followed up consecutively to the logical end, would have mended matters
for the most of them; and by common sense we refer mainly to natural
impositions and deprivations, with the right kind of individual effort for
them strongly marked.
But no; they were rated as just unthinking boys who were blowing off
surplus steam. There was no question about the blowing off of surplus
steam, albeit they were not blowing it off unthinkingly. To the contrary,
they were calculatingly transferring the ways and means of the thuggish
gangster to reformative domain, and scoring with it; scoring with it
individually not only, but by "gang" expression in strongholds of the
State's social defense. Hence, incipient riot essential in mass
manifestations that occur in certain juvenile schools of reform.
Just such lads are either rushed to parole, or the load is shifted to
reformatories by transfer direct. Through turning back onto society lads
who had run to institutional rope about as they chose to run, while they
had been groomed to despise discipline and the State's disciplinary
agents, the same load is indirectly unloaded, not always inadvertently it
would seem.
Heads of first-aid houses of correction have been blamable for the named
procedures, only in so far as they must have yielded of conviction in
order to prosecute banal measures prescribed by their superiors in rank of
lay extraction; but be the facts thereof as they may, they have imposed
first off upon reformatories the heaping chore of causing lads to put off
forms of expression to which they had become habituated while under the
initial care of the State.
By the time reformatories get such ego-centric, instinctively anti-social,
wretchedly brought-up lads, they are better than half-strapped to the
toboggan of crime. Throughout the plastic and most impressionable of
years, inclusive of time spent under State instruction, they had made
pretty nearly their own pace, pretty close to the pace that kills. Of
self-discipline they had learned next to nothing, and less of the law of
consequence. Accustomed to having unearned donatives tossed them, and to
force compromise with their obliquely-conceived and collectively-executed
flings in primary institutions, they see no reason why they should be
denied the one, or held up as to the other, in the first reformatories to
which they are committed. What is more, the public, purblind when not
indifferent to basic causes and motives for their continued criminous
conduct, is naturally inclined to their view. Therefore periodicals pay
for the spurious stuff of ex-prisoners, expressed with the gusto of
injured innocence.
The average lay critic portrays a reformatory to the public as a place
where magic wands of reformation can and should be wielded. No matter that
a lad had been the terror of his ward; then had been practically
established by a juvenile plant a rough-shod, "faking," shirking,
undercutting young "roughneck": the reformatory must blow him to virtue as
Nature blows the mushroom, else it is smugly pronounced passé by those who
do not know and cannot know of the instinctive reactions of natural,
crime-soaked young felons.
Furthermore, gentlemen responsible for utterly false procedure in juvenile
reform schools, are the readiest to visit stricture upon reformatories,
because they do not work reformative miracles in jig time upon lads with
whom the gentlemen themselves so miserably failed.
By the same token, the same gentlemen are inconsistent while grossly
unfair, who lash prison officials because they do not reach reformatively
those same lads, passed up to them, via themselves and reformatories.
"Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined." The primal responsibility
for such lads rests with society as a whole, beginning with the lamest and
most loosely executed immigration laws ever framed by man, resulting in a
big brood of the big brood of anarchists and semi-anarchists, who have
yet to do their worst; so much emphasized by execution of the general law
so lax as to be ludicrous; the last clamped down by legislation designed
to catch and hold the votes of militantly self-centered groups; and all
made binding by so ordering the activities of corrective régimes, that
they shall square with the instinctive reactions of predal felons.
As if all of that, with its endless chain of pernicious by-products, were
not enough, we needs must nationalize, heroize, and put on pedestals the
clan parasite for the youth of the land to emulate, featuring
"get-rich-quick Wallingford" and pug-ugly-drone stripes.
At the present moment, millions of men and women in America acutely in
need of work, can't get it. Why? Fundamentally because billions of dollars
have been shunted from legitimate channels of trade to sporting grooves,
there to circulate mainly from pocket to pocket of parasites; and there to
remain, most of them, relatively dead to industry.
