It contained a number of striking features. He strongly advocated the
adoption of the indeterminate sentence plan, and that of productive
labor. Among other things he said:--“The absolute indeterminate
sentence for all prisoners except life convicts is, in my opinion,
the only logical method of dealing with the delinquent classes. Upon
criminals it should operate as a definite deterrent influence. To
habitual offenders it would be a danger sign, and it would beget new
risks in the commission of crime. Under it the sifting process, by
which the reformable prisoners are sorted from the incorrigibles, could
be intelligently applied; powerful motives for the abandonment of
criminal practices would be created, and safeguards for the protection
of society would be erected.”
The State might as reasonably send an insane person to an asylum for
a definite time, as to convict a criminal to a prison for a specific
period. If the management in the one case is competent to discharge,
why not in the other?
“From every penal institution in the country convicts are being
regularly discharged, who as the management only too well knows, will
promptly resume the criminal program which was temporarily interrupted
by a term of prison.
“Every consideration of social welfare demands that, on the one hand
the criminal should be kept under restraint until he is fit to be
released, and that, on the other hand once fit to be released, he
should be conditionally discharged. This system should not only afford
the largest measure of protection to life and property, but it would
also supply the most practical method for the reformation of the
offender.”
The galling fire which is kept up against productive labor in penal
institutions, is born of a mistaken or partial view of the situation,
and is not justified by the whole body of facts in the case. It is
estimated that the value of the products of penal institutions does not
exceed one tenth of one per cent of the total value of the products
of the manufacturing industries of the whole United States. This fact
renders it obvious that the economic and competitive effect of convict
labor upon free labor is in the aggregate insignificant, and that it
wholly fails to justify the persistent warfare which some people take
pleasure in waging against prison industry.
It would be superfluous to state in a gathering of this kind, that
regular and intelligent employment is absolutely essential to the
moral and physical welfare of convicts, and the enforced idleness
begets sullenness, immorality, sickness, insanity, and retards, if
indeed it does not entirely prevent, the improvement of which the
prisoners might otherwise be susceptible. In all intelligent efforts
to reform convicted criminals, work is an indispensable factor--and
only productive labor is reformative labor. Both the practical and the
ethical requirements of the situation make for productive labor.