be a prison where the guardianship over the prisoner would be relaxed by degrees, so that he could approach his freedom in such a way as to regain some degree of self-reliance.

“To make the general plan of a classified prison system harmonious and effective, the particular place of imprisonment should not be unalterably fixed at the outset. In effect to-day the court in Massachusetts does not absolutely determine the place of imprisonment. The central board has the power to make transfers from one prison to another, with the single exception that no person can be put into the state prison from another place.

“I have seen in other places, however, many prisoners who manifestly belonged in the state prison.

“It would be needless to recite cases of inequitable sentences that show the need of classification. As a type of many others I mention one instance where, through lack of knowledge of the prisoner’s antecedents, a justice sentenced to the reformatory a man who had been six times under imprisonment, including a term in the state prison, and as far as one human being can judge of another, had shown himself incapable of amendment or unwilling to accept the means of reformation.

“Information that may be immediately available to the prison authorities when the prisoner is committed, so that they can assign him to his fit place, is in most cases lacking when the prisoner is before the court. The needed adjustment of prisoners I think could be made by a central authority having all places within its purview, after conference with the prison officials.

“In what other ways can we make centrality help a prison system? We can do it by requiring, as many States have done, that all reports of prisons shall go to a central office so that there shall be available to the central board the needed information in regard to the prisons. We can do it by the establishment of a more effective method of registration, so that there shall be available for the guidance of the transfer board all the records of prisoners, whether obtained in one State or another.

“Under the same authority with the bureau of registration and identification, all the data possessed by that department would be accessible to the agent who was seeking to discover how far it might be practicable and useful to assist a prisoner at liberty. A central registration office would in the end yield a large return to the State by securing a comprehensive oversight of prisoners on parole. In the central office in Massachusetts we endeavor to keep a record of all prisoners at liberty from the prisons under our supervision. This, to be sure, is not always easy to do, because names are readily changed and it is not difficult to conceal identity. The only reliable method of following up the prisoners at liberty is to maintain a system of identification based upon the plan that does not rely on names, or upon any data that is subject to change.

“What the scheme of registration has done for this State and for other States cannot now be measured, but the interest that has been excited in this subject and the information that has been spread from the central office must prove invaluable to the police and prison officials of the entire country. When all the States adopt this plan it will not only be difficult for a paroled prisoner to evade his obligations to keep the terms of his release in his own State, but he will find if he returns to evil practices in another State that his record will be readily brought against him.

“All that I have said so far has seemed to apply mainly to persons convicted of felonies, but I intended that there also should be comprehended in the scheme a large number of misdemeanants, who need generally the same sort of correction and training as felons.

“There is one class of misdemeanants, however, which I would exclude as a rule from any elaborate prison system, although the place for their detention might be made one of the departments of the plan I have described, and that is the large number of persons committed for drunkenness. Most of these have passed beyond the age when they would be the best subjects for an industrial reformatory. They have no criminal instincts, are merely social disturbers, and what the State does in the way of their correction should be different from the means employed in the care of criminals. And the persons committed for drunkenness can be dealt with in a better way than now prevails if they are drawn into larger groups where fitting employment can be given; and this arrangement would need the intervention of a central board.

“Under a well-organized and thoroughly equipped system, with such a degree of centrality as I have indicated, all the beneficent methods of the prisons would be sustained and strengthened.”

The second address of the evening was by Dr. Frederick Howard Wines, on “The Prisons of Louisiana.” Residence in the South and an intimate acquaintance with Southern people and Southern prisons, gave the utterances of Dr. Wines authoritative value. The prison question in the South, he said, is almost exclusively a negro question. The greater proportion of crime in the South is committed by negroes. Hence most of the prisoners are negroes. The negro prisoner is a distinct problem. The methods we apply to white prisoners are not applicable to him. The religion of the negro, for example, is altogether emotional and has little connection with morality. As to education, the Southern people do not greatly favor the education of the negro. A partly educated negro thinks he belongs to a select class and must no longer work. As to the question of labor, he is not fitted for indoor work, nor wanted by the industrial classes.

