By Hastings H Hart.
Director Child Caring Work, Russell Sage Foundation.
[This very illuminating book review of “Within Prison Walls,” a book
by Thomas Mott Osborne, has, by agreement, been published jointly
in _The Delinquent_ and The Survey. The editor of _The Delinquent_
had at first planned to give to several persons the pleasant task
of reviewing Mr. Osborne’s important book. But Dr. Hart has written
so graphic a review that we shall be content with this. The second
article in this month’s magazine follows logically this review.]
In his book, “Within Prison Walls,” “Tom Brown,” (Hon. Thomas Mott
Osborne) has given a remarkable study of the mind of the convict.
This book should be read in connection with Donald Lowrie’s book, “My
Life In Prison,” which portrays the prisoner from the vantage point
of actual and prolonged experience but without the advantage of Mr.
Osborne’s wider knowledge of human life and human philosophy.
Mr. Osborne’s study is an astonishing achievement for a single week.
To break the crust of officialism and without legal authority to
command the co-operation of unwilling prison officials; to overcome
the suspicions and the reticence of the prisoners, to secure their
general co-operation in his plan, and to gain admission to the inner
circles of convict life; and then to really put himself in the place of
a prisoner and to realize how he feels, how he thinks and to catch his
viewpoint--to do all this in a week was an astonishing piece of work.
Of course, his work was fragmentary and incomplete, but the writer has
known prison officers who have associated with prisoners for years
without obtaining such a knowledge of their mental processes as Mr.
Osborne gained in a week.
It is much to be regretted that Mr. Julian Hawthorne did not seize the
opportunity of his experience at Atlanta and apply his literary genius
to record and analyze the effects of prison life upon himself and his
associates. He might have written a classic equal to De Quincey’s
“Confessions of an Opium Eater,” but he choose instead to retell the
gossip and scandals of the State prisons, true and false, as given him
by second and third-term convicts.
Mr. Osborne, having been appointed by Governor Sulzer as chairman of
a commission to recommend improvements in the prison system of the
State of New York, resolved to become a voluntary prisoner at Auburn
and to put himself, as nearly as possible, in the place of the actual
convict. He frankly declared his purpose in the prison chapel, asking
the co-operation of the officers and prisoners to make his experience
as realistic as possible; and they took him at his word.
He entered the prison gates in citizen’s clothes and was registered by
the receiving officer as “Thomas Brown, 33,333x.” He was conducted by
an officer to the tailor shop, where in a corner of the shop without
any screens and in full view of all passers in and out, are three
porcelain lined iron bath tubs side by side. He stripped, bathed and
dressed in the conventional prison suit and was supplied with a “cake
of soap, one towel and a bible.” He was admonished by the Principal
Keeper (“P. K.”), was given a copy of the prison rules and was assigned
to work in the basket shop. During the first two days he was catechized
as to his past life, occupations, habits, etc., by the principal
keeper, the chaplain, the doctor, and the clerk of the Bertillon
identification system, with much repetition.
It had been agreed with the warden that Tom Brown should be placed,
at first, with the “Idle Company,” a group of prisoners who were
characterized by one of the officers as “the toughest bunch of fellows
in the prison.” He was disappointed therefore when he found himself
in the basket shop where the men were courteous, communicative and
helpful, and was astonished after two days to discover that this was
the identical “worst bunch in the prison” of which he had been told.
Tom Brown was assigned to a cell 4 by 7½ feet and 7½ feet high.
(Many of the cells are only 3½ feet wide). Many cells of this kind
contain two men each. The cell contained a stool, a folding shelf, a
folding bed, a wash basin, a tin cup, a broom, a small wooden locker,
and an electric bulb.
Tom Brown swung open his cell door at a signal, marched in line,
carried out and emptied his own cell bucket, ate prison fare in the
prison dining-room (including prison hash), did his stint in the basket
shop with refractory material which made his fingers sore, and served
on a detail moving railroad cars with block and tackle. He received
from his fellow prisoners donations of sugar, of doubtful origin, for
his oatmeal. He received communications and newspapers from numerous
sources by underground communication. He learned to talk without moving
his lips and he found himself instinctively joining with his associates
“agin the government.” He details most interestingly the petty items
that make up the life of the prisoner and revealed how much unhappiness
may be caused by things which appear insignificant in themselves, such
as the collapsing of the folding cot, under inexperienced hands, after
the extinguishment of the lights.
