If the jails and lockups in our country--4,000 or 5,000 in number--are
in truth, as they have been often aptly termed, in most cases
compulsory schools of crime, maintained at the public expense, we
shall have from this quarter alone an accession to the criminal
classes in each decade of perhaps 50,000 trained experts in crime.
Surely, almost any change in dealing with the young, with the
beginners in lawbreaking, would be an improvement on the prevailing
system. Jails and prisons, so constructed and managed as to keep
separate their inmates, would afford an adequate remedy for the evil.
Until this can be done it would be far better to cut down largely the
number of arrests and committals of the young.
[Illustration: United States Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kansas; the
best and most modern Penitentiary in the United States if not in the
world.]
"It is absurd to argue that life in the penitentiary is conducive to
moral betterment, for all the conditions are against this cheerful
theory. In jail a man meets criminals. The whole system makes for
greater criminality on the release of the prisoner. He has time to
plan fresh onslaughts on society. His incarceration further embitters
him against the world. He looks with malicious envy on those who
have escaped the punishment which he has had to suffer. When he is
turned out of prison he is ready for further felonies--only now he has
learned more caution, and for this reason he is more dangerous than he
was when he entered the institution."
When a man has served two prison sentences without being convinced of
the futility of the attempt to live without honest work, it is evident
that he has abandoned all idea of being a good citizen and has made up
his mind to prey upon society.
"Then," says Mr. Wooldridge, "moderate sentences having produced no
good effect upon him, either to deter or reform, why should he not be
taken permanently out of society and put where he cannot harm others
or wrong himself by committing crime? No objection," he concluded,
"can be found to this method."