As conditions are in Louisiana, I can think of nothing better than the large plantations on which the convicts are employed. The barracks are absolutely clean and sanitary. There are no chains. The guards are unarmed. After breakfast the prisoners go to the cotton and sugar fields, accompanied by armed guards and hounds. There are few escapes and very little punishment. Hospital and physician are provided. All the convicts are well fed, and at the close of the day’s work all must take a bath. As the labor is steady it is more profitable than that of the free man. All the earnings go to the support and improvement of the prisons and prisoners. The lease system is gone in all the counties but one. Baton Rouge has the only prison of the old style, with walls, etc. Camps are now the thing, on plantations. Since the abolition of the lease system, and the adoption of State control, the health of the prisoners is much better.

A third address by Mr. F. B. Sanborn, Concord, Mass., on “Prison Reform and Prison Science,” was largely a review of the results accomplished in the past forty years, and reminiscent of the many eminent men associated with the movement since its inception.

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 19

MORNING

The session of the Physicians’ Association, held this morning, was most interesting, and was marked by some notable features. The President, Dr. S. H. Blitch, Ocala, Florida, presented a paper on “The Open versus the Close Penitentiary System of Handling Prisoners,” in which he took strong ground in favor of the former, especially in the South. He defined the “open” penitentiary system as that mode of social restraint according to which the prisoner sentenced to hard labor is required to perform skilled and unskilled service in fields, woods, and surface mining, and in such industries and occupations as do not necessitate his daily cellular or circumscribed confinement, as is the case under the “close” system. He claimed that in spite of criticism, the “open” system, wherever climatic conditions make it practicable, is far more conducive to the mental and physical rehabilitation of the convict than the “close” system. In the South, especially where the vast majority of prisoners are negroes who have been accustomed to life in the open air and to outdoor employment, the confinement in a “close” penitentiary would be most detrimental. The open-air system puts these men at work under conditions to which they have been accustomed from youth up, and the results demonstrate the wisdom of the plan.

In the discussion which followed this paper, Dr. Barrows said that many penologists felt that the Southern system had many advantages, but that other industrial and reformatory elements should be added. Dr. Wines saw an immense advantage in the Southern method, and claimed that Northern prisons would find it very beneficial to have farms connected with them for the outdoor employment of convicts.

The paper on “Prison Sanitation,” by Dr. W. D. Stewart, West Virginia Penitentiary, Moundsville, was followed by that of Dr. S. A. Knopf, of New York, on “The Tuberculosis Problem in Prisons and Reformatories.” The presentation made by this eminent specialist on tuberculosis was probably the most exhaustive on this subject to which the Congress ever listened. This very valuable paper, any condensation of which would do it injustice, is published in full in the _New York Medical Journal_, November 17, 1906, to which the reader is referred.

Dr. J. W. Milligan, Indiana State Prison, Michigan City, read a paper on “Mental Defectives Among Prisoners,” of which the following is a synopsis: Where reformation, not punishment, is the aim, a just estimate of the prisoner’s mental state is essential. Without this the indeterminate sentence cannot be successful. Communities as well as courts too frequently overlook mental defect as an important element in crime. Too many prisoners on admission are insane, epileptic, or feeble-minded. Epilepsy is not an infrequent factor, especially in atrocious crimes without motive, and overlooked because _not of the pronounced type_ popularly considered characteristic of this disease.

Indiana prison records show among the defectives, a percentage for murder _three times_; for murder, manslaughter, and rape, _twice_; but for larceny, _two-thirds_ that of the average for all classes. On admission, forty-four per cent. admit mental defect or criminal record, in the personal or family history. This tainted influx, and the fact that defectives are not paroled, explains why twelve per cent. of our population is insane, epileptic, or feeble-minded.

The psychosis are chiefly degenerative in type. Insane among prisoners are not especially difficult to manage; no harsh measures are ever justifiable. Indiana has as yet no institution for insane criminals; it needs one badly. A ward in the prison hospital gives good results, though far from ideal. Insane criminals should be judged in the light of modern psychiatry, and their rights and the safety of society carefully guarded.