Tom Brown reveals startlingly the horrors of prison life to the man of
refined sensibilities--the shock of the first night of cell life when
the lights went out.
“The bars are so black that they seem to close in upon you,--to come
nearer and nearer, until they press upon your forehead.... You can
feel the blackness of those iron bars across your closed eyelids; they
seem to sear themselves into your very soul. It is the most terrible
sensation I ever experienced. I understand now the prison pallor; I
understand the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I understand the
high nervous tension which makes anything possible. How does any man
remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone grave, day after day, night
after night?”
He tells the ghastly story of the collapse of a poor old prisoner in a
shop:
“In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful fragment of humanity is
placed gently upon it and is carried out of the shop into which he
will probably never return. The look on his face was one not easy to
forget in its white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to typify
long years of stolid endurance until the worn-out old frame had simply
crumpled under the accumulated load.”
He experienced the humiliation of being the object of pursuit by
pertinacious curiosity-hunters and camera-fiends; yet the change in his
appearance was so great that he escaped recognition by personal friends
who were watching carefully for him. The crowning horror he describes
as follows:
“The cell house has settled down for the night. Only a few muffled
sounds make the stillness more distinctly felt. Then, suddenly, the
unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying uproar. It is too far
away to hear at first anything with distinctness; it is all a confused
and hideous mass of shouting--a shouting first of a few, then of more,
then of many voices. I have never heard anything more dreadful--in the
full meaning of the word--full of dread. My heart is thumping like a
trip hammer and the cold shivers run up and down my back.
“I jump to the door of the cell, pressing my ear close to the cold
iron bars. Then I can distinguish a few words sounding against the
background of the confused outcry: ‘Stop that!’ ‘Leave them alone!’
‘Damn you, stop that!’ Then some dull thuds; I even fancy that I hear
something like a groan, along with the continued confused and violent
shouting. What can it be!
“While I am perfectly aware that I am not in the least likely to be
harmed, I am shivering close akin to a chill of actual terror. If
anyone near at hand were to give vent to a sudden yell I feel that I
might easily lose my self control and shout and bang my door with the
rest of them.
“The cries continue, accompanied with other noises that I cannot make
out. Then my attention is attracted by whispering at one of the lower
windows.... It is so dark outside that I can see nothing, not even the
dim shapes of the whisperers....
“The shouts die down. There are a few more vague and uncertain
sounds--all the more dreadful for being uncertain; somewhere an iron
door clangs! Then stillness follows, like that of the grave.”
Tom Brown reported this mysterious occurrence to the warden who
promised to investigate. Next day the warden “has inquired into it, he
says, and found it was only a case of a troublesome fellow sent up from
Sing Sing, who was making some little disturbance in the gallery. After
they had admonished him he wouldn’t stop, so they had to take him down
to the jail. When the officer entered his cell, he threw his bucket at
the officer and there was a little row. ‘I’m inclined to think,’ adds
the warden, ‘that he may be a little bit crazy, and I’m ed further
investigation, telling the warden that, from information which has come
to him, he thinks that the officers are “trying to slip one over” on
him.’
From his fellow prisoners Tom Brown obtained what he believes to be
the correct version of the incident, as follows: “There had lately
been sent up from Sing Sing a young prisoner ... pale, thin and
undersized; weight about 120 pounds; age 21.” On charge of impertinence
to an officer he had been kept in a dark punishment cell five days,
on bread and water. (The allowance of water was 3 gills per day).
He was sent back to work but was unfit and next day remained in his
cell ill, but “in spite of his repeated requests, the doctor was not
summoned. The reason probably was that he was in the state known in
prison as bughouse--that is to say at least flighty, if not temporarily
out of his mind”.... “In the evening, he created some disturbance by
calling out remarks which violated the quiet of the cell-block.” “I
understand,” Tom Brown says, “something of this sort: ‘If you want to
kill me, why don’t you do it at once and not torture me to death?’ He
seemed to be possessed with the idea that his life was in danger.”
“Now here was a young man, hardly more than a lad, in a sick and
nervous condition that had produced temporary derangement of mind.
What course did the system take in dealing with that suffering being!
