comprehensive. The prevention of crime is one of the important results
hoped for from the long process of civilization. It is an end toward
which many diverse influences are consciously or unconsciously directed.
Many laborers in many fields, unknown to each other, are working for
this result. Among them we may mention every church which is teaching
the subordination of the present pleasure to the future greater good;
every home circle in which dignity and strength of character are being
built up; every health officer who is conscientiously laboring to
restrict the ravages of preventable diseases; every teacher who
inculcates self-mastery by precept and by example; every public official
who is striving to make effective the public will for better things;
every employer who seeks to soften the iron law of competition--in
short, all those who, in individual effort or in organization, are
trying to build up a saner, more wholesome, better-knit community.
“As many forces are working for the prevention of crime; so also many
are working for its production. Wherever the illusory pleasure of the
present is exalted above the ultimate good; wherever luxury is
ostentatiously displayed; wherever human weakness is exploited for
financial gain; wherever the public will is thwarted; wherever the heart
becomes hard and the eye steely; wherever duty is evaded; wherever
disease is unchecked--in all these ways crime is encouraged and
promoted.
“The prevention of crime, therefore, is a topic not for a brief paper
for a portion of one evening’s exercises, but for a constructive program
for generations. We may, nevertheless, single out two or three factors
in the production of crime, as to which the time seems peculiarly ripe
for corrective action.
“We would mention first the frequency with which the very agencies
established and slowly worked out by the community for the punishment of
crime, or for its prevention, become agencies for precisely the opposite
result; and by their action tend to increase and to propagate crime
rather than to diminish it. I have in mind specifically our criminal
courts and our penal and reformatory institutions. Who has had
opportunity for close observation of our criminal courts without being
impressed by the extraordinary element of chance that enters into all
their operations! How many chances there are that the offender will not
be arrested at all; and how many chances there are that if arrested the
technical legal proof will be wanting; and how many chances there are
that if the technical legal proof be forthcoming the resources of an
ample purse will be sufficient to tie up the proceedings in an endless
tangle of complications which an ordinary lifetime is too short to
unravel. Under these circumstances the offender almost invariably feels
himself the victim, not of his own wrongdoing, but of chance. He regards
the operations of the law not as expressing slowly but surely the
community’s sense of right and justice, but as the gambler watches the
cards or the dice, and, with all the gambler’s belief in luck, is
confident that the penalty will not finally be actually inflicted.
“And if we add to such a degree of chance as perhaps must of necessity
exist, the belief spread abroad in the community, whether rightly
founded or otherwise, that political, personal or other improper
considerations reach out and influence the decisions which are supposed
to take cognizance only of the law and the facts, we have gone a long
way toward a state in which every man feels justified in being a law
unto himself.
“But when the law grips and the culprit finds himself behind the bars of
the jail or the reformatory, what processes have we set in motion? I
suppose that of all the factors that have entered into the production
and encouragement of crime, the consensus of opinion among those
competent to judge would place the county jail foremost. With what
inconceivable callousness we have thrown into promiscuous association
those not yet determined to be guilty of an offense (and of whom a
goodly number will finally be declared innocent) and those against whom
the judgment of conviction has been entered! With what inconceivable
shortsightedness we have mingled those guilty of the least offenses with
those to whom vice and crime have become second nature, and under
circumstances of enforced idleness and enforced association! Worst of
all, children arrested for even the slightest offenses, and occasionally
for no offense other than homelessness, have been unintentionally made
the pupils of adepts in every form of vice and crime. I am painting no
imaginary or fanciful picture; I am describing the thing that has
existed, and still exists, throughout practically the entire United
States. The county jail is the classic instance of an institution
established to serve one purpose and actually serving exactly the
opposite purpose, intended to promote the good order of the community,
and actually a most potent factor in every form of demoralization, an
agency by which the traditions of crime are handed on undiminished from
one generation to another, by which the ranks are kept full and new
recruits at least equal in numbers those who drop out.
“And as to our penal institutions for the care only of convicted
offenders for considerable periods of time, what is the net effect of
prison life upon the prisoner? We would like to think that the work of
John Howard has been substantially completed. We gladly recognize the
fact that a large and increasing number of prison officials, such as
those present at this national congress, sincerely desire and earnestly
labor for the good of their prisoners, but I suspect that they would
agree with us that the inherent and almost unescapable tendency of
prison life, even in the best institutions, is not to build up either
the physical or moral stamina; and unfortunately not all officials of
penal institutions are in attendance at this congress, and not all are
represented by the spirit which is here present. The work of John Howard
has to be done over again with each generation. There are only too many
prisons to which the biting words of Oscar Wilde would apply:
“The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.