AFTERNOON

Mr. C. W. Bowron, Superintendent of the Wisconsin State Reformatory, Green Bay, presented the Report of the Committee on Prevention and Reformatory Work, in a paper entitled, “Reformatory Sentences and Discharges,” which concluded with the following propositions:

1. That the authority to transfer prisoners from the reformatory to state prison is an essential safeguard to the successful management of a reformatory; and this power on the part of prison officials has been abundantly upheld by the courts.

2. That the so-called indeterminate sentence has been repeatedly held valid, but apparently upon the construction that it is a definite sentence for the maximum limit. It is therefore a misnomer.

3. That the fixing of a minimum period in the indeterminate sentence is illogical, and detrimental to reformatory purposes.

4. That the power of parole is purely an administrative function exercised in the establishment of a prison regulation, the validity of which has been upheld by the courts; and that the determination of parole should largely if not wholly rest with the principal officers of the institution.

5. That the parole system does not depend upon the so-called indeterminate sentence, or any other form of sentence, but stands apart from it as a separate and distinct reformatory element.

6. That a definite and uniform sentence fixed by statute, subject to modification through the legal powers of the administrative officers to parole and discharge, is not inconsistent with reformatory purposes, and in some respects is an advantage to reformatory management.

7. That final discharge after a suitable term of probation on parole is a just and essential feature of the merit system, in which the pardoning power should coöperate with the reformatory officials.

8. That the indefinite sentence does not exist, probably cannot constitutionally exist, possibly ought not to exist, and certainly would be the object of severe criticism if it did exist.

9. That a central bureau of identification operated by the general government is so essential to the proper ends of justice that its establishment would mark an important advancement in our criminal jurisprudence.

“Methods of Reformatory Administration” was the subject of a paper by Mr. W. H. Whittaker, Superintendent of the Indiana State Reformatory, Jeffersonville. Mr. Whittaker claimed that in many institutions methods had not kept pace with advancing civilization. Ideal reformatory management must, first of all, have a solid foundation to stand upon. Said foundation consists of the men in charge of an institution. These, from the superintendent down, should be men of broad intelligence, good morals, and clean habits, who thoroughly believe that they are their brothers’ keepers, and who, in the discharge of all their duties, will constantly have in view the reformation of the prisoner. No good results can come from physical punishment or the employment of such methods as humiliate the prisoner. All methods should aim to secure the harmonious training of the heart, the head, and the hand, and should have for their one purpose the building of character.

In a paper on “The Delinquent Girl,” Mrs. Lucy M. Sickels, Superintendent of the State Industrial Home, Adrian, Michigan, pointed out that the real delinquent in most cases is the parent. The delinquent girl is not born so. She comes into the world with all the winning graces of babyhood; but when she reaches the years of girlhood, she is allowed to have her own way and to run wild. The mother is perhaps so busy attending missionary and temperance meetings, endeavoring to save others, that she has no time for her own daughter. If the girl has no mother, or a widowed mother, who, in order to support her little family, is obliged to go out to hard work day after day, until she becomes nervous, impatient, and petulant, an equally unfortunate situation again presents itself. Or parents are constantly quarreling, until divorce stalks in, breaks up the home, and sets the children adrift. In eight cases out of ten, ill temper and divorce in the home are the cause of delinquency. Delinquency or incorrigibility is only another name for parental neglect. What we want are laws to protect the children and punish the delinquent parent, for this is the root of all the evil we are striving and contending against.

Mrs. Sickels outlined the methods followed in the institution which she directs. “We go back to the first home principles, a mother and a mother’s love. A manager or mother is at the head of each family home, of which we have eight, each family having a kitchen, dining room, and laundry, just as complete in itself as you are from your neighbor. Each family cooks its own food, makes its own bread, and does its own laundry work. Each girl has a nice little room all to herself, in which is a single bed covered with a clean white spread, a pretty pillow sham on the pillow, a dresser, a mirror, a rug and a chair. Each room has a large airy window. The girl may beautify the walls and dresser according to her own taste and skill.