Two keepers opened his cell, made a rush for him and knocked him
down.... During the brief scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the
bucket were overturned. Then, after being handcuffed, the unresisting
if not unconscious youth was flung out of his cell with such violence
that, if it had not been for a convict trusty who stood by, he would
have slipped under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the stone
floor of the corridor four stories below, and been either killed or
crippled for life.
“Then the two keepers, being reinforced by a third, dragged their
victim roughly down stairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him
on the way, and carried him before the Principal Keeper, who promptly
sent him down to the jail again.” (i.e., the punishment cells).
“This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed; and the loud
protests and outcries of the prisoners whose cells were near by,
... were the sounds I heard far away in my cell.” A trusty who saw
most of the occurrence “so far forget his position as to venture the
opinion that it was ‘a pretty raw deal’. This remark was overheard by
an officer; and the trusty at once received the warning that he had
better keep his mouth shut and not talk about what didn’t concern him.
“If it is realized that these officers have what almost amounts to the
power of life and death over the convicts it can be understood that
such a warning was not one to be lightly disregarded.”
After three days further detention in the “jail” the prisoner was
transferred to the hospital, where he received proper care, but “he had
at first no clear recollection of the brutal treatment of which he had
been the victim.”
An interesting side light is thrown upon the official side of prison
life by an episode connected with this case of punishment. Immediately
after the episode, Tom Brown questioned one of the officers who refused
to answer the questions. On the following morning the same officer came
to Tom Brown, who writes:
“This morning he is exceedingly bland.... He enters upon a long
rigmarole, the gist of which is how necessary it is for a man to
do his duty.... Then he casually turns the conversation around to
show how closely connected he is to various admirers of my father
and myself, and gracefully insinuates that he also shares these
feelings.... It is borne in upon me that he not only knows all about
last night’s disturbance, but that he was probably concerned in it,
and is now deliberately trying to switch me off the track.”
Another side light upon the official side of prison life is that Tom
Brown discovered that prisoners under punishment were never released
from the jail on Sunday. When he made an appeal to the Principal Keeper
to transfer the sick boy from the dark cell to the hospital, the
Principal Keeper objected strenuously, but when the prison physician
joined in the appeal, “finally the P. K. with an air of triumph brings
out his last and conclusive argument. ‘There is a great deal in what
you say, gentlemen, and I should like to oblige you, Mr. Osborne, but
you see this is Sunday; and you know we never let ’em out of jail on
Sunday.’ ... ‘Sunday!’ I exclaimed. ‘In Heaven’s name, P. K., what is
Sunday? Isn’t it the Lord’s Day? Very well, then. Do you mean to tell
me you actually think if you take a poor sick boy, with an open wound
in his ear, out of a close, dirty, vermin-filled, dark cell, where he
isn’t allowed to wash, and has but three gills of water a day ... and
put him back into the hospital, where the Doctor says he belongs--do
you really think that such an act of mercy would be displeasing to
God?’ ‘Why,’ he gasps, ‘that’s true. I think you’re right. We put ’em
in on Sunday; why shouldn’t we take ’em out?’”
Mr. Osborne certified that this story is fully corroborated by careful
inquiry from different men and comments as follows:
“Doubtless some will say that the statements of convicts are not to
be believed. That touches upon one of the very worst features of the
situation. No discrimination is ever made. It is not admitted, that
while one convict may be a liar, another may be entirely truthful;
that men differ in prison exactly as in the world outside. It is held,
quite as a matter of course, that they are all liars, and an officer’s
word will be taken against that of a convict or any number of
convicts. The result is that the officers feel themselves practically
immune from any evil consequences to them from their own acts of
injustice or violence. What follows this is inevitable. Our prisons
have often been the scenes of intolerable brutality, for which it has
been useless for the victims to seek redress. They can only cower and
endure in silence; or be driven into insanity by a hopeless revolt
against the System....
“The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the
right to be believed; not even the right to reasonable considerate
treatment. He is exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever
outrage and inconsiderate and brutal keeper may choose to inflict
upon him; and you cannot under the present system guard against such
inconsiderate and brutal treatment.
“I should not like to be understood as asserting that all keepers are
brutal or even a majority of them.” ... But, “we must recognize, in
dealing with our Prison System, that many really well-meaning men
will operate a system, in which the brutality of an officer goes
unpunished, in a brutal manner.