A dollar turned over and over in legitimate business, and constantly
growing as it goes, has quite somewhat the edge on the dollar passed to
the gambling clerk, to the bookmaker, to other gamblers and their grand
army of henchmen such as "fillers in" and race track "touts," to
prostitutes and prostitution of work and the worker: and then back in
bulk to the gambler of one or another kidney, to be passed around a like
circle.
That is to follow the pocket-to-pocket circulation of but one "sporting"
dollar. The variations and combinations of route are legion, but the
illustration points our point, which is that America is at pains to imbue
the minds of her up-coming lads with false values, as for instance: gone
sporting mad, she puts a kingly premium on the blood-spilling brute and
parasite, and on his parasitic promoter, while she discounts the laudable
aims and efforts of the actually deserving; she does, indubitably, through
placing premiums where she does, the which fact no amount of
sporting-monger sophistry can alter.
"Pug" Dempsey drew down $300,000 at Jersey City for twelve minutes of
cruel slugging. The average skilled artisan cannot earn one half of so
much money in a life time. Get down on your knees and make that pleasing
in the sight of God if you can, while millions of His children literally
waste away for lack of the bread of life.
Do nothing worse than grind out annually in the social mill thousands of
sport-drugged lads, who would be and remain sporting drones in the social
hive, and cure the case with a few reformatories and prisons! Impossible!
Order reformative régimes so that their reformative processes must yield
in practice, suggestion and example, to the sporting schedule, and to
inmates who stand accursed of outraged sport! Ridiculous!
Expect a spell of any kind of discipline to make up to men and lads, that
of which they had been and are being cheated by grossly overdone sport!
Futile!
True, it is, that prison discipline has basically to do with serviceable
muscles; but serviceable muscles to be used to social and productive ends,
and not to the ends of the sporting thief who dumps ill-gotten gain into
palms dirtier than his own.
Another check imposed upon reformation of the kind of lads in question,
resides in the State's "penny-wise-and-pound-foolish" policy of
withholding money for working tools germane to the process of their
reformation; essentially, for trade tools, and for appointments and
materials to match the tools, inclusive of the very best of human
material.
A skeletonized trade school can yield but skeletonized results: whereas,
exactly the reverse is demanded for unskilled, untaught young felons, if
they are to be given a fair chance to make good in free life. There, they
take with them the serious handicap of the prison brand; and there,
crime-free mechanics grudgingly yield them place and portion. Therefore
they must be ready to market commanding skill and knowledge, else almost
inevitably have recourse to the crook's outfit.
The "policy" of the State thereof is "penny-wise-and-pound-foolish,"
because it is much cheaper, in the end, to school a lad for social
rehabilitation and have done with it, than it is to do it over and over
again, and even then leave him less than half-baked industrially, as is
commonly the case.
America holds the world's record for recidivistic criminals. She will
continue to hold that record so long as she puts up with the play-house
prison, call the house by what name you will, and place it in the prison
chain as you may.
While thinking of the house, and of the work tax payers pay for it to do,
ponder very carefully this deep-digging declaration by Ignatius Loyola, S.
J.: "Let me instruct a lad up through his seventh year, and I don't care
who instructs him after that."
Probably beyond that which Loyola meant to convey, America's elementary
penological lesson is plainly written in his words; a lesson America
should have learned by heart and heeded, decades ago. It is that she must,
absolutely must, close her doors and keep them closed to natural breeders
alike of criminals, and agitators against the public peace and security;
then search out and deport such "natural breeders" who have sieved,
willy-nilly, into the land.
Cures for habitual criminals seldom cure; correctional quackery, never.
Also, when a lad shall have passed the "seventh year" by seven years, and
from his first conscious thought had been given habitually to unlawful
selection; and further, shall have come congenitally by predisposition
for such selection, the merry-go-round correctional plant is the last
place on earth wherein amelioration of his plight will be effected. Young
as he is, he will elect and maneuver for a criminal career, unless he is
consistently subjected to schooling stripped of suggestion of crooks and
crookedness.
