AFTER SENTENCE, WHAT?
After a person has been convicted of a felony in New York County, either
in the Criminal Branch of the Supreme Court, or in the Court of General
Sessions, if the sentence is a year in prison, or less, he is sent to
the New York Penitentiary on Blackwell’s Island. But if he is sent away
for more than a year, he is taken to Sing Sing, or Bear Mountain, the
new prison on the west bank of the Hudson, where if he is a first
offender, he is detained till he has finished his time.
As soon as he leaves Court, he is taken in charge by the Sheriff, or one
of his deputies, who hurries him off soon after to the prison destined
for the fulfillment of the sentence.
In the case of those who have been sentenced to the electric chair, they
are taken the same day to the place where the sentence is to be carried
out. The reason for this is obvious. While in the Tombs or Raymond
Street jail, Brooklyn, he is visited by his friends, who might aid in
his escape or death by suicide. As the Sheriff knows from experience
that it is best to take no chances, he hurries him to prison at once.
After he reaches the death house, he is never again allowed to shake
hands with any of his friends, lest they might communicate to him poison
or a knife.
After reaching prison, the prisoner is practically dead to the world,
except that his friends may visit him monthly. Some will return to
citizenship again as honest men; others will never pass through the gate
till they are carried out to a bed of lime in the little cemetery on the
hill-side.
During the transition from court to prison, kaleidoscopic scenes pass
through the brain of the prisoner, and are continued indefinitely in his
little 3×7 cell, where he spends his first sleepless night.
In England all persons sentenced to penal servitude for a period of two
years and over, are sent to what is called the Central Prison for six
months for the purpose of observation. This is done that the authorities
may be able to put the prisoner to some work best suited to his nature.
The Central Prison is the Experimental Station of the English system.
The inmate’s physical, mental and moral nature are carefully inquired
into, and observations made. This reform was begun about a third of a
century ago, and has met with success.
After the newly arrived prisoner enters the Sing Sing or Bear Mountain
Prison reception room, he is interviewed by an official, who forthwith
takes his pedigree. If the prisoner happens to have any money or
valuables, he is relieved of the same, and a receipt given him. They are
returned when he leaves the prison.
As soon as the reception is over, he is taken by a keeper to the State
Shop. This is the storehouse for clothing. Here he receives a suit of
clothes, including underwear, shoes, stockings and cap. The next place
is the bath house, where the prisoner has the privilege of staying
fifteen or twenty minutes, after which he dons his prison garments, and
is sent to his cell for the night. “Some men have a natural aversion to
water, and refuse to take a bath when they come here,” said the
principal keeper of a large State institution, as he showed me around
his establishment. Being anxious to know what they did in such a case, I
asked: “What then?” “Oh,” said the P. K., with a twinkle in his eye, “we
fix ‘em all right.” I said, “How do you do it?” “Well,” he said,
pointing to a corner of the large stone bath-house, “We set ‘em up
there, and turn the hose on them. The fact is,” said the P. K., “we give
the kickers a good soaking, and then tear the clothes off their back,
and they never rebel against a bath afterwards. It cures ‘em, sure.”
This is the first step in the transformation of the prisoner. Next day
he is taken before the P. K., who carefully interviews him, to know just
what particular work he is best fitted for. The P. K. may interview him
daily for three weeks or even a month before sending him to one of the
shops. If his health is not good, the prison doctor may be called in,
and if suffering from some contagious disease, he is sent to the
hospital, or if it is found that he has incipient or chronic
tuberculosis, he is sent to Napanoch, in the Ulster Mountains, or
Clinton Prison, in the Adirondacks.
These steps in the reformation of the criminal are little known to the
outside world. But they are all necessary and important, and carefully
observed by our State prison authorities.
Prison Classification
The proper classification of the inmates of our prisons is a most
important part of their treatment, looking to their reformation. This is
something that has been sadly neglected in the past by nearly all of our
prisons and reformatories. Elmira Reformatory is the exception, as it
comes the nearest to the proper classification of prisoners of any
institution in the country. It is nothing less than a crime to allow
novices to associate with hardened offenders, either in shops or yards,
where they can freely converse together. Such an association soon
changes the first offender into a real criminal who goes forth when his
time is finished with his brain all aflame to commit crime.
A Real Prison Reformer
One of the best of our modern prison reformers is Mr. Cornelius V.
Collins, of Troy, N. Y. Since 1898 he has been Superintendent of State
Prisons, and has given excellent satisfaction, not only to many of our
leading reformers, but to the men in prison. He is a man of energy and
ability and knows how a prison should be conducted, and is intensely
practical in everything he does. Since he has had charge of our State
prisons, he has inaugurated many valuable reforms which have been a
blessing to the inmates, which easily leaves him in the front rank of
prison reformers. It was through Mr. Collins’ enterprising efforts and
practical foresight that the Star of Hope was first started soon after
he became Superintendent of Prisons. He saw the great need of such an
educational helper, as well as the importance of utilizing the
intellectual strength of the men and women behind the bars, and having a
splendid printing plant then lying idle at Sing Sing, he felt the
success of his new enterprise was assured.
Since then many of the other prisons outside of the State have monthly
publications, but none of them can be compared to the Star of Hope for
enterprise, dash and intellectual vigor.
Mr. Collins has made so many successful reforms in the penal
institutions of this State since he became Superintendent of Prisons, as
to commend him favorably everywhere. Many of our prison wardens and
reformatory superintendents are good practical men, but they have not
been able to carry out the reforms which were necessary even in their
own institutions. Mr. Collins having had the courage of his convictions
and the support of the State Prison Commission behind him, saw to it
that his own reforms were strictly carried out.