“The reason of this is not far to seek--a reason which also obtained
in the slave system. The most common and powerful impulse that drives
an ordinary, well-meaning man to brutality is fear.... In prison,
where each officer believes that his life is in constant danger, the
keeper tends to become callous; the sense of that danger blunts his
higher qualities.... Undoubtedly there is basis for his fear, for some
of those men are dangerous, rendered more so by the nerve-racking
System. I can conceive no more terribly disintegrating moral
experience than that of being a keeper over convicts.
“I am not now in any way disputing the necessity of a keeper being
constantly on his guard; I am not saying whether this view of things
is right or wrong; and when I use the word fear I do not mean
cowardice--a very different thing, for a brave man can feel fear. I am
simply trying to point out that in prison, as elsewhere, when men are
dominated by fear, brutality is the evitable result.”
In view of this episode, Tom Brown determined to undergo the horrors
of the “Jail.” To this the prison warden very reluctantly consented.
It was agreed that he should be treated exactly like a convict under
punishment except that a “jail suit” should be cleansed for his use,
whereas the ordinary prisoners use them interchangeably, without
cleaning. Accordingly, Tom Brown suddenly knocked off work, declaring
that the material furnished was unfit and he wasn’t going to work any
more anyhow. His shop captain, finding him obdurate, had no option
and was obliged to send him to the Principal Keeper who, finding him
still obdurate, reluctantly ordered him to the “jail,” which Tom Brown
describes as follows:
“A vaulted stone dungeon, about 50 by 20 feet, having on one side
the death chamber for electrocuting murderers, and on the other
side the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day.
It is absolutely bare, except for one wooden bench along the north
end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells, of
solid sheet iron; floor, sides, back and roof. They are studded with
rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time that Warden
Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; the inmates slept
on the bare iron and the rivets! The cells are about 4½ by 8 feet
and 9 feet high. There is a feeble attempt at ventilation--a small
hole in the roof of the cell, which does not ventilate. Practically
there is no air in the cell except what percolates in through the
extra heavily grated door.” Two windows in the vaulted room outside
admit some light but, except on a bright sunny day, an electric light
is necessary in order to see the inside of the cell. “Up to the time
of Supt. Riley’s and Warden Rattigan’s coming into office the supply
of water for each prisoner was limited to one gill for 24 hours.”
There is a sink in the outer room but “the sink was not used for the
prisoners to wash for the simple reason that the prisoners in the jail
were not allowed to wash.”
On entrance, Tom Brown was instructed to take off his clothes and
put on the jail suit which had been cleansed in anticipation of his
coming. He says: “If these are the clothes which have been carefully
washed and cleaned for me, I should like to examine--at a safe
distance--the ordinary ones. They must be filthy beyond words.” He
was carefully searched by the captain to discover whether he had any
weapon or instrument upon his person. His handkerchief was taken from
him, presumably to avoid danger of suicide, because a prisoner once
strangled himself with his handkerchief. He was given a small tin water
can.
The cell contained no seat, bed, mattress or bedding--nothing except a
papier-mache bucket. A convict trusty handed in through a slot in the
door a slice of bread and inserted the spout of a tin funnel through
which he poured into the prisoner’s can exactly a gill of water to last
through the night. The officers and the trusty departed and very soon
five other prisoners in adjacent cells made themselves known. Then
followed an animated discussion on prison fare; ethics of the jail;
comparative merits of transatlantic liners, politics, prison reform,
etc. Tom Brown says: “On the whole, more intelligent, instructive and
entertaining conversation it has seldom been my lot to enjoy.” To his
surprise he finds that these men, presumably the worst in the prison,
are human and even sympathetic. One has been sent down “because he
had talked back to one of the citizen instructors;” two others for
a little scrap which involved no special bitterness; a fourth for
hitting a convict with a crow bar because he had called him a bad
name; the fifth was a sick boy whose ear was still discharging after
an operation. He had been sent down for making trouble in the hospital
and was not allowed a handkerchief to take care of the discharge from
his ear. All prisoners punished, whatever the character of the offense,
received the same treatment and in addition to confinement on bread and
water were fined 50 cents for each day of confinement; the fine to be
worked out at the rate of 1½ cents per day, allowed each prisoner as
“earnings.” The prisoner also has to wear a mark upon his sleeve from
that day forward indicating that he has been punished and, if he has
previously earned a good-conduct bar by a year’s perfect record, that
bar is taken from him and, finally, some portion, if not all, of the
commutation time which he may have gained by previous good conduct is
forfeited. Manifestly a prison punishment is a serious matter to the
convict.
