The distinguishing feature of the discipline which this Society has
advocated for Penitentiaries, is that which the world misrepresents by
denominating it _solitary_ confinement, and which it discredits by
arguments founded not on past experience, but resting upon the probable
effects upon the minds of the prisoners of total solitude and utter
separation from association, sight and converse with man. We do not
pretend to say what would be the effect of such a condition. Our object
is not the condemnation of an untried system, but the exposition of the
benefits of that which has been well tested. The amelioration not the
augmentation of prison discipline is the object of our Association. The
permanent benefit of society through the improvement of individuals, or
the eternal benefit of individuals, by making the prison a school of
reform rather than a place of torture. Separate confinement is the
object that has been proposed—and wherever obtained, it has produced, if
not all the good which had been hoped for, at least more than any other
system that has been adopted, and has satisfied those who are engaged
officially or voluntarily in its administration, that its benefits are
progressive. By the separation of the convict from his fellow criminals,
he is taken from the concerted plans and practices of crime, and placed
where none may approach him but officers charged with the care of his
person, or those who visit his cell with messages of kindness. People
who, sensible of his guilt, but hopeful of his reformation, approach him
in a spirit of kindness, and, satisfying him that they seek his good,
and not their own benefit, gain admittance to his heart, win his
confidence, and produce, perhaps, solemn resolutions to amend. He sees,
in the narrow confines of his cell, and he feels, in the strictness of
the discipline to which he is subjected, the terrors of the violated
law. But he comprehends, in the oft-repeated lessons of love that are
given to him by the Society’s visitors, that, prone as he is to crime,
he is the object of human solicitude and the subject of divine mercy.
And in time he understands also, that, had he been released with the
first resolution to repent, he would have missed of reform. He
comprehends that time and retirement were necessary to the germination
of the seeds which had been planted in his heart, and a long season of
abstraction from society could alone have matured the fruits of
repentance. Solitude—entire solitude—might have embittered his heart
against the social compact by which he was suffering. He may have had
learning, but he probably lacked that moral education, that culture of
the heart, by which he could easily discern the rightful dependence of
punishment on crime, or his responsibility to society for the talents he
possessed, and the uses to which he applied them. In utter loneliness,
he would have brooded over his privations, and, recalling the hundreds
whom he knew equally guilty, but wholly unpunished, he would have
regarded his condition as of special, unequalled, and gross injustice,
and might have sought liberty and life to revenge himself on man; or,
wearying of existence, and despairing of relief, he would have “cursed
God and died.” Utter solitude to the ignorant and the bad is rarely
productive of benefit. Solitude may be the occasion and the means of
beneficial progress to the good. It may enable the repentant to avoid
the errors which have injured him and by which he has injured others,
and it may enable him to work out his own benefit, doing good to
himself, but not communicating it to others. The whirlwind of passion
disturbs the solitude, but God and good are not in the disturber. The
small still voice of reason and revelation calls him to repentance, but
he cannot understand. Like the child Samuel, he hears the call, but
until there be some one to instruct him how to respond, he remains in
his darkness, unimproved.
But solitary confinement we have said is not recommended by the Society.
That species of penalty might be as cruel to the convict as the
associated imprisonment is unjust to society. We would have all
penalties so tempered with mercy, that they should lead naturally and
certainly to improvement. We condemn any sentence to utter solitude, as
heartily as we do that to a social imprisonment, whereby pecuniary
compensation to the State takes the place of moral improvement in the
prisoner, and where day by day former associates in vice become schemers
for future depredations and teachers of the means of crime to the
neophyte in wrong doing.
The separate confinement which constitutes the peculiar character of
prison discipline advocated by the Society and practised in the Eastern
Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, has reference to the separation of one
convict from another, and of separation of the criminal from that
intercourse with people from without that might keep up his relation
with criminals and his taste and his resolutions for crime. Day by day
the lesson of moral instruction is heard. Day by day the visitors from
the city present themselves at his cell, and invite him to reformation;
and at any stated period, or in case of special emergency, the inmate of
the cell may have the attendance of a clergyman of his own choice, and
the consolations of religious instruction such as he may have cherished
in better times. His solitude is disturbed by the regular visitation of
the officers of the prison, and the silence of his cell broken by the
prayers and teaching of his visitors. Nor is it a violation of the plan,
that he should repeat and amplify what he has heard, and loudly express
what he has been brought to feel. This, with all the privations which
imprisonment and conviction for extensive crime necessarily include, is
not “solitary confinement.” The justice which, for the sake of society,
restrains the freedom of the offender, yields entirely to the mercy that
turns to that offender’s temporal and eternal good. This infliction,
that separates him from his associates in felony, frees society from
apprehension of his crimes.
We speak here of the infliction of the Penitentiary. The case of a
convict in the County prison has in it much less of severity, and is
proportionately therewith of less benefit to him and less advantageous
to society.
We do not intend to argue upon the advantages of separate confinement
and labor, over the associated condition of prisoners. That subject has
been often presented in our annual reports, and in essays published by
the Society, and ably and satisfactorily handled. We shall present some
of what may be regarded as the minor objects and labors of the Society,
from which, however, great good has already resulted, and to which we
must look for many of the direct, personal, and permanent benefits which
are to result from our efforts.
It will be seen, in the course of this report, that close observation
warrants the conclusion that little hope of improving the moral
condition of the prisoner can be indulged until he is placed within the
reach of separate instruction, and beyond the evils of companionship
with the vicious. This is the experience in this State; this is the
growing opinion in Great Britain and Ireland.
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