“For they starve the little frightened child
Till it weeps both night and day:
And they scourge the weak, and flog the fool
And gibe the old and gray,
And some grow mad, and all grow bad,
And none a word may say.
“With midnight always in one’s heart,
And twilight in one’s cell,
We turn the crank, or tear the rope,
Each in his separate Hell;
And the silence is more awful far
Than the sound of a brazen bell.
“And never a human voice comes near
To speak a gentle word:
And the eye that watches through the door
Is pitiless and hard:
And by all forgot, we rot and rot,
With soul and body marred.
“The establishment of juvenile reformatories has always indicated a
realization of the evils of leaving children uncared for and equally of
the evil of committing those of tender years to penal institutions. Born
of a benevolent purpose, to what extent have they in practice realized
the intent of their founders? When we contemplate the extent to which
prison methods have been reproduced in juvenile reformatories; the
extent to which cells and bolts and bars have been deemed necessary; the
severe and ofttimes brutal punishments inflicted; the mingling of those
of tender years with those much farther along in the school of crime;
the absence until recently, and in many instances at present even, of
facilities for suitable industrial training; the woeful inadequacy of
any system of care or oversight while on parole, we are obliged to admit
that even the juvenile reformatory has not been an unmixed blessing;
that many have learned within its walls far more about wrongdoing than
they knew before; and that its _régime_ has been too often far removed
from that which would develop strength of purpose and strength of
character.
“The recent revolution in the methods of some reformatories which find
its most complete expression in the New York State Agricultural and
Industrial School of Industry, near Rochester, N. Y., is the strongest
evidence of the weakness of the other plan. At this institution the boys
are subdivided into groups of twenty-two each. These groups are not
placed closely about a central “Village Green,” but are scattered as
widely as possible over an area of fourteen hundred acres of fine
farming land. Each group has not only its cottage, but its barn, its
live stock, etc. The boys lead as nearly as possible the life of the
ordinary farmer’s son. You might drive through the grounds of the
institution without recognizing it as an institution. Its work is
commended to the serious consideration of all those interested in
juvenile reformatories.
“At the outset we indicated, however, that the great forces for the
prevention of crime are to be found not in institutions, but in
influences; not in repression, but in development; not so much in
discipline as in affection; not in coercion, but in care. To provide
these things, it is not always necessary to remove the juvenile
offender, even though he be a real offender, from his home. We have in
the past decade witnessed an extraordinary development in many States of
the Union of a system which is in effect an effort to carry personal
interest, care, affection, uplifting influence, inspiring personality,
into the home. This is the probation system. The probation officer is
simply a representative of the community striving to make up that which
has been lacking; to counteract the slowly acting influences which have
made for deterioration; to set in motion the recuperative factors in the
individual and in his immediate environment.”
The subject of probation was further discussed by the Rev. Dr. A. J.
McKelway, of Atlanta, who spoke on “The Need of Reformatories and the
Juvenile Court System in the South”; and by Henry W. Thurston, Chief
Probation Officer, Juvenile Court, Chicago. Dr. McKelway said in part:
“It is time that our Southern States awoke to the crying need for the
humane and merciful treatment of the children who go astray; it has only
to avail itself of the experience of other States to meet the need. If
it be said that our poverty is yet too great to undertake the additional
expense, be it said in reply that we are too poor not to save to the
State the criminal expenses that inevitably follow the lack of such
reformatory institutions, and that the restoration of one child to a
useful life, from a life of crime and shame, is well worth the attention
of any civilized State.
“And when we learn to treat the young criminal properly, to consider the
unfortunate environment which breeds crime, we should be led to the
consideration of the larger problems involved and the reformation of the
adult criminal, that he also may be, wherever possible, transformed into
a man, instead of being hardened in iniquity.
“In the State of Georgia, during the investigation of the convict lease
system, a pitiful case was presented to the attention of the legislative
committee of investigation. A white boy, sixteen years of age, was
sentenced to the chain gang for stealing a pot of ham. While at work on
the chain gang he resisted the too near approach of one of the warden’s
hogs, and threw upon the hog some of the hot coffee with which he was
supplied. For this crime Abe Winn was beaten until even, in the
judgment of the camp physician, he was fit only for the hospital, and he
entered the hospital, to be removed in a few weeks as a corpse.
“There are many such instances of cruelty to young convicts, white and
black, for which the State has provided no better reformatory than the
chain gang, and yet people of the South are a humane people, abhorring
cruelty.
“The final argument for the extension and complete adjustment of the
juvenile court system in the South and for the building and proper
maintenance of model reformatories is the development of the factory
villages of the South, with their system of family labor, including the
labor of the child. There are now some seven hundred or eight hundred of
these communities in the South, either entirely separate from other
communities or forming a separate section of our municipalities.