After four hours confinement Tom Brown was visited by two prison
officers, it having been understood that he would not stay longer, but
to their astonishment he refused to go, having determined to experience
the full limit of jail life. They left him very reluctantly. As the
night wore on he says:
“Now that all chance of escape is gone I begin to feel more
than before the pressure of the horror of this place; the close
confinement; the bad air; the terrible darkness, the bodily
discomforts, the uncleanness, the lack of water. My throat is parched,
but I dare not drink more than a sip at a time, for my one gill--what
is left of it--must last until morning. And then there is the constant
whir-whir-whirring of the dynamo next door and the death chamber at
our backs.”
The prisoners seek to mitigate their misery. One asks: “Say fellows!
what would you say now to a nice thick juicy steak with fried
potatoes?” One “sings an excellent ragtime ditty;” another “follows
with the Toreador’s song from Carmen, sung in a sweet, true, light
tenor voice that shows real love and appreciation of music.
“This is the place where I had expected to meet the violent and
dangerous criminals; but what do I find! A genial young Irishman, as
pleasant company as I have ever encountered, and a sweet voiced boy
singing Carmen.”
These entertainments over, the night drags on. The wooden floor proves
a hard bed until a prisoner instructs him how to make a pillow of his
felt shoes and his shirt. Bed bugs infest the place and after killing
one, he imagines multitudes. The sick prisoner accidentally upsets his
water can and soon becomes delirious, seeming likely to become a raving
maniac. There is no way to summon an officer, but one of the prisoners
with amazing tact and patience soothes his agitation until he finally
falls asleep.
At last Brown falls into a doze but is speedily awakened by a
patrolling officer who awakens the prisoners at 12:30 and 4:30 A. M.
but refuses his request to renew the water spilled by the sick prisoner
because it is “’gainst the rules.”
At 6 A. M. on Sunday, Tom Brown is released from his punishment,
convinced that the “System” is illogical, antiquated, barbarous, cruel
and destructive to the character of prisoners and officers alike. He
is exhausted, body and soul; but he finds strength to make a chapel
address to the prisoners, which must have been memorable. The prisoners
are tremendously impressed by the fact that this man of education,
culture and wealth has voluntarily endured for six days the same
treatment as themselves, in the endeavor to understand their situation
and, if possible, to improve it; they recognize that the cell, the
march, the shock and the dungeon affect the man of culture and
refinement more keenly than the ordinary prisoner; but the thing which
affects them most profoundly is the vicarious character of his act.
They would almost apply to it the words of the prophet Isaiah: “Surely
he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
Mr. Osborne is not content to discover and reveal the vices of the
prison system but he seeks a practical remedy. To this end he has
taken counsel, not only with the prison authorities and students
of penological science, but also with the prisoners who live under
the system and, some of whom, are keenly alive to its destructive
influence. A prisoner in the shops gave him the basic idea. He says:
“For some years I have felt that the principles of self-government
might possibly be the key to the solution of the prison problem;
but as yet I have not been able to see clearly how to begin its
application. There have seemed to be almost insuperable difficulties.
In this connection Jack” (Jack Murphy, a prisoner) “made a suggestion
which supplies a most important link in the chain.
“In discussing the various aspects of prison life we reached the
subject of the long and dreary Sundays. Jack agrees with all those
with whom I have talked that the long stretch in the cells, from
the conclusion of the chapel service, between ten-thirty and eleven
o’clock Sunday morning until seven Monday morning--over twenty hours,
is a fearful strain both physical and mental upon the prisoners.
“‘Well, Jack,’ I say, ‘from what I have heard Superintendent Riley
say, I feel sure he would like to give the men some sort of exercise
or recreation on Sunday afternoons; but how could it be managed! You
can’t ask the officers to give up their day off, and you don’t think
the men could be trusted by themselves, do you!’
“‘Why not?’ says Jack.
“I look at him enquiringly.