“The first requisite for a girl as she enters the Home is _occupation_, not work only. It may mean work, but instruction is given along all lines most necessary and useful to every woman in order to fit her to be a housekeeper and home-maker.” A chapel, in which two services are held each Lord’s Day, a schoolhouse and graded school with eight teachers, a hospital and trained nurse, a sewing school, a cooking school, a dressmaking department, a greenhouse, and an orchestra and brass band composed of girls, form part of the equipment. There is no wall or fence around the Home, but a clear open space and beautiful lawn, with walks and flowers, shrubbery and trees. The results obtained have been most satisfactory, at least seventy-five per cent. of the girls so far received having turned out good, true women, many of them being devoted wives and mothers.

EVENING

Mr. Alexander Johnson, General Secretary National Conference of Charities and Correction, Indianapolis, Indiana, spoke on “The Reformation of Jails.” Many county jails, he declared, are a blot on civilization. Should this be the case when we seek the reformation of the prisoner? Reform has begun at the top of the prison system, but the jails have made little progress upward, and a great number deserve to be called “schools of vice.” What is the remedy? The physical condition of the county jail must be improved. Each prisoner should be separately confined. The fundamental error is that the jails are used for two dissimilar purposes: for men awaiting trial, and for men who are sentenced. The two do not belong together. I have seen these two classes together in the same cell, and treated perfectly alike. When a man has been convicted he no longer belongs to the county, but to the State, and should be sent to a State institution. Then the jail would remain only as a place of detention for those awaiting trial. But why the State? Because the county would hardly be justified in going to the expense of supporting a real work-house. Another reform imperatively needed is speedier trials. It is infamous to hold a man in jail for months awaiting trial. “I hope the time will come when the question will be, ‘What kind of a man is this, that we may fit him for society.’ When we make our prisons hospitals for the moral reformation of men, we will realize that the jail will be the place in which to begin.”

“The Juvenile Court: Its Uses and Limitations,” was the title of a paper by Dr. Hastings H. Hart, Superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society, Chicago. The juvenile court is an evolution. Some twenty States have juvenile court laws--all within about six years. This evolution is still in progress, and the matter still in its infancy.

The juvenile court is founded on three great ideas: 1. The value of the child for its own sake and for the community. 2. The abandonment of the _lex talionis_, _i. e._, the infliction of a punishment commensurate with the wrong done. This is impossible as well as a wrong. No man is wise enough to adjust the punishment accurately to the crime. 3. The recognition of the responsibility of the mother State for the children, especially for the erring and neglected ones.

The first essential feature of the juvenile court is the breadth of its scope: it deals with delinquents and dependents. The second is the character of its proceedings. “What is the best possible thing to be done for the good of the child?” This is the question which the juvenile court endeavors to solve every day. A third feature of the juvenile court is that it places the child in such hands as will do what is best for it. Having such a high character and such noble purposes, no jurist is too eminent to serve as a juvenile court judge. Another distinctive mark of the juvenile court law is the probation officer, who is the very heart of the work, and who not only learns to know the child in the home, but also represents it in the court. Finally the juvenile court recognizes the great fundamental principle that the home and family, when properly constituted are the great molders of character.

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 20

MORNING

From the proceedings of Thursday morning the following admirable paper by Mr. C. E. Haddox, Warden of the West Virginia Penitentiary, Moundsville, is selected and reproduced in full:

SOME ELEMENTS OF PRISON DISCIPLINE

Old Noah Webster, in that charming book of his entitled “Dictionary,” of which Bill Nye says his chief criticism is that it changes the subject too often, gives the following definition of discipline:

“Education, instruction, cultivation, and improvement; comprehending instruction in arts, sciences, correct sentiments, morals, and manners, and due subordination to authority.”

