IN spite of all that has been done for the reformation of the world, in
spite of all the inventions, in spite of all the forces of nature that
are now the tireless slaves of man, in spite of all improvements in
agriculture, in mechanics, in every department of human labor, the world
is still cursed with poverty and with crime.
The prisons are full, the courts are crowded, the officers of the law
are busy, and there seems to be no material decrease in crime.
For many thousands of years man has endeavored to reform his fellow-men
by imprisonment, torture, mutilation and death, and yet the history
of the world shows that there has been and is no reforming power in
punishment. It is impossible to make the penalty great enough, horrible
enough to lessen crime.
Only a few years ago, in civilized countries, larceny and many offences
even below larceny, were punished by death; and yet the number of
thieves and criminals of all grades increased. Traitors were hanged and
quartered or drawn into fragments by horses; and yet treason flourished.
Most of these frightful laws have been repealed, and the repeal
certainly did not increase crime. In our own country we rely upon the
gallows, the penitentiary and the jail. When a murder is committed, the
man is hanged, shocked to death by electricity, or lynched, and in a few
minutes a new murderer is ready to suffer a like fate. Men steal; they
are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years, treated
like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of the term they are
discharged, having only enough money to return to the place from which
they were sent. They are thrown upon the world without means--without
friends--they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected and despised.
If they obtain a place, they are discharged as soon as it is found that
they were in prison. They do the best they can to retain the respect of
their fellow-men by denying their imprisonment and their identity. In
a little while, unable to gain a living by honest means, they resort
to crime, they again appear in court, and again are taken within the
dungeon walls. No reformation, no chance to reform, nothing to give them
bread while making new friends.
All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the pentitentiary as a
punishment, because we must remember that men do as they must. Nature
does not frequently produce the perfect. In the human race there is a
large percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with certain
appetites and passions and with a certain quality, quantity and shape of
brain, men will become thieves, forgers and counterfeiters. The question
is whether reformation is possible, whether a change can be produced
in the person by producing a change in the conditions. The criminal
is dangerous and society has the right to protect itself. The
criminal should be confined, and, if possible, should be reformed. A
pentitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. So,
prisoners should work, and they should be paid a reasonable sum for
their labor. The best men should have charge of prisons. They should be
philanthropists and philosophers; they should know something of
human nature. The prisoner, having been taught, we will say, for five
years--taught the underlying principles of conduct, of the naturalness
and harmony of virtue, of the discord of crime; having been convinced
that society has no hatred, that nobody wishes to punish, to degrade,
or to rob him; and being at the time of his discharge paid a reasonable
price for his labor; being allowed by law to change his name, so that
his identity will not be preserved, he could go out of the prison a
friend of the government. He would have the feeling that he had been
made a better man; that he had been treated with justice, with mercy,
and the money he carried with him would be a breastwork behind which he
could defy temptation, a breastwork that would support and take care of
him until he could find some means by which to support himself. And this
man, instead of making crime a business, would become a good, honorable
and useful-citizen.
As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again
and again at the bar; the same men hear again and again the verdict of
guilty and the sentence of the court, and the same men return again and
again to the prison cell. Murderers, those belonging to the dangerous
classes, those who are so formed by nature that they rush to the crimes
of desperation, should be imprisoned for life; or they should be put
upon some island, some place where they can be guarded, where it may
be that by proper effort they could support themselves; the men on
one island, the women on another. And to these islands should be sent
professional criminals, those who have deliberately adopted a life
of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves, the women upon one
island, the men upon another. Such people should not populate the earth.
Neither the diseases nor the deformities of the mind or body should be
perpetuated. Life at the fountain should not be polluted.