BY A PRISON GRADUATE
[Written for The Delinquent by a “Long-Termer.”]
One dull grey morning during the closing days of September, 1912, I
sat poring over the records of the ---- State Prison at a desk in the
administrative offices where I was employed, when the shrill voice
of a woman rang out on the street directly outside my barred window,
attracting the startled attention of the prison clerk, the doorkeeper
and myself. They rushed into the room past me and raised the sash. And
what a sight met our eyes! There, beneath the stone ledge, stood a poor
wild-eyed Slav woman, tying a stout rope from behind both wrists of her
son, a lad of about twelve years, punctuating each knot with cuffs on
his ears and wild gesticulations and admonitions in her native tongue
and in broken English.
“Now you go to school, huh?” the woman cried when she had tied the last
knot behind the lad’s back. But the little fellow seemed as unmoved
and dogged as she was excited and persistent. With another cuff behind
his ear she sent him sprawling along the sidewalk. But never a whimper
from the lad. The doorkeeper, accustomed as he is to the hardest of
characters that pass in and out the grey prison doors, and to pathetic
scenes on visiting days, melted at the sight.
“What are you doing to that boy?” he shouted at the woman from the
prison window. She turned quickly, and with eyes ablaze, retorted:
“Dot’s not you’ business!” and then gave her attention to the boy,
cuffing and pushing him on ahead of her. “You’ll get arrested, if you
don’t stop treating your boy that way!” the doorkeeper warned her. But
the woman kept on cuffing and pushing the little fellow while shouting
back over her shoulder as she moved away: “Dot’s not you’ business!”
The doorkeeper and clerk shook their heads, looked at each other and
left the office in silence. We were stunned by what we had seen, and
marvelled that such a thing could happen in the capital city of one
of our foremost states in this civilized century which boasts its
wonderful advancement in every branch of life.
“Is that mother right?” I asked myself. “Will her boy bend and become
a dutiful son and worthy citizen? Or will he mistake his mother’s good
intentions, administered so cruelly, run away from home and finally
land here in prison?”
From whatever side I viewed it, the situation was pathetic. The poor
mother, no doubt, had great hopes for her boy through giving him an
education which, perhaps, she and her laboring husband were denied.
But what boy, with his misdirected faculties ahunger for adventure and
mischief, can see things with the mature eyes of an ambitious parent?
Would that the Slav woman might have known how much of the rod (in this
case the rope) to administer and how much to spare in her boy’s case!
But what parent knows?
I kept thinking of that Slav mother dragging her child along the
street on the end of a rope; thinking of the stubbornness of a boy,
so tender in years, yet so indifferent to such barbarous treatment.
I thought also of how much good so self-willed a lad was capable if
properly guided; how much harm, if nourished by evil influences.
My mind travelled into the interior of the prison, whither so many
men and women have drifted and are still drifting, from just such a
start as that truant boy’s. Not that their parents had tried to put
their good intentions into execution so barbarously, but the fatal
misunderstanding between parent and child was there just the same. I
have seen men come in, serve their time, go out and then come back
again and again for similar offenses. And yet they were once good
innocent boys, born of good, industrious and well-meaning parents, who
had great hopes for their future careers. In the end Society suffered
from the repeated damage they had done, their parents grieved in
disappointment and sorrow, and the erring boys finally become social
outcasts and parasites, of no use to themselves nor to any one else.
Surely, thought I, there must be something radically wrong or stupid
with a world that permits so much damage and misery to go on unchecked.
I thought of the terrible destruction caused by floods in times past,
and of the wonderful good that came from those same bodies of water
when harnessed to machinery or when floating our great ships, laden
with all the necessaries of life, to all quarters of the globe. The
same is true with respect to the possibilities--good and bad--of all
mankind. The population of our prisons is simply the misguided flood
of Society’s stream, destroying everything that obstructs it, and
polluting itself as it courses along its aimless path. The officials
of penal institutions are doing their best to guide the wayward
and polluted stream into cleaner channels of usefulness; but penal
institutions are, at best, but weak dams, unable to cope with the
situation unless something be done to check the cause, or source, of
the flood. That crime is increasing, criminals becoming bolder, the
prison population becoming larger each year, and new and larger prisons
are being built, is ample proof of this contention. Pondering these
matters, vital to society, to fond and ambitious parents and to growing
children, my thoughts finally crystallized themselves into a plan that
should at least prevent many future youths from swelling Society’s
destructive and polluted stream of crime.