“‘Why, look here, Tom. I know this place through and through. I know
these men; I’ve studied ’em for years. And I tell you that the big
majority of these fellows in here will be square with you if you give
’em a chance. The trouble is they don’t treat us on the level. I
could tell you all sorts of frame-ups they give us. Now if you trust
a man, he will try and do what’s right; sure he will. That is, most
men will. Of course, there are a few that won’t. There are some dirty
curs--degenerates--that will make trouble, but there ain’t so very
many of those. Look at that road work! Haven’t the men done fine! How
many prisoners have you out on the roads! About 130; and you ain’t had
a single runaway yet. And if there should be any runaways you can just
bet we’d show ’em what we think about it.’
“‘Do you really think, Jack, that the Superintendent and the Warden
could trust you fellows out in the yard on Sunday afternoons in
summer!’
“‘Sure they could,’ responds Jack.... ‘And there could be a band
concert.... And it would be a good sight better for us than being
locked in our cells all day. You’d have fewer fights on Monday, I know
that.’
“‘But how about the discipline! Would you let everybody out in the
yard! What about those bad actors who don’t know how to behave! Won’t
they quarrel and fight and try to escape?’
“‘But don’t you see, Tom, that they couldn’t do that without putting
the whole thing on the bum, and depriving the rest of us of our
privileges? You needn’t be afraid we couldn’t handle those fellows all
right! Or why not let out only those men who have a good conduct bar!
That’s it!’ He continues, enthusiastically warming up to the subject,
‘That’s it, Tom, a good conduct league, and give the privilege of
Sunday afternoons to the members of the league.’”
This suggestion of Jack Murphy bore practical fruit. Soon after his
“discharge,” Mr. Osborne, with the co-operation of the Superintendent
of Prisons and the Warden of Auburn Prison, succeeded in establishing
a Good Conduct League composed of prisoners, with officers elected by
their fellow prisoners. The prisoners are given the liberty of the yard
on Sunday afternoons, with a greatly reduced force of guards. They
march to and from their cells and their work under the direction of
prisoners. They prepare entertainments with the permission and approval
of their officers. This plan has now been in operation for several
months without the slightest disorder or accident and with marked
improvement in the spirit and behaviour of the men.
This inspiring demonstration represents no new discovery by Jack Murphy
or by Mr. Osborne. It is only a re-discovery of what was practiced
by Captain Alexander Machonochie at Norfolk Island with transported
British convicts seventy years ago. The writer saw Colonel Gardner
Tufts doing similar things with convicts at Concord, Massachusetts,
nearly thirty years ago, where prisoners were carrying on evening
literary societies in perfect order without the presence of an officer.
He saw similar things done by Captain Hickox at the Michigan State
Prison more than twenty years ago, where the old chaplain gathered
200 men in a single room for an evening assembly with no officer
present but himself. This same principal is being worked out in the
State prisons of Oregon and Colorado, in the Ohio State Reformatory at
Mansfield and in Doctor Gilmour’s splendid work at Guelph, Ontario. In
all of these places it has been found that when you build a wall around
a man he immediately wants to climb over it and that when you turn him
loose and say, “I trust you and I know that you will not betray me,”
there is almost always an instant response.
Mr. Osborne believes that this is the first instance of the application
of the democratic principle to the management of convicts in a large
convict prison, and that the Auburn experiment differs from others
in that the prisoners there themselves originated the movement. He
says that “the good conduct of the prisoners is in reality an outward
expression of an outward spiritual impulse.” “Hence the name, ‘Mutual
Welfare League,’; hence the motto, ‘Do good, make good.’ By doing good
to others the man makes good for himself.”
Mr. Osborne’s demonstrations make it clear that those who believe
that severity is an essential part of prison methods need not worry.
Every convict is punished. When you pillory a man before the world as
a criminal, transport him by public conveyance and march him through
the streets in irons, put him behind prison walls, deprive him of his
liberty, subject him absolutely to the will of another man who holds
practically the powers of life and death, lock him in an ill-ventilated
prison cell, 4½ by 7 feet (perhaps with an uncongenial cell mate),
dress him in prison garb, exhibit him to curious visitors at 25 cents
per head, subject him to strict compliance with thirty to fifty
exacting rules on pain of loss of privileges and increase of term,
restrict his correspondence to two censored letters per month, permit
him to see his wife and children only in the presence of an officer and
clad in prison garb--under these circumstances no one need question
that the prisoner is punished, even though he may have the privilege
of listening to a band concert and watching a baseball game once a
week, conversing with his fellow convicts in subdued tones at meals and
witnessing a moving picture show once or twice a month. Let it never be
forgotten that the convict is punished!