These are not all the elements Webster says constitute discipline, but they are quite enough upon which to base a paper, and it is well enough to keep this definition in mind, especially for such as may have the impression that discipline consists solely and alone in administering punishments for real or imaginary, deliberate or unintentional, breaches of good conduct.

To the unthinking, the sole object of imprisoning a convict may be regarded as the making him suffer for the crime he committed, and that the judge in imposing sentence should calculate how much suffering will be commensurate with the crime, and adjust the sentence accordingly, the prison authorities then taking hold of him, holding him in “durance vile” for the period of his sentence, keeping him as quiet and orderly as they can, and when his sentence has expired, discharging him without further concern or responsibility for him or his future.

THE SCOPE OF DISCIPLINE

Discipline comprehends in its fullest scope absolutely everything that has to do with the convict, as to his training physically, morally, intellectually, and spiritually, and embraces in its application every agency that has to do with his development as a laborer, his advancement as a student and a thinker, his uplifting morally and spiritually, and his complete and perfect rounding out as a man.

It does not refer alone to the agency of the dark cell, the strap, the taking of good time, the bath, the ball and chain, and similar devices; and in a properly conducted, well-ordered, and painstaking institution, these agencies are far and away the smallest, least used and least effective of all those which make and promote this thing called “discipline.”

In a rightfully planned and properly manned prison, the officers maintain much the same attitude toward the heterogeneous population there gathered--most of whom are children in mental attainments, children in moral culture, children in industrial bent--that a parent occupies toward his child. The motive, the hope, the desire, the object, the plans, and the efforts should be much the same, changed and modified only as the conditions necessarily demand a modification of plans.

The thoughtful and intelligent parent ponders and studies about the future of his child. He knows that he must fit and prepare him for the solemn duties of life, and upon the preparation or lack of preparation he gives him, the discipline or the lack of discipline the child undergoes, will depend that child’s future welfare or misery.

If the parent is wise he carefully arranges for the child’s physical well-being, he plans for his mental cultivation and discipline, and provides systematically for proper environments and training for his moral and spiritual growth and strength. Nothing is left to chance, little to precept, much to example, and the use of the rod or other correctional methods or devices, is an obvious confession of a failure on the part of the parent to take all the necessary care and precaution in training or drilling the child. No child ever needed physical correction at the hand of its parent, that the parent was not also some to blame in neglecting precautions that would have obviated this necessity.

Rev. Samuel J. Barrows, to whom prison people are under so many lasting obligations for his invaluable contributions to prison literature, said no truer thing than when in his admirable address at Kansas City, in 1901, on “Jesus as a Penologist,” he said:

“The ideal discipline is that which educates and strengthens the will without breaking it, and which develops a man without crushing him.”

LABOR AS DISCIPLINE

The first and prime requisite to discipline is a proper labor system that calls for a reasonable amount of satisfactory, productive, remunerative labor from every convict fit to labor. It is altogether the greatest problem that confronts any prison, and is most vital.

Idleness in prison is grossly wasteful, utterly uneconomical, terribly demoralizing, and prevents almost entirely all plans for a regimen that looks to discipline. For those in health there should be no wasted hours at any time or any place in prison.

A score of idle or partly idle convicts can do more mischief, subvert more discipline, destroy more regularity and system than a regiment of men kept at proper, legitimate employment. So the key to discipline is a labor system that embraces in its scope every person in prison.

To devise a system of labor for an institution that will keep everyone sufficiently employed and underwork none (for strange to say, in practice, the prison that overtaxes convicts probably does not exist), is the hardest problem, requiring the most labor, care, and attention that could possibly be imagined, and means that the warden who accomplishes it and continues it will be the most severely taxed of all. It is not the convict that is likely to do an honest, just day’s work, but the management who undertake to see that this most vital and salutary agent of discipline is always in full force and effect.