“It has been amply proved that the ranks of our criminal population are
not being recruited from the schools, but from the army of neglected
children, especially the army of the toiling children. It is a matter of
commonest complaint of the managers of our factories where children are
employed that both the boys and the girls, especially the boys, so soon
become unmanageable.
“Their arguments in opposition to child labor laws really amount to the
plea that these children of the factory villages must be sentenced to
labor in the mills, either by day or by night, in order that they be
kept out of mischief.
“I hold that the child labor system or the family labor system--in the
one case the mother being kept at work and away from the duties of the
home; in the other case, the children early developing, as
bread-winners, first the spirit of independence, then of irreverence,
disobedience and finally hoodlumism--is responsible for this state of
affairs.
“We are making progress in the South in the correction of this abuse. At
the same time there is urgent need for the proper handling of these
children of the factory districts, under authority of the law, when they
manifest their disposition to recruit the criminal classes.”
On the question, “What Should the Probation Officer Do for the Child?”
Mr. Thurston said: “Two theories are now in conflict in the United
States, one that it is enough to look after the child thirty, sixty or
ninety days, keep it out of court, and then discharge it; the other,
that if something is wrong with the child’s intellectual, physical and
moral adjustment, this must be found and, if possible, corrected.
“The delinquent child is an embryo enemy of society as now organized,”
he said. “The duty of the probation officer is far more than the
collecting of fines, receiving reports and carrying out explicit court
orders. He has an opportunity to get in close touch with the youthful
criminals as few can.
“Of course, the child should be made to obey the law and live up to
court orders. There can be no two opinions on this point, but mere
external conformity is not real obedience, and the probation officer
must strive to reach the sources of the child’s delinquency.
“It is therefore his duty to study each delinquent child as the
physician studies his patient. Successful diagnosis is essential to
intelligent service. It is not enough that a probation officer visit a
child regularly. He must visit with definite plans in mind and make
definite record of the same with results. At least these phases of the
child’s life must be constantly attended to.”
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 16
MORNING SESSION
At ten o’clock the Wardens’ Association held its meeting, with Vice
President W. H. Haskell, of Kansas, in the chair. After paying a
beautiful tribute to the deceased President, Warden C. E. Haddox, of
West Virginia, Mr. Haskell introduced the Hon. R. W. Withers, of the
Virginia House of Delegates, who spoke on “Convict Labor on the Public
Highways,” and explained in detail the workings of the Lassiter-Withers
road law in his State.
“The roads there used to be described in very uncomplimentary terms, but
now there are many miles of good macadam roads in the commonwealth,
thanks to the wisdom of the State and the strong arms of the convicts.
“No prisoner with a sentence longer than five years is allowed to work
on the roads, and jail prisoners are worked in separate gangs and
without stripes. There are twelve gangs now working in different parts
of the State. A prisoner awaiting trial may work also, if he so elect.
If he is afterwards acquitted he is allowed fifty cents a day for every
day that he has worked. If he is fined this amount may go toward the
payment of the fine, and if he is imprisoned the time counts on his
sentence. The success has far exceeded the expectations of the most
sanguine. The men are healthier, happier, better morally; and the
counties are getting good roads.
“The State employs an expert engineer at $3,000 and three consulting
engineers without pay. The county furnishes material and tools, the
State labor and brains. The county makes an application for convict
labor for a certain road to the Highway Commission and the road is
surveyed, a careful estimate given, blue prints prepared and the county
then considers the matter. If it accepts the estimate a requisition for
convicts is made and they are put into tents or portable iron cabins,
where they are housed at night and in stormy weather. At night a guard
with a rifle is on duty, but each convict is also chained by the leg. By
day they wear no chains, but are under the surveillance of a gun.
“When they first come from the prison they are not very strong. None of
them is allowed to do more than ten hours work a day, less in winter.
After a few weeks they show a great change in appearance and in
strength, and statistics show that with the better food and the fresh
air they increase in weight, on an average, fifteen pounds. Last year in
the penitentiary in a population of twelve hundred there were
twenty-five deaths, and of those nineteen died from tuberculosis. Most
of the prisoners are negroes, and tuberculosis is the most deadly
disease among them. During the same period in a road force of seven
hundred and eighty there was not a death.
“But another thing is important. You cannot reform men without healthy
occupation. Crime comes chiefly from idleness, and inability to work
from lack of training. This gives healthful work. Not a man has been
found who, after trying it, would not prefer the outdoor work to
remaining in the penitentiary. The common phrase is, “The road for me!”
Under the old plan the State paid $150,000 a year to keep these men in
idleness, and there was nothing to show for it. Now a smaller amount is
used with the result of good roads.