Plenty of play in the wide open an imprisoned lad must have. Attempt to
fit a man's head to a lad's shoulders is indefensible error; but the play
should be wholesome play purged of the "pug"; it should be fixed in his
mind as relatively incidental to basic measures of reform, and it should
not be allowed to cross those measures.
As for the rest, "For forms of government, let fools contest; that which
is best administered is best," provided: the "form of government" runs
true to the form demanded by the intrinsic social exactions upon a lad.
Contrariwise, attempt such as to make farmers out of young men whose urban
life has been decided by every natural circumstance, is at once waste of
time, material and human potential, and to fly in the face of geographic
destiny. City-bred felons will take on just so much of farming as
compulsion compels, or the ulterior motive dictates, and not a stroke at
it more. If you question the above assertion, ask any farmer who has tried
out the ex-prisoner farmer who was city-bred.
Coming down to detail for correctional discipline, one must carefully
guide one's pen. General statements thereof are unassailable only when
they predicate the unchangeable; yet certain factors cannot be shaken from
their shoes. Truth camouflaged is no less a lie. Dull the edge of honesty
and it does not cut to the bone of equity. Make the manual processes pay
tribute to by-play, and bald bid is made for the drone-sport. Compromise
with chronic perpetrators of evil deeds done out of evil intent, through
loading them with largesse, and they are furnished with the last formula
for piling deviltry on deviltry. Construe a lad's conduct as of primal
importance, while holding his reaction to educative activities to be of
secondary import, and build beyond doubt to the faker and malingerer.
Essay to form or reform character either with the "billy" and
billingsgate, or with padding and coddling, and the result will reflect
the asinine tools employed. Imbue lads with the belief that their
reformation is an overnight joke, and they will make night hideous, as
well as most of days--for good measure.
Beyond all, lead erring youths to believe themselves immune to religiously
prosecuted discipline fitted to the individual case, just because they are
youths, and their huzzahs as one for you will not shrive you of your share
of responsibility for their continued criminousness.
It is easy to scold, hard alike to salve and save; but the salving and
saving must be done. The scolding has been coming to some for a long, long
time; particularly to self-nominated lay reformers, and "uplifters," who
mostly reform and uplift after the fashion the frog jumped out of the
slime-coated well, which is to say: farther down to slime at every
attempted leap to light.
While that is a pity, out of the efforts of many who keenly engage to
help, it is also seriously reprehensible; for, he who affects the role of
protagonist concerning the most complex problem given man to solve, owes
it to society to know intimately the order of the criminal's going; else
he will find himself hopelessly enmeshed in a labyrinth of motive and
counter motive.
It is also easy to write disciplinary "don'ts," and betimes most difficult
to execute them. Just the same, don't curse; don't threaten, bluff or be
bluffed; don't lose your temper; don't make promises unless you can
fulfill them to the letter; don't construe as directed against you
personally, acts that are aimed at bigger game; don't fraternize with
prisoners to the gutter level; don't heap discipline of any kind on a lad,
until he needs must conclude that you are "down on him," and are "giving
him the worst of it"; don't wabble; don't shriek; don't resort unduly to
petty impositions for petty offenses; don't utter false coin of suggestion
and example; don't commonize discipline of character whatsoever, else it
will lose its carrying power; don't reach lightly for tags of stigma: they
depress and discourage; don't despise hints dropped to you by lads who are
hoping for better things, and who may lead you to the correct psychology
of the individual case, and of the mass; and don't assume that you know it
all about crime and criminals: no man does, nor can, give him a life time
to do it.
Do seek to know yourself, your man, and so much of a great-big work as it
is possible for you to know. Doing it, realize yours will be just one
opinion about it all. Scores of others have written that which you must
absorb in saving degree, if you are to get a grip on what makes and keeps
men criminal.
