DOES IMPRISONMENT REFORM?
This is a hard question to answer, although it has been asked
extensively down through the ages. The answer will turn mainly on what
you mean by reform. It is interesting to know that students of
criminology have wrestled with the question, but cannot agree on the
answer. As an abstract question it is very clear to us that imprisonment
of itself cannot reform. Force cannot change a life, nor restore the
image of God in the soul. When a lawbreaker is placed inside the walls
of a prison, force uses the machinery of the institution to compel him
to pay the penalty of the law. But it cannot reform him, nor make him a
better man, nor change his nature. That work must be done by a higher
Power.
Not only can it be truthfully said that imprisonment does not reform the
law-breaker, but in most of our prisons the culprit has only to serve a
brief sentence, to come out a worse man than when he went in. This is a
sad statement to make, when we think of all our boasted liberties and
advanced civilization, but it is nevertheless true. For the explanation
of this condition of affairs it is not necessary to look far. The fact
is, the unfortunate lack of proper classification in all of our prisons
makes the companionship of thieves and cutthroats so demoralizing, the
fellowship so infectious, the language and habits so debasing, that out
of thousands of persons who mingle together in a modern prison, few
escape the contaminating influences.
When a man has been charged with a crime, the first thing that is done
by society is to arrest him and lock him up in a little dark dungeon,
4x6 feet, with hardly enough cubic space of air coming in through the
small iron grating to make it sanitary. Here he is kept weeks and
sometimes months before a trial is given him, breathing the fetid
atmosphere of the institution, which after a time poisons his entire
system, and paints his face with the prison pallor.
Here it is that many a man who has brooded over the past to such an
extent that when he has atoned for his crime, and he finds himself a
free man once more, has made up his mind to fight society to a finish!
From this time on his hand is against every man, and every man is
against him. The imprisonment has aroused in him the darkest passions of
an unregenerate life, and made him a moral anarchist for the fancied
wrongs he has suffered. Said a man to me who had spent nearly
twenty-four years in prison, having been convicted of crime eight or ten
different times, when I asked him why he did not go to work when he came
out of Caldwell Prison, N. J., “Me work! I will never work. When I was
sent to prison for the first time, I received a good deal of harsh
treatment. I then vowed vengeance for the wrongs done me. No! I will
steal as long as I live, but I will never work.” Whenever I touched on
prison life, the subject awoke bitterness in his soul, and for the time
being he spoke like a maniac. The fact is, over fifty per cent. of all
first offenders come from our penal institutions, and after a brief
period return to crime again, unreformed and uncured.
The prison authorities should always bear in mind that no matter how
deep-dyed in crime the inmates may be, they are moral beings, made in
the image of God, and are therefore worth saving, and may be saved if
the proper methods and influences are brought to bear the right way on
their minds and lives. While there is life there is hope.
It is true, the men in prison, no matter how intelligent, have little
influence over the authorities in bringing about needed reforms. They
are regarded as having no right to complain, nor even to ask for favors.
If they are to receive favors, others must speak in their behalf. Even
the suggestions of criminals are usually ignored by the prison
authorities, as they are supposed to be moved by sentiment, or often by
mercenary reasons.
In dealing with crime, it should be the settled policy of the State to
use every means possible, although sometimes expensive, to bring about
the reformation of the prisoner. It is a well known fact that when a
thief is sent to prison, absolutely nothing is done to teach him the why
and wherefore of the Eighth Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.” Out of
168 hours in seven days, one, or possibly two, hours are devoted to
religious training. If the thief, the perjurer, the gambler, the
swindler and others of that ilk are to be reformed, why not use means
for the accomplishment? Why not have moral and ethical teaching, or
addresses of some kind daily? Every one saved from a life of wrongdoing
will necessarily reduce the cost of crime!
Although all cruel and inhuman methods of punishment are forbidden in
nearly all of our prisons, and the punishment for crimes that is meted
out to criminals was never so free from malice and revenge as it is
to-day, yet we are free to say that as far as prison reform is
concerned, we have not yet reached the ideal.
Capital punishment as it is practised at the present time is in our
opinion simply a relic of barbarous times. No one on this planet is
authorized to take away life. God gave it, and He is the only One that
can take it away. And no matter what kind of punishment may be meted out
to the homicide, the worst and most foolish thing that can be done to
him is to put him to death. It matters little what a man’s crime is, if
he is to be reformed, he should have a future hope held out to him, and
he should realize it, provided he can show by his life that he is worthy
of it.
