When we consider that the obligations of benevolence, which are
founded on the precept and examples of the Author of Christianity,
are not cancelled by the follies or crimes of our fellow-creatures,
and when we reflect upon the miseries, which penury, hunger, cold,
unnecessary severity, unwholesome apartments, and guilt (the usual
attendants of prisons) involve with them, it becomes us to extend
our compassion to that part of mankind who are the subjects of those
miseries. By the aid of humanity their undue and illegal sufferings may
be prevented; the link which should bind the whole family of mankind
together, under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken; and such
degree and modes of punishment may be discovered and suggested as may,
instead of continuing habits of vice, become the means of restoring
our fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness. From a conviction of
the truth and obligations of these principles, the subscribers have
associated themselves under the title of “THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON
SOCIETY.”
For effecting these purposes they have adopted the following
CONSTITUTION: