Every effort made by the Society, in its attempt to alleviate the
miseries of public prisons, is intended to be in a moral direction; and
whether the person in whose behalf the agent or representative of the
Society labors, is to be the tenant of a cell for years, or to be
immediately released, it is to the moral perceptions that addresses are
made, and it is the moral condition that is the object of public and
private labor; it is for the moral improvement that the physical
condition is regarded, and what may appear to the careless or
indifferent observer as merely an exercise of philanthropic feeling, or
of a humane sentiment, has for its great end such a disposition of the
offender, or the accused, as will secure to him the means and condition
of moral improvement, making the cell endurable to the felon by a
growing appreciation of the justice that placed him there, and a sense
of the benefit of reflection upon the past, and the comprehension of the
advantage of resolves for good, which, by kind monition and gentle
persuasion he is induced to adopt. The moral image defaced by vice, or
buried beneath the accumulation of crime, begins to assume its earlier
charms, begins to move under its superincumbent mass, and, with a
recognition of its proprieties and value, vice and crime not only lose
attraction, but become hideous and repulsive; the spirit of hostility to
the world is gradually weakened, and a lively sensibility to all the
duties of social life takes the place of that wretched resolve to
misapply power by felonious appropriation, and indulge passion in the
violation of the laws of decency and morals.
Or, if the prisoner is to leave his cell, the efforts are to fix in his
heart the great principle of moral excellence, and to strengthen the
resolutions which he formed while in prison. To follow, indeed, the
liberated man to his home, if he have any, or failing that, to provide
him with temporary shelter and employment, and to watch over his
conduct, and guide and guard him amid the temptations upon which he has
entered with delicate susceptibilities and wounded self-respect.
Resolves formed in the solitude of cells, are like roots that vegetate
in darkness, they are certain not to be very fruitful in their secluded
condition, and are exceedingly liable to perish unproductive when
exposed to the light.
Care, watchfulness, kindness, and condescension on the part of those who
would perfect their work of good, are absolutely necessary to that
reformation in the prisoner, which is to make him a useful citizen, and
restore him to the confidence and respect of associates. It is not
permitted here to give instances of the beneficial exercise of this
species of practical, long-enduring kindness, lest the sensibilities of
the benefactor should be wounded, and the beneficiary find his condition
and circumstances injured by unnecessary publicity. But instances are
not wanting of the recent criminal occupant of a felon’s cell, returning
to his moral teacher to give thanks, to present the fruits of his
amendment, and, while asking additional advice, to solicit continued
interest in the future.
The cheerful, kind reception of the young penitent by his friend and
guide, seemed to seal the work of reformation; and if he who had been
justly charged with, and severely punished for, repeated felonies, felt
the healing influence of Christian forbearance, and the long exercise of
reforming efforts on the part of the moral instructor, who shall tell
the effect upon the repentant’s future interests, upon his associates,
and upon the business men of the world, with whom he must mingle, of the
freedom of his access to the house of his benefactor, the cordiality of
his reception and entertainment, and kindness and good wishes with which
he publicly takes leave of him at the open door.
This kind of conduct is that “_coup d’epaule_” which denotes true
dignity and greatness in the bestower, and which confers upon the
recipient the freedom of virtuous society, and the power to become a
useful member in a good community.
Though the publication of many striking instances of reformation that
illustrate the effect of direct personal dealing with the prisoner has
been forborne, lest the peculiarity of the cases should too directly
point to the individual, and injure his prospects of success, yet one or
two are given, that all, and especially prisoners, may comprehend the
“possibility of reform,” even to the very vicious and guilty. It is
believed that the offender, much more frequently than is supposed,
contemplates in his cell the duties and work of reformation, while the
discharge of that duty, and the commencement of that work are postponed,
from the inability to see how the censure or suspicions of society are
to be surmounted, or how, amid those censures and suspicions, so
repulsive in their operation, he is to avoid the snares of former
associates, and the temptations of former pursuits. The possibility of
amendment, the practicability of virtuous resolves must be made apparent
by judicious counsel and imitable example.
The effect of the moral improvement on the repentant prisoner, is soon
manifested in the improvement of his physical, social, and fiscal
condition. The confidence and favor of those who have promoted the
change is communicated to others, and amendment of life is productive at
once of an amendment of the means of living. The man of business
pursuits is as anxious to procure the service of the honest and the
able, as the honest and able are to obtain the patronage of active men.
With these great means of moral improvement, and, doubtless, with an eye
to the temporal as well as the eternal consequences, the Society has
always had in view the means of making prisoners better as well as more
comfortable, of ameliorating the miseries of prisoners as well as
prisons; and hence it has required action on the part of its visitors,
and a regular report of what they have done, and generally how they have
labored.
In dealing with the question of reformation among those who occupy the
cells of the County Prison, it will be readily conceived that there are
not only a variety of minds to deal with, but a great difference in the
elements of character. Something must be attempted for those whose
degradation is so great, that they hardly discover in their condition
more cause for shame than does the unfortunate speculator who has failed
in his plan of wealth. These miserable wretches seem to have no taste
beyond the lowest dens of infamy, and no ambition but to gratify that
taste in its utmost depravity. And there is a demand, too, for services
among a few who seem to have few tastes for what are called low vices,
and to have based their calculations of success on efforts that involve
the higher degree of felony. The higher offences are in many instances
rather the result of vicious habits than the resort of those who aim at
the property of the industrious and the wealthy. Every one of these
offenders against the law is within the scope of this Society, and his
moral condition is in some degree provided for.
It has already been mentioned that the Society sends to both the
Penitentiary and the County Prison, a Committee, whose business it is
not only to note whatever in the administration of the institutions may
have a bearing on the moral and physical condition of the prisoner, but
also to be themselves missionaries to the inmates of the cell, moral and
religious teachers of those who have failed in both. In addition to the
labor of these committeemen, there is at the Penitentiary a regular
moral teacher, (occupying what in some other institutions is called the
chaplaincy,) but fulfilling other requirements, and making acceptable
his more formal and general teaching by his frequent special and
personal communication with individuals.
At the County Prison, the Agent of the Society, who is also the Agent of
the Board of Inspectors, procures the services of a clergyman for
religious general instruction, by preaching and prayer on the first day
of the week. It may be added, also, that not unfrequently ladies and
gentlemen, who belong to the choirs of some of the city churches, lend
their musical aid, and give additional attraction to the religious
services.
But it will be readily comprehended that as the prisoners remain in
their cells during the whole of the religious exercises, they are not so
likely to be influenced by the teaching and exhortation, as if they were
assembled in chapel for social worship, and sat within sight, as well as
within sound, of the preacher. The difficulty in this matter with a
large portion of the occupants of the cells, especially when low vices
rather than considerable crime have placed them there, is to get them to
give attention to the speaker, whom they cannot see.
They, too generally, use the occasion of religious exercise for sleep or
conversation; and the administering of discipline is, perhaps, more
frequently called for, in consequence of mal-conduct during “Divine
service,” than at any other time. As bringing the preachers face to face
with his audience is impossible under the arrangement of the prison, and
would be a departure from the plan of separate confinement, it follows,
of course, that it cannot be resorted to as a remedy for the
indifference to, and neglect of, the public teachings of the officiating
clergyman.
In the Parliamentary Reports, partial abstracts of which are given under
the head of “Correspondence,” in this report it is mentioned that the
prisoners are brought into chapel without being able to recognize each
other in their ingress or egress, and placed in separate stalls, so
arranged, that while they can see and be seen by the clergymen, they
cannot see each other. The prisoners while conducted to and from their
respective cells, have their faces covered with a species of mask,
which, being perforated, enables each to see and breathe, but not to
recognize any other masked person. Whether this is a better system than
is practised in our County Prison and Penitentiary, we are unable to
say, but it supposes a chapel or chapels for several denominations, with
a large number of stalls. The plan could be practised only with much
inconvenience to the officers of the prison, and the object of the
non-recognition among the prisoners must at least be endangered.
Separate confinement and separate instruction, seem the safest.
The Society has received the aid of members of a female association,
whose wish to be useful have taken them to the cells of prisons, and
whose devotion have placed them in immediate conference with the erring
and miserable of their own sex; and great good has resulted from their
labors. It is a beautiful testimony to the devotion of these females,
that while generally connected with some religious denomination, and, of
course, attached to their own creed and practices, they have limited
their labors to the inculcation of great moral precepts that rest on
revelation, and secured much success from a gentle and affectionate
enforcement of their teaching, leaving the object of their efforts more
in love with the theory of virtue, if not fully resolved to enter upon
its practice.
This is undoubtedly the true course for those who resolve to be useful
to all who will listen to them. But those who know the well-springs of
affection in the human heart, know how often they are called into
exercise by some incident that seems aside from the general or the
ordinary mode of procedure; nor should those who look for improvement in
the prison cells, overlook a great element of success found in the early
attachment to the creed in which the prisoner was reared, and for which
he possesses that kind of affection which is offended by the least
impeachment of its efficacy, though his own life and present condition
show how utterly inoperative for good it has been on him. Those persons
are not Atheists or Deists in theory, only in practice. They recognize
their obligation to their creed and their early instruction, and they
mean at some future time to do better; but now they sin against their
own knowledge.
They know the right, and they approve it, too;
They know the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.
As to these persons, and especially in the female department, nothing
could startle them more than an imputation upon their _belief_, nothing
offend them more than an attack upon their creed; and suspecting that
their delinquencies in practice will be imputed to the deficiency of the
doctrine in which they have been reared, they stand often on the
defensive; occasionally, indeed, they seem ready to take the offensive
against those whom they believe to be of another form of worship. This
all may be wrong; it may be ridiculous, but nevertheless it _is_; and
with those who seek to do them a good, and reclaim them from vice to
virtue, it must be respected, so far as not to offend it by any evidence
of hostility to aught but sin and vice. The confidence of the prisoner
must first be secured, and this not always by the same means, that his
improvement is to be effected; and few circumstances so soon open up the
heart as a similarity of creed, and an evidence of belief that that
creed is not answerable for the vices or crimes of those who rather hold
it in abeyance than in practice. And in that view of the case, and of
the wants of the prisoner, some of the Committee having been specially
assigned to the female department of the County Prison, have solicited
or accepted the offered services of educated and pious females of
diverse religious denominations, and opened to them, by authority from
the proper officers, the doors of all the cells, so that each may have
access to every inmate, and deal with her mind and conscience in the way
which shall seem best adapted to the peculiar case.
It is not expected, as certainly it is not desired, that these devoted
women should attempt to proselyte the prisoners, looking rather to a
change of creed than a change of conduct; or rather, to speak more
charitably, seeking a reformation of conduct only through a change of
creed; but it is, of course, supposed, that each will deal with the
object of her care in the way in which her conscience shall sanction,
and that advantage will be taken of a similarity of creed to enforce a
renewed recognition of doctrine in which the offender was reared, and a
resort to the means which, having been enforced and adopted in
childhood, are easily comprehended and readily practised, and bring with
them the reminiscence of the better days of home and early piety, while
they give a stronger hope of future prosperity and happiness.
The stranger visiting the County Prison, has been gratified with the
free ingress of these female missionaries, and has been forcibly struck
with the harmonious, though not associated, action of women whose
peculiarity of dress shows them to be of religious connection variant in
creed and ceremony, but whose concurrent _general_ instruction shows
them to be trying to serve one Master in the way which their consciences
suggested and approved, and which is warranted by the example of that
Master, who “went about doing good,” and who showed the duty of that
conduct when he said, “I was in prison and ye came unto me.”
However beneficial may be the regular service of the clergy on the
Sabbath, it will, it is believed, be admitted by all, that those who
have the ear of the separated prisoner, who know the peculiarities of
his case, and the proclivity of his inclinations, have a great
opportunity of touching his affections, of making an impression on his
mind, and rousing him to good resolves, when the dealing is separate and
special, and the poor wanderer feels that every word that is uttered is
directed to his own conscience, and every hope that is offered is
founded on amendments that are peculiar to his own condition. This
separate dealing is, in almost all cases of sin, of vice and crime, that
which a friend would desire to exercise; it is that which the sinner,
the vicious, or the criminal, would acknowledge the most efficacious,
because less offensive to his self-love, and because it can be so
specially adapted, as to meet every point of his own case, so as to
leave no avenue for mental escape, and satisfy him that nothing less
than entire reformation of resolves and conduct will save him from the
augmentation of that punishment which he is now suffering, and which
will cut him off from the sympathies as well as the intercourse of his
fellow-beings.