“The roads cost on an average about $3,000 a mile. It costs about
seventy cents a day for each man, to feed, guard, clothe, transport and
recapture him; forty cents a day for feeding, guarding and transporting.
At present there are four hundred and fifty men in the twelve camps, of
whom more than half are jail men. The long-time convicts naturally
become the best road builders, but the short-time men can do a great
deal. In twelve months there were but eighteen escapes, and eleven of
the fugitives were recaptured. Stone crushers, furnished by the county,
are used, but all the work save running the engine is done by the
convicts. Virginia furnishes abundance of stone. The men get it out of
the quarry, ready for crushing, and after it is crushed pile it by the
road ready for spreading. They also, of course, do the grading and
surfacing.
“On Sundays the local preachers hold services in each camp and reading
matter is provided, but there is no schooling. Whenever possible the
road is cut off from public travel while the convicts are at work.
“The system of conditional pardon exists in Virginia. It is granted
after they have served half their term if they are recommended by the
board, but each man must have honest labor provided for him before he
can thus be paroled. This still applies to these men. If they are sick
or injured the county physician looks after them. This road-making
experiment has been working eighteen months continuously because the
climate is so mild the men can work outdoors all winter.”
Warden W. H. Moyer, of the Federal Prison, Atlanta, Ga., read a paper on
the question, “Should Indiscriminate Visiting to Prisons and Prisoners
Be Permitted?” The speaker distinguished between indiscriminate visits
to _prisons_ and to _prisoners_. He declared himself opposed to both.
Visits to _prisons_ are usually made only to satisfy a morbid curiosity,
and often result in unjust criticism, destructive of public confidence.
They should therefore be prohibited, excepting by those who are engaged
in educational or charitable work. Visitors to _prisoners_ are rarely
prompted by morbid curiosity. With very rare exceptions such visitors
are relatives. But only in specially meritorious cases should even these
be admitted.
“To the young man of fine sensibilities a visit from his wife or mother
would be deplorable. It may seem anomalous to speak of convicts with
fine sensibilities, but the expression is perfectly proper and entirely
applicable. There are such convicts, and that fact cannot be too well
recognized.”
The speaker illustrated this view by relating the example of a young
wife who at first decided to reside near the penitentiary in which her
husband was confined, but who finally wisely decided to await his return
to their distant home rather than to meet him in convict garb and amid
a prison environment.
“Such instances are not isolated; there are many others of a similar
nature which have occurred frequently in my experience, but, after all,
they are at most exceptional, and merely establish what I have already
stated, that a hard and fast rule absolutely prohibiting visits to
prisoners is not now practicable, although such a rule would be
justified in a very large proportion of actual cases.
“Answering, now, the question which is the subject of this paper, I
submit my opinion that indiscriminate visits to the prison and the
prisoners should not be permitted.”
AFTERNOON SESSION
Col. Joseph S. Pugmire, of Toronto, Ontario, submitted the report of the
Committee on Discharged Prisoners. He said in part: “The day of the
prisoner’s discharge is a critical time. So much depends upon how he
starts life again. The attitude of society toward the released prisoner
often hinders those who are trying to save him, and makes his lot hard.
They say: ‘There goes a criminal; give him a wide berth; he is not to be
trusted, but is coming out to do what he did before.’ I do not excuse
his wrong, but I plead for such to have a chance. It is not enough to
lecture him and even pity him. We must go beyond that. What impresses me
with regard to these men (and I have dealt with thousands) is not that
they are resentful and vicious, but that they are as helpless as babes,
powerless to help themselves.
“I contend that we are doing society a great injustice, as well as the
prisoner himself, to allow him to step into liberty again without some
careful oversight. What the discharged prisoner needs is a real friend
who will give him the opportunity to rise and do better on the causeway
of redemption, meeting him at the prison doors, arranging a helpful
environment and providing him with employment of some kind.”
In his address on “The Duty of Society to the Discharged Prisoner,”
Bishop Samuel Fallows, of Chicago, emphasized two points: 1. The
discharged prisoner is a man and a brother; therefore our sympathy must
go out to him. 2. Society must do its utmost to rehabilitate the one who
has infracted the law, and above all to give him employment. If a man is
willing to work it is the best evidence that his reformation has begun.
Statistics show that the majority of those who are again usefully
employed turn out well.
In the discussion which followed, Warden Wolfer, of Minnesota, made the
suggestion that prisoners should be allowed increased earnings for
overtime, to be applied to the support of the families of married men
and to give single men a start in business when they leave prison. In
this he was strongly seconded by Dr. F. Emory Lyon, Superintendent
Central Howard Association, Chicago, and Warden McClaughry, of Kansas;
and the latter was subsequently instructed to prepare a resolution on
the subject to be submitted to the congress.