THE CONTRACT SYSTEM

I have no sympathy with those who inveigh against contract labor in prisons. A contract system in which the State receives the proper compensation for the labor of convicts, and the convict receives a just compensation for surplus work, a system which eliminates the abuses formerly found in contracts, a system in which the government, control, and treatment of the men is in the hands of the prison officials only, and the amount and the kind of labor is adjusted by the warden only, may be the best practicable economic system.

The abuses formerly chargeable to the contract system, and possibly chargeable now in sections, are not necessary, and existed and exist only because prison officials permitted them or fostered them; and instead of abolishing the system, men should have been substituted who would prepare a proper contract, obtain the right compensation, secure rational treatment for the convicts, and get just conditions generally, and have the invaluable experience of expert manufacturers to teach the men deft and skillful labor at something they know becomes a factor in the world beyond the walls.

Shall the meat packing and producing business be destroyed because great abuses have recently been unearthed, or shall it be reformed and corrected?

Shall the oil industry be wiped out because an undue share of the benefits are absorbed by a few, or shall the conditions be changed, the wrongs be righted?

Just think of the consistency of the people who rail at the contract system in prisons, but view with complacency the spectacle, in the East Side of New York, of almost countless thousands of children of four years of age, and sometimes younger, working in basements fourteen hours a day, making paper bags at four cents per thousand; or three-and-a-half-year-old children making artificial flowers on Mott Street, at eight cents per gross! Twenty-three thousand licensed, not to speak of the unknown thousands of unlicensed, tenement houses (home) factories in the city of New York, of the State of New York, which sternly forbids any form of contract labor in prison!

Far be it from me to criticise the State account system, ideal, utopian; but the superintendent who can combine the business qualities necessary to run successfully and economically the factories with the executive qualifications requisite for the other duties of prison governments, is certainly a prodigy, and cannot often be found.

THE REFORMATORY

Neither have I anything to say against the reformatory system of manual training, so called, which builds only to destroy again, except to regret that the only way the State provides manual training for its young men is through the passport and credentials of crime.

THE HABIT OF LABOR

It is not so necessary that a convict shall know a trade, in these days of machinery and constant and continual changes in the methods of manufacture, as it is that he shall have developed in him habits of industry and the willingness to work at what he can do. The great trouble with the average convict is, that he not only does not know a trade, but that he has not been drilled in any kind of labor, and prefers to obtain his substance from the labor of others, by surreptitious, unlawful and unjust means. The _habit_ of labor is what he needs more than the specific kind of work.

As Superintendent Brockway said many years ago: “Only motivelessness is the seat of incorrigibility. To discover or create a want is to find a motive. Given a motive, you may direct a habit. To form a habit is to create character. Habit is the school of conscience. Conscience and habit reinforce one another.”

Let us have the _habit_ of labor rather than the expensive training in trades, which in countless thousands of great industrial establishments will be of no additional value.

LITERARY DISCIPLINE

Next to education in labor, I place as the most important factor in prison discipline the development of the mind through the medium of the various agencies that may be employed for that purpose, not forgetting that labor develops the mind as well as the muscle.

An overwhelming majority of the inmates of any prison are densely and grossly ignorant, and mentally deficient. The polished, scholarly, shrewd criminal is a creature of fiction, not of fact, the exception, not the rule. The average convict is a living example of Horace Mann’s aphorism, that “ignorance in this country is a crime.”

THE PRISON SCHOOL

The convict’s mental discipline can be accomplished in many ways, one of which should be the prison school. The work here will often have to be of the most elementary character. This work should not be merely perfunctory, but should have the most careful attention and consideration. The eagerness with which even comparatively old men undertake to master the simplest primer is one of the pathetic but encouraging aspects of prison-school life.

As the school will probably have to be an evening school of but few hours’ duration, the course of study will necessarily have to be comparatively brief, in order that all inmates needing its help may have their turn.

But the brief term in school should be supplemented by a course of reading and study in the cells, or elsewhere, which should have the same attention, the same systematic oversight and encouragement that the work in the school had. This serves a twofold purpose: first, to drill and discipline the minds, furnish them with concrete information; and second, to fulfill a vital necessity in proper prison discipline, the continual occupation of the subject in his waking hours, with labor, study or proper recreation.