It is scarcely possible to say too much of this mode of separate
instruction and exhortation,—this mode of softening the heart and
moulding it to good,—the simple means of acquiring the confidence of the
prisoner, and then leading him out of his miserable condition, to the
commencement of that course which in a long run is to lead to the
establishment of virtuous principles; but it is desirable that more
could be justly said of the number of those who give themselves to this
holy service. The number is small,—quite too small for the number of
those who need those aids to virtue of which we have spoken; and
especially is there a deficiency in the variety of religious views of
the visitors. Not that it is desirable that distinctive doctrines should
be enforced; but it is desirable, as has been stated above, that the
attachment to creed,—almost as strong in the vicious as in the
good,—should be respected as a means of confidence at least. Few
virtuous, few pious persons of enlarged christian philanthropy consider
the attachment or hostility of certain persons to certain creeds in
which they have been reared, or which they have been taught to hold.
Zealous attachment to creed survives all practices of virtue, all ground
of self-respect, and is apparently, and perhaps naturally, more rampant
in those who have no sense of the virtue which the creed enforces, than
in those who understand the character of the creed, and the rights of
others who do not profess it. And it is worthy of remark, that some of
the most violent personal contests of which the Vagrant cells of the
County Prison have been the arena, have been caused by the opposite
_religious_ creeds in which the miserable occupants had been born, and
in which they had been reared; and thus the broken forms of christian
doctrine would be avenged in the receptacle of vice, and by the vicious,
with all kinds of blasphemy and personal violence, and the religion of
peace and purity be enforced with broken heads and broken commandments.
This strong case (entirely real) is presented to illustrate the idea
that almost all hope of doing good to the class of persons to whom
reference is made, must rest upon efforts that are put forth in some
regard to the prejudices which are manifested by those whose benefit is
sought.
To produce the ends proposed by the means which we recommend,—namely, an
arousing of the conscience by gentle appeals to the hidden affections,
by those whose circumstances qualify them to gain access to the
confidence of the moral patients,—we must have many devoted visitors,
willing to labor beyond the sight and without the applause of the world;
and they, when properly vouched for in all requisite qualifications,
must have free access to those whom they would aid. It is known that
this Society has, by the laws of the Commonwealth, a sort of special
privilege to visit in prison, by its members, the miserable, the
wretched, the vicious and the criminal, to breathe through the gratings
of the cell words of admonition, comfort and hope, or to open the door
and participate in the confinement of the prisoner, and address him in
accents that may, in the silence of all around him, awaken him to holy
resolves. But even this privilege, greatly used, and, as we believe,
never abused, is imperfect without a concurrent action on the part of
those who directly administer the affairs of the prison. If they oppose
obstacles to free access to the incarcerated, no assertion or proof of
right will make the path easy, or often trod by those who represent us,
especially the females; it will be found to add the disgust of
contention with keepers, to the inconvenience of visits to the guarded.
And still less effective will be any efforts by christian
philanthropists to alleviate the misery of the cells, and improve the
minds of the occupants, if their visits of mercy are followed by the
coarse jeers of the unrefined and unsympathizing, ridiculing the efforts
of the self-sacrificing visitor, and shaming the half-resolved prisoner;
nor would it be better, if the regular official should, from bigotry or
bad design, denounce the teaching of the voluntary visitor, because it
might tend to other creeds than his own, or because it proceeded from
other sources and in other channels than that by which his creed was
formed, or those in which his conscience directed. It will be readily
understood how potent such disturbing causes would be in producing
injurious effects,—in marring, indeed, the good work of the moral
teachers in our prisons. It seems therefore meet to say here, that while
it is supposed that those who are entrusted with the care of the
prisoner, in both Penitentiary and County Prison, have some
well-established views of doctrine, and are connected with some
religious denomination, it is not known that any of them have attempted
to interrupt the work of the committee and agents of the Society, by
hindering the access to prisoners, or by disturbing with contrary
teaching the effect produced. On the contrary, it seems a duty at this
time and in this place to bear testimony to the unfailing urbanity with
which our visitors are received and treated at the prisons, and the aid
always rendered to give them ready access to the cells and to the minds
of the incarcerated. In the County Prison, where such a variety is
presented, and so much care is required, and so much time demanded by
the frequent changes, no occupation of the employees, male or female,
ever poses an obstacle to the visit of those who come to help the
helpless and improve the bad. No variety of creed induces a diminution
of that courtesy which is the true exponent of benevolence; and in this
respect the superintendent, keeper, clerk and matrons may be regarded as
official assistants in the work of alleviating the miseries of the
prisons which they are bound to regulate.
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