In short, be actually a compassionate criminologist with an open mind, and
not a misinformed, or half-informed, or uninformed ego-centric,
single-track dilettante, who drives ruthlessly along rock-strewn roads,
over which life students of budding and budded felons soon enough learn
that they must pick warily their way all of the way.
But, warning! Listen to the "personal equation" cult, and many of the
conclusions given off in this chapter by the writer postulate him a fit
subject for the psycho-analyst. According to that wrecking crew, nothing
clings to the habitual young felon that can't be cast off with such as
baseball, and a bit of "laying on of hands"--by the "crew," of course.
The "hands" have been patting and puttering persistently during the past
three decades. Result? The mounting American Apaché has not so much
respect for law and agents of the law, as eagle for sparrow. He rides
gun-hung, kills for the mere blood-lust of killing, lies "until the cows
come home," and laughs up his sleeve betimes over the use he makes and use
made of "research" of him.
Caught and corralled--against which the chances are about ten to one--he
nestles down in many a State nest, where he practically dictates in a
boiled shirt, and "does" what he sneeringly terms, "sleepin' time." This,
spite of the written effusions of ex-criminals, who rush to print with
grossly overdrawn statement--for a consideration.
Writing and speaking about the class of criminals in question, gentlemen
affect the esoteric. They have it, for instance, that the offenders are
mostly "morons," hopelessly ox-like mentally by nature's fling in embryo,
or the victims of arrested mental development. Therefore, gentlemen are
moved to hurl anathema at those who dare the assertion that appreciable
irresponsibility applies only to "morons" who had not measured up to
average intelligence at any form of human activity, do not do so, and
probably cannot do so.
Apparently, it does not occur to our friends that the mind that functions
alertly along any one line, can be developed to function alertly along
many lines. In any case, the question of the subject's voluntary efforts
will be uppermost; yet that question may be quite foreign to his intrinsic
mental content. If he chooses to be a mighty clever thief, just as another
chooses to be a mighty clever mechanic, and pursues single-mindedly his
choice, he won't know any more about mechanics than the mechanic knows
about thievery; but if he becomes a mighty clever thief, he will have used
brains sufficient for any ordinary accomplishment. That he had
side-tracked honest for crooked skill agreeably with the weight of
influences exerted upon him, relates usually to his moral obliquity, and
not to his meagre mentality.
Specific mental efforts held in "arrest" by him who spurns the fruition of
such efforts, by no manner of means classifies him a "moron" in the sense
that he is commonly classified a moron. His choice of mental activity is
oblique, but his execution under the choice stamps him as anything but a
mental dud. He is usually a moral mongrel from mixed causes, and must be
prescribed for as such.
Were any but the lowest grade of predal felons--bungling imitators
they--fit subjects for kindergarten treatment, they were not able to
master the most massive time-locked safe locksmiths can contrive; nor
could they "get away" with about ninety per cent of their loot; nor hold
peace officers in contempt, and the combined sleuths of the land pretty
much at bay; nor press so cunningly, individually and collectively, for
ill-timed and placed prison perquisites, and for comparative freedom of
choice in the matter of their response to actual reformative measures; nor
cast crooked lines and haul in the bebadged; nor enlist the "pull" and
"protection" of higher-up grafters and meanest of secondary thieves; nor
so mix high-soaring mixers of prison broth that they don't know which way
to turn for ingredients, and do turn over the seasoning thereof to
habitual criminal rounders; nor lead up to false cards, exposed all the
way from prevention to parole, inclusive of gross stretching of probatory
extensions.
Real prison discipline for such men means a sharp tacking of their minds
away from criminal shoals. Aside from educative activities understood,
such as trades and scholastic instruction closely and consecutively
imparted, it means a taking up of their loose, anti-social slack, mental
and physical; particularly and essentially, of their smug contention to
the effect that society is an "easy mark" for all kinds of criminous
flim-flam and bunco-steering.