Experience has shown how the reputations of many good men and women
have been blasted in moments of temporary weakness when temptation
beset them. They may have gone through life up to that time with little
or no temptation, knowledge of the wickednesses of the world being
withheld from them by watchful parents. Many have gone on offending for
a long time before they are exposed; while others, tempted on all sides
from youth upwards to commit crime, resist the temptations repeatedly
by sheer force of character and will power. The tendency of youths
in general, however, is in the direction of mischief when curiosity
and temptation beckon; and from the knowledge that our faculties grow
strong in proportion to our exercise of them, we may conclude that
it is far wiser that children be taught to cultivate the power of
resistance to evil than that that knowledge of evil be withheld from
them. We know not how or when temptation may overcome us or those dear
to us; but we do know that in the lives of even the worst of those
that have fallen from grace, _there was a first fall_! And the crucial
time, therefore, to begin crime prevention is _before that first fall_,
during the time of youth.
From what has been said it might be urged that crime prevention should
begin in and be confined to the home. No one will deny that the home
is the most potent factor in preserving the peace and purity of any
community. We know if our youths will but follow the teachings of the
religions of their parents, they will not fall into the error and
follow lives of crime. But religion is not practiced in every home; and
all parents do not know how to influence or control the minds of their
children any more than did the poor Slav woman, when in desperation,
she dragged her boy to school on a rope. Again, many youths turn out
badly in spite of religious parents and good homes, because of vicious
associations abroad. For these reasons, then, I believe that the
problem of crime prevention must be solved in our schools and colleges,
leaving to parents the matter of selecting neighborhood companions of
their children and of selecting respectable neighborhoods in which to
bring them up.
Because the children of our public schools represent so many religious
denominations, it has been deemed politic to exclude religious
teachings therefrom; and the child, in consequence, is seriously
handicapped. There is a common ground, however, upon which all schools
and colleges, private, parochial and public may unite to make up
considerably for this handicap to the habit-forming youth. And that
is by establishing a system wherein teacher and pupil may co-operate
in mutual discussion of the various temptations that befall men and
women from time to time; what one should do under given circumstances;
the penalties of indulgence in evil; and the benefits of following
resistance.
The teachers should not confine themselves to lectures on the abstract
qualities of truth, honesty, purity, justice, etc., as these are
usually wasted when delivered to children. Let them take concrete
examples from the columns of our newspapers and impress upon the
pupils the moral lesson in each selected article, and thereby cause
the press to become a moral agency instead of a contaminator of weak
youthful minds. Let them discuss such matters as quarrelling, slander,
intoxication, fighting (as distinguished from manly defense), gambling,
smuggling, bribery, thefts from parent’s purses, from pantries, from
the family’s storekeepers, picking pockets on the streets, all sorts of
abuses and impurities, and the terrible consequences these lead up to.
There are innumerable examples to choose from in our daily life. The
teacher might formulate a series of real or imaginary situations and
catechise the pupils as to how they would act when confronted by them
in real life. These situations should be made dramatic enough to engage
the full attention of the children’s eyes, ears, minds and wills, so as
to leave lasting impressions upon them.
Parties of children could be formed to visit local jails and prisons,
where the teachers could hold up mirrors to them of young men, husbands
and fathers being torn from their loved ones and thrown into prison;
of the long hours of bitter anguish spent in solitary cells year
after year. Make this penal sacrifice of suffering mortals count for
something more than mere restraint and punishment of crime. Make it
the price paid in advance for the saving of youths in the future. The
pupils should be made to write essays on the subject of temptations met
and resisted, to discuss the traits of one another frankly, to commend
the good and discourage the vicious among their number; thus imbuing
the whole class with a feeling in common of protective fellowship.
It is the right of every child to be safeguarded in a way that it
may not, through ignorance or lack of proper guidance and warning,
be doomed to spend its life behind prison bars. It will surely be an
agreeable and noble task for our teachers to so safeguard the child. In
this way, it may fall to the lot of one of them to prevent that poor
Slav boy from ending his days with another rope about his neck. Who
knows?