If some one of the prison officials of New York were to suggest the
turning out of hundreds of the prisoners on Blackwell’s Island and Sing
Sing into a colony in the fertile valley along the Hudson or the Mohawk
river, under the care of a superintendent and a half dozen assistants
without an armed guard, the inhabitants not only of New York state but
of all the states in the Union would immediately hold mass meetings
of protest and set their political organizations to work to have the
official making the suggestion removed from office and incarcerated in
an insane asylum. This would be the action taken in this far advanced,
civilized country.
Yet in the Philippine islands this very thing has been done, and done
with success. It has been done with a people said by leading officials
of this country and other countries to be incapable of self-government.
To be explicit, there are today 1,423 prisoners, or “colonists,” as
they are now termed—prisoners of all classes and sorts, serving terms
of from five years to life imprisonment, and for crimes from petty
thievery to murder—living without a guard in a small, fertile valley
along the river of one of the islands in the archipelago just south of
Luzon, the largest island, of which Manila is the capital.
Here the 1,423 convicts live, not alone, isolated as the prisoners
of Siberia are, but much the same as they would have lived had they
never committed a crime against the community—in peace, prosperity
and happiness, with their families, engaged in the pursuit of
agriculture-and the only guns on the place are those mounted at the
superintendent’s office for saluting purposes and the “six-shooter” the
superintendent keeps locked up with his cash in the safe of the penal
colony office.
There is a guard on the reservation, but it is only a police guard, and
the only arms its members carry are a small policeman’s club, which is
more ornamental than useful.
With this lack of military display on the part of the authorities,
there has been but one outbreak or attempt at escape, and that occurred
soon after the colony was first established and before the valley had
been drained and rid of malaria and cholera. Since that first outbreak
and the subsequent capture of all but one of the nineteen who escaped
(and that one died) there has been peace and quiet on the reservation.
It was in 1904 that George N. Wolfe, then warden of Bilibid, the
“bastile” of Manila, now director of the bureau of prisons of the
Philippine islands, found the prison fast becoming overcrowded. He had
male and female inmates confined there who were serving sentences for
all manner of crimes. He was confronted with the problem of finding an
additional housing place. He took the matter up with the superintendent
of prisons with the result that it was determined to establish a colony
of prisoners under a guard.
Accordingly, in November, 1904, the superintendent of prisons appointed
Warden Wolfe, Prof. William S. Lyon, horticulturist of the bureau of
agriculture, and Dr. Arlington Pond, star pitcher on the old Baltimore
Oriole baseball team in the McGraw and Keeler days, then city health
officer of Manila, to select a site for a penal colony.
After hunting up and looking over several sites the committee finally
selected Iwahig, a small valley on the Iuhuit river on the southern
point of the island of Palawan and directly opposite the town of Puerto
Princesa. The valley is about ten miles long and contains something
like 270 square miles.
The site selected, sixty prisoners of all classes and confined for all
manner of crimes, most of whom were hardened criminals, were sent there
under an armed guard.
At first health and discipline were not good. Malaria and cholera made
great inroads upon the little band. The valley, while of fertile soil,
was covered with water more than half the year, and that which was not
under water was densely overgrown with bamboo timber. The first sixty
dwindled down to less than one-third that number. Others were sent to
take their places and they, too, became either infirm or more hardened
criminals. Conditions got worse, and one day there was a mutiny, in
which nineteen of the prisoners made their escape. All but one of the
nineteen were captured and sent back to the colony. Things became so
bad that Warden Wolfe decided to make a change in the superintendent
of the colony, and he made a request therefor to the superintendent of
prisons.
At that time the penal institutions of the Philippines were under the
jurisdiction of the secretary of the department of commerce and police.
They were later placed in the bureau of public instruction and under
the bureau of prisons.
The governor general of the Philippines in 1906 appointed Major John R.
White of the constabulary superintendent of the colony.
Major White immediately set to work to cure the evils. He got several
physicians and sanitary officers of the Philippine government to lay
out general plans for draining the valley, so as to rid it of the
malaria and cholera. He was more than successful; in fact, in 1907,
when he turned the colony over to the present superintendent he had
obliterated both diseases. Major White also started a radical reform in
the system of handling the prisoners, and instead of driving them and
herding them in a few buildings he used kindness.