The writer recalls reading recently with some curiosity and interest a stricture written some nineteen years ago on the methods of the Elmira Reformatory referring to the study in the cells of “The Prologue of the Canterbury Tales,” “The Tragedy of Hamlet,” Emerson’s “May Day,” Browning’s “Paracelsus,” and similar literature, and the critic stated that if the convicts are to remain in prison for life, there can be no objection to such reading, but otherwise, the time thus occupied is worse than wasted.

But there is where the critic is wofully mistaken. No man can read even such classics as are here named without being substantially and materially benefited and strengthened, and better able to cope with the practical bread-and-butter part of life. This statement may seem far-fetched, but it is true.

But he does not need to be confined to such books. In this intensely practical age, books are as practical as other things. In the institution over which I preside, scores of men are taking courses in the correspondence schools, doing well, and neglecting no prison requirements. Let the library be stocked with practical handbooks that tell men how to do things, such as to mix concrete, lay brick, build houses, construct telephone lines, run machinery, and similar enterprises.

Prison libraries are generally the result of heterogeneous and indiscriminate donations, the aftermath of the spring house-cleanings of the philanthropically inclined. Such donations should be accepted in the spirit in which given, graciously, thankfully, then where proper, classified, catalogued and used. But this source should not be depended on entirely, or even largely, to supply the library. The books should be selected with as much care and fidelity as they are selected for a university or a public library, for they are to accomplish the same purpose.

THE DAILY AND WEEKLY NEWSPAPER

The writer never shared in the fear of the daily or weekly newspaper in the prison. He acknowledges their necessity to himself, and feels that what is helpful to him ought not seriously to injure his men. In this day, the yellow journals, so called, are mighty agencies for reform, and they and their associate muck rakers, the magazines, are uncovering frauds and wrongs in high places, and driving powerful wrongdoers to cover; and when their work is completed, the smaller criminals will not have the baleful example of some people in high places to justify them in their evil ways. The taste for a blood-and-thunder paper, magazine or book, is infinitely preferable to none at all. The taste will pall eventually on such pabulum and call for better.

Every prison is a community of itself and to itself. The things that elevate people outside, should be found inside the walls. There should be neatness and cleanliness and sanitary conditions everywhere. The lawns should be green, neat and carefully kept. Every prison should have a greenhouse, and flowers should abound in profusion, for civilizing, ennobling and disciplinary powers of nature at her fairest cannot be over-estimated.

The reading courses should be supplemented by instructive lectures and literary entertainments, for such times as are practicable. Theatricals should be permitted and encouraged at intervals. Such relaxation is a great lubricant. Quartettes, octettes and choirs should be organized, and all the men possible taught vocal music under a competent instructor. Orchestras and brass bands should be maintained from the inmates, and music should be a feature of very proper occasion.

To the timid soul who fears that all these pains will pamper the convict and make him love the prison and do something to be returned, let me say that the greatest punishment is in being immured behind great walls beyond which he cannot go, and any deprivation of the elements of reform and enlightened discipline is a mere bagatelle compared to the main fact of imprisonment. As Chaplain Tribou forcibly says: “Men are not sent to prison to be punished, they are punished by being sent to prison.”

Let the great aim be to show the men the many legitimate avenues of improvement, enlightenment, enjoyment and amusements that are open to those who never transgress the law.

Convicts are not to be classed as a peculiar species of genus homo, but are to be regarded as _individuals_, amenable to the same influences, the same treatment, the same hopes as other men. Charles Reade, in his famous book “It Is Never Too Late to Mend,” tells of two little children who come to see a thief just arrested. “Farmer Fielding,” says the little girl, courtesying, a mode of reverence which was instantly copied by the boy, “we are come to see the thief; they say you have caught one.” “Oh dear!” and her bright little countenance was overcast, “I couldn’t have told it from a man.”