Well, then, what are the corporal and semi-corporal disciplinary tools to
be employed on the job? Any tool, this side of cruelty or brutality
stripped of revenge, which will bring it home to habitual, by-choice
marauders who do murder for diversion, that they cannot dance on the
shoulders of the State.
What? Make prison life for such men dully automatic, comparatively, under
an industrial drive? Precisely. Make life in prison onerous enough to
them so that they will turn to honest toil, rather than endure it.
Reinstate the mechanism and the spirit of the "hell holes of Egypt"? Not
at all; but reinstate respect for law and authority in the minds of such
as death-dealing parasites; let them know, baldly, that "comin' a
shootin'" for hard-earned gelt, does not entitle them to browse, else buck
in prison.
First of all, have done with the "Welfare League" fraud. Have done with
the idea that instinctive, habitual felons, amenable both to the menace
and machinations of many other instinctive, habitual felons, whom they
must sooner or later face in free life, can be trusted to preside over the
destinies of a prison population. That throw is precarious, even for
colleges, where, if those in the know are to be believed, it is touted as
doing exactly that which it does not do.
At any rate, go to the subterranean, perversely sex-charged, murderous
record for evidence on which to condemn the prison Welfare League; but
doing it, insist upon examination of all of the books, of the submerged
tenth of prisoners who are cheated by specious crooks, and of the entire
after-parole record of the latter.
Then use the eyes of your mind, clamp down the lid on banal counterfeits
of reformative processes, break active agents who bungle with those
counterfeits for a price, and you will help make secondary prisons what
they should, nay, must be made, viz: industrial bee hives, wherein
would-be social wolves go bang up against compelling contrast.
"Never again!" said an ex-prisoner, as an English turnkey "good-lucked"
him into free air from one of England's convict prisons. When American
criminals so exclaim on being released from American prisons, we shall
cease to have falsely-alleged "waves" of crime, and not before.
Rational prison discipline involves no less a chore than to change the
point of view of men become habitually a law unto themselves. The view
point will vary in accordance with the amount and kind of adverse
influence unloaded upon the subject, inclusive of his congenital scars.
There will be parallels that apply to nearly all, and sharply-defined
tangents that mark the few. Comparative insensibility to pain, borne or
inflicted, examples in the first instance. The oversexed, undersexed, and
sexually perverted declare in the second case.
A prison population is never of one mind, nor of the same clay, save only
for a common criminal camaraderie, ever alertly expressed to take
advantage of those who think criminologically in single numbers.
Therefore, the man who rushes behind bars with a cock-sure cure-all for
criminality, is at once to be pitied and shunned; and less than
reformatively useless is the individual who does not understand that the
particular reasons for the manner in which a given criminal was grooved
for crime, predicate the means by which he may best be weaned from crime.
In other words, while all must be held closely to catholic schooling, such
as trades and occupational teaching, the emphasis belongs where Nature and
unnatural acquirement place it.
Shall a grown lad have acquired a mania for the sporting life, say, and
not so much as a smattering of vulgar knowledge, he should be held down on
sports until he engages earnestly for knowledge; he should, because he
cannot hope to get anywhere worth while and remain a crass dunce; he
cannot, in conscience, out of his old-age exactions, however such as the
baseball "fan" may howl to the contrary. God planned for man to be
something bigger and better than an ignorant automaton at play; also, He
demands deeper digging by man than that which reduces to mere making of
dollars.
It is clearly up to correctional plants to raise their charges beyond the
level of the "tin" sport. Even where exceptional sporting ability is
shown, it should not be allowed to cross the making of the whole man.
This, because when such as the cunning of his throwing arm fails a man, he
must have recourse to commanding skill, and pleasures of the mind, else
the sharp edge of the meaning of life will cut into his soul, while he
drifts down stream a dependent derelict.
Service is the "meaning of life." Service begins with self-discipline.
Self-discipline presupposes rational arrangement of, and adjustment to,
basic values. Therefore the essential purpose of the parent State should
be to establish, or reëstablish, basic values in minds either cheated of,
or switched from, basic values.