The real change from a penal colony to a “Golden Rule” colony took
place in the latter part of 1907, when Carroll H. Lamb was appointed
superintendent.
Mr. Lamb had ideas of handling the prisoners that were different from
those of his predecessors. He exercised from the first a humanitarian
policy, and instead of asking for the worst behaved of the convicts of
Bilibid he asked for the “trusties,” who were the greater in number.
His requests were granted.
Superintendent Lamb consulted with sociologists and leading
criminologists, after which he laid down for himself and the prisoners
the following principles by which a good convict might be made a good
citizen:
“Proper environment and association, fixed habits of conduct and
industry, intellectual and moral instruction and industrial and
practical teachings.”
He instilled these principles into himself and into the convicts, as
the method to fit them soonest to return to society, cured mentally and
physically, and to teach them to be law-abiding and self-respecting
citizens.
Mr. Lamb devoted much study to the character of the Filipino and
found him, as many others have found him, easy to manage, especially
where tact and kindness is used. He also found that the primitive
civilization of the Filipino people and their natural bent toward
agriculture aided in the application of the principles he laid down.
He began by reducing the restraints and increasing the independence of
the colony as a whole. He also began the utilization of agriculture as
the burden of the convicts’ labors, and impressed upon them the idea
that not only were they working for the government against which they
had committed offenses but for themselves. He pointed out that they
would not only gain virtual freedom at once, but would participate in
the earnings of the colony.
His first lot of prisoners numbered more than 100, and they were, as in
the early history of the colony, made up of all classes of criminals,
but men who had been given certain liberties in Bilibid for good
behavior. He had as assistants two Americans, the oldest of whom was
less than 30, and the youngest of whom was but 21, a Filipino band
director, a Filipino physician, a Spanish padre for chaplain, and a
matron. The matron was necessary, as among his prisoners were some
twenty women.
Today, three years since Mr. Lamb first went to Iwahig, there are
1,423 prisoners. He still has his two American assistants and the two
Filipino assistants. In addition he has thirty-one petty officers,
all of whom are prisoners. Two of these petty officers are “lifers,”
serving sentences for murder in the first degree; two more of them are
serving long terms for offenses almost as serious as murder, and the
rest of the thirty-one are men who have more than five years yet to
serve.
Every one of these thirty-one petty officers lives in his own home,
has his wife and family, and is a director in the colony’s bank,
established last year for the deposit of the colony’s funds and the
gratuities saved by the prisoners. These gratuities are paid monthly,
and as the convicts raise everything they use, even to beef and to the
leather shoes they make from the hides of the cattle, their gratuities
amount to a considerable sum.
Each of these petty officers is in charge of a certain number of
prisoners called squads. The squads in turn are formed into brigades
or battalions and commanded by the superintendent and assistants.
The distribution of all prisoners is about the same as in a military
garrison, where a company of soldiers is divided into squads in charge
of a corporal and a sergeant.
The petty officer is responsible to the superintendent for the
deportment of the members of his squad. The general orders, which are
really regulations, are known by every colonist, and once a month must
be recited by him to his petty officer.
In the Philippine islands there are many more holidays than in the
United States, and on each of these holidays all work is suspended
and the colonists are allowed to engage in sports, church fiestas and
social intercourse. The American game of baseball is the principal
sport. There are four crack teams in the colony, among the players
being several American convicts. Each dry season the superintendent
gives a pennant to the winning team and a small sum of money to be
distributed among the players. The rivalry for the “flag” is sometimes
as keen as in some of the games between teams in the United States.
The colonists have their own court, too, with the superintendent as
a supreme judge. He acts finally and independently of the lower or
convict court, but with one or two exceptions his action has always
confirmed that of the lower court.
At this court are tried such cases as the police report to the petty
officers. Last year there were 102 cases before this court, ninety-four
of which were minor, or for slight infraction of a rule. The punishment
meted out was generally a loss of gratuity and a mark against the
individual to be used against him for any future offenses. In each
of these the convict court sentenced the culprits to be returned to
Bilibid, and Superintendent Lamb approved their decision and returned
them. Six of the eight have since been sent back to the colony at their
request and on their promise of good behavior.
* * * * *
A bill appropriating $50,000 for a reformatory for women, and
authorizing the government to appoint a commission to secure plans and
specifications has been proposed in the Connecticut legislature.