Prison sentiment is a powerful auxiliary in discipline, and the consciousness among the men that “a square deal” from the management can be depended upon for the cause of enlightenment, refinement, cheer and relaxation, is worth more than a regiment of soldiers.

RELIGION AS A FACTOR

Religion ought to be a mighty factor in correct prison discipline. If _good_ men need religion to help them and sustain them, certainly _bad_ men need it far more. This department of discipline should be presided over and directed by a strong, level-headed, pious God-fearing man, who may have at once the confidence of the warden and his subordinates, and the inmates as well, a very difficult undertaking.

A chaplain who mistakes his mission and attends to matters not within his province, can tear up and destroy the discipline of a prison more quickly and effectively than anyone else in it. But his opportunities for good are as great as, or greater than, for evil, and if he can discern between those who desire real spiritual consolation and those who are after the loaves and fishes, between spiritual pardon and official clemency, and devote himself unreservedly to the one and resolutely eschew the other, no man can overestimate his value.

The warden and the chaplain should go hand in hand, each sustaining the other. They need to have a perfect understanding, neither mistrusting the other. And with such an understanding, let the chaplain have entire charge of his church and other spiritual services, and resolutely exclude the self-constituted evangelist, the chance visitor, and forbid absolutely the spectacular and highly emotional harangues of people utterly unacquainted with the population with which they seek to deal. In nothing should there be more rigid censorship and more careful espionage than in the chapel and other religious services.

To quote from an address made by me before the National Prison Association in Louisville in 1903: “The influence of sightseers and idle visitors to prisons, always bad, reaches the acme of its perniciousness in the chapel service, if unrestrained and unguided by prison officials of experience and firmness, who alone are in a position to know that sickly sentimentalism is the worst possible pabulum to offer men already too eager to justify their evil deeds.”

THE DISCIPLINE OF OFFICERS

The question at once comes up, how are all these elements of discipline to be arranged for in a prison. Who are to provide and arrange for them?

This is altogether the most difficult question to answer. The most careful and exacting discipline is not for the _convict_, but for the _officials_ of a prison.

If convicts are to be gradually educated and turned from crime into virtue, out of slothfulness and viciousness into habits of industry, thrift, sobriety, regularity and evenness of life, it must be through the agency of officers, themselves disciplined, educated and schooled in self-control. “No man is fit to command who has not first learned to obey.”

No man can hope to have zeal, skill and care, the patience and fidelity to bring up men from the depths of ignorance to the level of intelligence, who has not himself gone over a part of the road. “Such officers are not found.” “They must be taught and trained.”

Superintendent Brockway has said: “The warden of a prison receives into his charge with the bodily presence of the prisoners, their very soul life, and is clothed with the authority and the duty to develop that life for fullness and perfection. He who enters upon the work of soul culture, touches the life and forces of a mysterious realm. His attitude should be profoundly reverent, for he invades a sacred precinct.”

This being the case, nothing but high grade, intelligent, educated men, should be permitted to have charge of this soul life. It is absurd to hope that any other can administer the discipline necessary to build up men whom society has failed or neglected to cultivate.

Every employé of a prison should be a man of good appearance, no physical blemishes, a man of high character, and should possess at least a good English education and be a student.

In many States, only those who have certain views upon the tariff and finance, or who are supposed to have, are permitted to have positions as officers in the prisons. But even there, a schedule of requirements within that limit may be arranged for, and rigidly adhered to. There ought to be an age limit, height, and other physical requirements, and an educational test. A mere recommendation from a politician, however high, is usually not worth the paper upon which it is written, chiefly because the aforesaid politician has only the most vague idea of the actual requirements of the prison official, and is under the impression that anybody who can occupy space will do.

There ought to be a school for the preparation of persons for institutional work. Such a school should be a national one and would be immensely profitable in the increased reformatory results in prisons, the saving of many insane from helpless insanity, and the reclaiming of many dependents.

With crime costing $300,000,000 a year, and every criminal saved worth a least $1,600 a year to the nation, the necessity for such a school for training specialists is very great.

DRILLING OF NEW OFFICERS