In regard to the Parole Law, if Mr. Collins is not the author of it in
its entirety he certainly suggested most of it, and worked harder for
its passage than any man living, and it would have been vastly more
comprehensive, if it had not been for some men who objected to it being
applied to first offenders charged with more serious offences. If Mr.
Collins had done nothing but champion this one law he would have
deserved the lasting gratitude of good men everywhere.
Before we can rightly understand the advances in prison reform that have
taken place the past hundred years, we ought to be familiar with the
treatment accorded prisoners in the early centuries of the Christian era
and for hundreds of years afterwards. The prisons we read of in the
ancient world were places of pestilential horror. They were dark, damp,
and unsanitary dungeons, from which the sunlight was entirely excluded,
where the chains rusted on the arms and feet of the prisoners, and where
they were frequently left to die of starvation.
The ancient method of dealing with criminals was threefold, namely,
death, exile and physical punishment or torture. Some of these methods
prevail in some parts of Europe to the present time. But the Christian
ideal of prison management is several steps higher. It has not yet
reached it, but it has been forcing itself upon the world for many
years. We believe a prison ought to be a place where the offender
against human law is to be reformed or Christianized, and afterwards
restored to society an industrious and useful man.
The prevailing idea in some of our criminal courts is that the average
prisoner is not only a dangerous character, but also a hopeless moral
and social defective and must be restrained and punished permanently.
After the criminal has been sent to a penal institution, the authorities
there, as a rule, seem not to care whether he is reformed or not.
Indeed, the prisons of to-day, with few exceptions, cannot reform the
unfortunates therein, as they are not conducted on Christian principles
nor by Christian men. Our legislators have not yet learned that the only
positive reclaiming force in the world for criminals is the religion of
the Lord Jesus. Not only is this true, but many of the persons who
manage our prisons do not believe in religion themselves and certainly
have little faith in it for others.
There is so much indefiniteness of idea as to what prison reform is,
that it would be well at the outset to say what we mean by it. We would
define prison reform not only as the reformation of the prisoner, but
the more efficient management of our prisons by men of fitness and
experience in the interest of humanity and economy.
Among the other reforms inaugurated by Mr. Collins since he took charge
of our prisons of this State was the abolition of the lock-step. All men
that are now sent to our prisons are drilled by a regular military
instructor and march no longer to the mess hall or the shops in the
lock-step, but as soldiers. This gives them a manly bearing and helps
their general health.
Some of Mr. Collins’ other reforms consist of the abolition of the
convict striped suit for first offenders, and no longer cutting the
convict’s hair short, except for sanitary reasons. Abolition of tin
plates and tin cups used at meals and crockery substituted. The
numbering of each one’s laundry and permission given to first offenders
to wear “honor bars” on their sleeves for good conduct, which gives them
special privileges. Mr. Collins has raised the moral tone of our prisons
in other ways, all of which shows him to be a man of energy and of a
practical turn of mind.
There is one other place where reform can be carried out to good effect.
In nearly all of our State prisons and penitentiaries there are
suppressed murmurings over the prison food. Coarse food that is not
eaten is dearer in the end than palatable food that is consumed with a
relish. For the purpose of having good discipline in our large prisons I
would suggest the following: Put every inmate on his good behavior and
give the men a chance to earn three good meals a day.
If they are well behaved, let them eat at the Warden’s table. This plan
is no longer an experiment, for it has been tried, it is said, in some
of our Pacific prisons, and works like a charm. The old saying that the
best way to reach a man’s heart is by his stomach has been found true.
Let there be three tables in each prison.
1. The first table is for men against whom there is no mark for rudeness
or breaking the rules for one whole month and who do their work well.
The board is first class at this table and each convict is entitled to a
napkin. They are allowed to converse with each other and have waiters.
Call it the Warden’s table.
2. The second table contains the regular prison fare. It is for those
who rebel against doing their work or wilfully disregard some of the
rules of the institution. The table is made of plain pine boards. Here
they eat their food in silence, without table cloth or napkin.
3. The third table is called “Bread and Water.” For their meals three
times a day they receive plenty of dry bread and an unlimited quantity
of water. When they are confined to their cells for bad conduct the
bread and water is brought to them.
When this course was first tried on the Pacific Coast, it was found that
at the end of three months, one-half of the men were able by their good
conduct marks to secure a seat at the best table. At the end of six
months two-thirds of the men sat at the first table. After a year’s
experience nine men out of every ten were able to keep the law and
behave like gentlemen, so as to sit at the best table. This change has
wrought wonders in some of the prisons of California.
I do not believe the criminal is the victim of an unavoidable destiny,
or that there is any inexorable necessity for his continuing the life
which makes him a social anarchist, or that he is beyond the reach of
reform. I believe if you treat him kindly his better nature will respond
to it and he will show himself a man. That crime is a moral disease that
is transmitted, the same as depravity, I believe to be true. I believe
further that early training, environments and cross-grained
individuality will account for nearly all of our present day
criminality.
Some one has said: “The soul of all reformation is the reformation of
the soul.” If such were the aim of the prison authorities, the
prisoner’s transformation would only be a question of time. But this is
not the case, and such an object is far from their mind. Yet the
religion of Jesus Christ is the only thing that gives permanency to
character. At the present moment the reformation of the criminal and his
return to freedom again as a man among men, never enters the mind of the
majority of our prison officials. All they care for is simply to hold
their charges in safety until their term expires, then turn them loose
again no better than they were before. The one great reason for this is
that the heads of departments are politicians and are given office
simply because they are a controlling power in their ward or county.
They well know when they take office that their tenure is exceedingly
brief, and they must make hay while the sun shines, by disappointing
their enemies and rewarding their friends.
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