While it is true civilization has been in the forward march the past
three hundred years, crime has been slowly and perceptibly on the
increase; that is to say, crime has been growing faster than the
population. The fact that so many jails and reformatories are being
erected in all the States and Territories is evidence enough to
substantiate that statement. Statistics show that the growth of
population in this country has maintained a steady increase since 1850,
with an average perhaps of about thirty per cent. each decade, while the
criminal increase during these same periods will average eighty per
cent., or nearly three times as large as the increase in population.
In former years the methods in vogue for reforming men and women behind
the bars were the stocks, the dark cell or dungeon, the whipping-post
and the tread-mill, nearly all of which have been abolished during the
past century, and more humane methods have been used, we are glad to
say, which is a cause for rejoicing among Christian people everywhere.
Perhaps one of the greatest needs of the prisons of this country is
their complete divorce from politics and their reorganization on
business principles of merit and capability. While it is true that the
civil service law, which operates in nearly every State, has raised the
standard of merit among the prison officiary, notwithstanding inferior
men, entirely unfitted for such work, creep into these institutions as a
reward for political services.
But it is also true that the prisons of the twentieth century are as far
advanced from those of the middle ages as those of the middle ages are
ahead of the prisons that existed at the beginning of the Christian era.
In those days jails were little better than hog pens, perhaps much like
the old cistern into which they thrust Jeremiah the prophet, when they
let him down with cords, and where his feet sank in the mire. Such
prisons were places of pestilential horror, cold and damp, from which
the sunlight was entirely excluded, and where the chains often rusted on
the hands and feet of the prisoners.
The evolution of the prison has been a long, dark, cruel process, as it
did not excite the interest and sympathy of the church till within
recent times. It is admitted now that prison reform began with Jesus
Christ, who, when He had conquered death and hell on the Cross, went up
to glory with the blood-washed soul of a repentant prisoner in His arms,
leading captivity captive. From this time on, the era of seeking to save
and help the prisoner began. But it did not make the advances it should
have made till the days of John Howard, who is called the morning star
of prison reform.
It is greatly to be regretted that no efforts are put forth to raise the
moral tone of our prison management. In Great Britain and the Continent
of Europe, there are schools for the proper training of prison
officials. In these schools are taught the military spirit, alertness,
courteous behavior, and quick movements in case of emergency. But it is
doubtful if in any of the schools they teach the officers to appeal to
the better nature of the prisoners for any permanent reform. The work of
a modern prison is largely one of punishment and repression. There are
no lectures on hygiene and sanitation, nor on manliness or how to resist
temptations, nor is anything done to incite them to live a new life,
except what comes through the Chaplain, and that only once a week.
In studying the early stages of lawlessness from the rudest times to the
present day, I am satisfied that crime grows on the mind by insensible
degrees, and shows itself only at the propitious time when the overt act
brings the individual into prominence.
I also believe that a certain class of delinquents are made more vicious
by prison life, simply, because their moral instincts are already
perverted, and by the lives they have led in the past. Such hopeless
people should be sent to lunatic asylums, rather than to prisons, as we
believe they are more in need of medical treatment than punishment.
One of the most needed reforms of the present century is the necessity
of putting forth more efforts to save beginners in crime. In many of our
prisons, criminals are huddled together like sheep, and as a result the
young offender learns more evil in one week from old crooks than ever he
knew before. There is nobody to blame for this but the old methods that
are still in vogue. Often criminals are driven to crime by motives
generated in a vicious nature, and as they are too weak to resist the
high pressure of modern temptations, they soon become law-breakers. It
is foolish to talk of the criminal classes, but criminal individuals.
Criminality is simply the darkened side of a human life, showing itself
in deeds of wickedness and rebellion. Anybody under the dominion and
power of the Evil One will dare to commit the most atrocious crime on
record, and will not think of the consequences at the time.
I am satisfied that the reclamation of the criminal, and his restoration
to society, a saved man, should be the first duty of every well
organized prison.
It is to be regretted that the greatest barrier in the way of reforming
and saving the prisoner is found in our antiquated methods of dealing
with him. Whatever else imprisonment is to-day, it certainly does not
reform the unfortunates who are sent there. Hundreds and thousands of
lives have been blasted forever by prison life, that might have been
saved if proper efforts had been made at the right time to place them on
parole before being sent to prison. All first offenders should get a
chance by being paroled.
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