Those who ridicule or condemn Mr. Osborne’s adventure make a mistake.
It may have been sensational, but there was need of a sensation. His
experiment was valuable because it was sincere and because it has
brought out the truth. But it has brought out only part of the truth.
We wish that Mr. Osborne would secure an opportunity to be installed as
prison guard in some one of the great prisons of the United States like
the Illinois State Penitentiary, the Indiana State Prison of Michigan
City, or the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa. Let him go incog., unknown
to anyone except the prison warden, and let him come into the same
intimate familiarity with the life and thinking of the prison guard
as that which he has acquired in the case of the prison convict. He
has already discovered the demoralizing tendency of life of the prison
guard, and has discovered its chief flaw, namely, the ruling principle
of fear, to which must be added the lack of psychological understanding
of the prisoner and the entire lack of any adequate preliminary
training. There must be taken into account also the fact that there
exists among prison guards, in an exaggerated degree, the sentiment
that it is dishonorable to “snitch” upon a fellow officer and, while
a superior officer is likely to report a subordinate for cruelty or
misconduct, the exposure of such actions by a guard of equal rank is
very unusual. The difficulty can only be overcome by improving the
personnel and raising the moral standards of prison guards. The day is
not far distant when training schools for prison guards will hold the
same relation to prison work which training schools for nurses hold to
well-conducted hospitals.
We wish that Mr. Osborne, or someone equally discerning, might put
himself in the place of the convict all the way through and tell an
equally convincing story. Let him go forth with a five-dollar discharge
suit on his back so marked as to betray to every passing policeman the
shop where it was made. Let him go out with five dollars or possibly
ten dollars in his pocket to satisfy a sharpened appetite and find a
job in these hard times. Let him meet the watchful policeman, or the
plain clothes man, who advises him that “We’re on to you.” Let him
meet the discharged convict who solicits the loan of a dollar with
implied threat of exposure. Let him take a job in good faith and render
faithful service, only to be discharged at the end of the second week
because somebody has given him away.
Let him be arrested, guilty or not guilty, as a suspect of some
crime. Let him be subjected to the inquisition of “the third degree,”
regardless of the rights which are supposed to be guaranteed to every
citizen that he shall be deemed to be innocent until proven to be
guilty. Let him experience the starvation, buffeting insults and
detectives’ lies which are incident to this inquisition.
Then, by all means, let Mr. Osborne’s representative await trial in a
county jail and discover the beauties of a System which is twice as
vicious as the Auburn Prison System which he describes. Thrust him
into a steel cage and exhibit him to all comers like a wild beast in a
menagerie. Let him share his cell with five other prisoners in a place
where he cannot keep himself free from vermin, where he cannot take a
bath, and force him into intimate association, day and night, with a
mob of prisoners who are kept in idleness, with no occupation except
to corrupt one another and to concoct plans to escape by bribing or
mobbing the jailer or by cutting out of jail.
Let him stand trial in a court whose judge is overwhelmed with
business or is fixed in the tradition that severity is the only remedy
for crime, with a prosecuting attorney whose reputation depends upon
making as many convictions as possible. Let him have assigned to his
defense an attorney who, because of inexperience, incompetency, or
indifference, cannot present his case properly, in order that his
innocence may be demonstrated, if he is innocent, or any mitigating
facts may be made clear if he is guilty.
Or let Mr. Osborne’s representative essay the role of a paroled
prisoner, going out as a ward of the State under the direction of a
parole officer, in order that he may discover the efficiency and equity
of the Parole Board, the fidelity and good-will of the parole officer,
the patience and fair dealing of the employer, and the advantages and
disadvantages generally of the parole system.
It is a good thing to call the attention of the public to the
deficiencies of the convict prisons, and the public ought to know that
Sing Sing is, and has been for many years, far worse than Auburn. Think
of a prison where rheumatism and tuberculosis form an inevitable part
of the prison sentence for a large proportion of the prisoners, whose
number can be definitely predicted! But the prison problem of the State
of New York can only be solved by a thoroughly organized and persistent
attack under the leadership of men and women who have social and
economic vision.
And the prison problem of the State of New York will not be solved
until it is recognized as a technical problem, demanding the services
of tried and expert men. Prisons, like other educational institutions,
should be headed by superintendents of demonstrated training and
efficiency, selected without reference to geographical lines.