The enduring paradox of the penitentiary: When punishment sabotages reform

“ Society without such a collective determination to resent and punish anti-social acts would be a welter of anarchy and disorder. Let us not then be tempted in the goodness of our hearts, and in the strength of our human pity and sympathy, to overlook the necessary foundation of punishment, which is the assertion of the system of rights by pain or penalty—not pain in its physical sense, but pain that comes from degradation and the loss of self-respect. ”

“ The old theories of punishment have broken down, and it is now difficult to find any coherent theory behind the practice. When a crime is committed that shocks the public by its atrocity there are demands made for fierce retribution on the culprit, partly on the plea that he ought to be made to suffer, and partly for the purpose of deterring others from repeating the act. Incidentally those who are most insistent on the employment of the executioner show that they possess a fair share of the same spirit that educed the act which they condemn. ”

“ The visiting chaplains always bring a choir with them, and to them we give our heartfelt thanks, with a God bless you. I love to read of the progress made in these penal institutions where reform is practiced. I am sure the prisoners must take an interest in it all, for it is all for their own good. The Stillwater prison and Elmira prison must be models of neatness and good order, with a perfect system of discipline. It would be well for all prisons to copy them. If prisons are supposed to be erected for the purpose of reformation, why not make them in reality what they are intended to be? ”

“ Make the prison a place of reformation, one of improvement as well as punishment, and instead of increasing crime you will reduce it, which should be the aim of all having the good of their fellowman at heart, and society will be the gainer. I would give a prisoner who would show by his conduct a spirit of reform a parole after half of his time, with conditions attached, as is done in the Minnesota state prison, so that, should he fall back into his old way of living, he would be returned to prison to serve out the remainder of his sentence. ”

“ With respect to life without parole for juvenile nonhomicide offenders, none of the goals of penal sanctions that have been recognized as legitimate—retribution, deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation, see Ewing, 538 U.S., at 25 (plurality opinion) —provides an adequate justification.
Retribution is a legitimate reason to punish, but it cannot support the sentence at issue here. Society is entitled to impose severe sanctions on a juvenile nonhomicide offender to express its condemnation of the crime and to seek restoration of the moral imbalance caused by the offense. ”

“ Penalty is not essentially reformatory.—By this we mean that the reformation of the offender is not its primary design,—as penalty, it is not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but in grace. ”

“ The retributive theory is now being condemned by all the advanced thinkers. Deterrent theory is also following the same fate. Reformative theory is the only one which is essential, and indispensable for human progress. It aims at returning the offender as a most competent and a peace-loving citizen to the society. But what is the nature of punishment inflicted by God upon men even if we suppose them to be offenders. ”

“ I often wonder if the busy world ever gives a thought to the men incarcerated in places made for the punishment of crime and reformation of criminals, but often failing of reaching the desired result. Why is this failure? It must be from defect in the law or prison discipline. Some think perhaps the rigid enforcement of the law in its severest way is right, and that the prisoner should be shown no mercy. ”

“ True, we each had our notions on prison reform, he thinking that attempts in that direction are useless, that, when one has fallen into prison we can not reform him, that punishment is the great mission of the prison, and thus on; I, supposing that reform is practicable, that we should faithfully use all available means for it, and make it the paramount object of imprisoning. On the question of prison order we were exactly alike in sentiment,—perfect order, strict discipline,—though, perhaps, varying as to the ultimate results, he securing that as a deterrent to crime ”

“ Punishment wears different shapes according to the point of view from which it is regarded, but, in the distinctively moral view, is reformatory. All punishment is retribution, but not in the sense that it is personal vengeance. ”

“ If, now, we consider the spirit of that desire for retribution carefully, we find that it is very different from common revenge, which seeks to mitigate the suffering, endured by the sight of the suffering inflicted; indeed, we find that what it aims at deserves to be called, not so much revenge as punishment. For in it there really lies the intention of an effect upon the future through the example, and that without any selfish aim, either for the avenging person, for it costs him his life, or for a society which secures its own safety by laws. ”

“ The general principle that penal suffering should be graduated according to the magnitude of the crime goes to show that retribution is the proper basis for punishment. One must be on one's guard against jumping at conclusions. If Pichon were to see these spots he would pronounce them blood offhand. Pichon sees blood in everything which is red. ”

“ Nature abhors a vacuum. I retire—enter Pichon!
Equally significant is the principle that punishment must not overstep the limits set down by moral disapproval. We are more indignant over the murder of a great man than over that of a worthless drunkard. So, too, courage, genius, worth of the criminal, constitute alleviating circumstances. These facts show that punishment is intended to pay back for wrong-doing in proportionate measure—is, in other words, for retribution. Yet that property of the blood which we call clotting would produce precisely such spots as these. ”

“ Satisfaction by substitution, and substitution by incorporation. The bloody sacrifice among the heathen expressed the consciousness that sin involves guilt; that guilt exposes man to the righteous wrath of God; that without expiation of that guilt there is no forgiveness; and that through the suffering of another who shares his life the sinner may expiate his sin.
Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatik, 170, quotes from Nägelsbach, Nachhomerische Theologie, 338 sq.—“The essence of punishment is retribution (Vergeltung) , and retribution is a fundamental law of the world-order. ”

“ Every manly feeling, every effort toward real reformation, is trampled under foot, so that when the convict's time is out there is little left on which to build. He has been humiliated to the last degree, and his spirit has so long been bent by authority and fear that even the desire to stand erect has almost faded from the mind. The keepers feel that they are safe, because no matter what they do, the convict when released will not tell the story of his wrongs, for if he conceals his shame, he must also hide their guilt.
Every penitentiary should be a real reformatory. ”

“ It is apparent that modern criminology has had a very negligible effect upon the popular mind within the last twenty-five years, for I have found the prisons of today in no essential way different from those of a quarter of a century back. Brutality is rampant; discipline is synonymous with the absolute suppression of individuality and the crushing of the prisoner’s spirit and will. The atmosphere of our penal institutions of today is that of violence and force, of force and violence. With very rare exceptions, the spirit of humanity, of understanding, and justice, is a stranger in prison. ”

“ Punishment and abuse may stir and arouse a man so that he will fight with a desperation born of despair, but more [12] often he sinks into a state of mind, sullen, revengeful and heartless—a condition fatal to reformation, and dangerous to Society. Method, discipline, authority, are fine things and will accomplish much, but with a prisoner you can not force his soul against itself. You must lead him up and out of himself; you can not curse him into a better man. The supreme object of imprisonment should be to inspire the prisoner to do his best when more than his best is needed. ”

“ There is no greater mistake in the whole compass of penal discipline, than its studied imposition of degradation as a part of punishment. Such imposition destroys every better impulse and aspiration. It crushes the weak, irritates the strong and indisposes all to submission and reform. ”

“ In short, what happens to the prisoner in prison is of secondary importance to the public. Of primary importance is, what is likely to happen to them when he comes out. The first consideration should be: How can you deal with people who have offended so as to avoid making them worse and to ensure that they will behave better? Unfortunately, one main concern of many is how they can make the culprit suffer. One of the effects of retributive punishment is to make those who undergo it less fit, physically or mentally, than they were before its infliction. ”

“ There is something in the atmosphere of a criminal prison which seems never to forsake the liberated prisoner: he feels its influence, and suspects all to be guarding against its infection. In his imagination, the deadly mephitic air is always about him. A reflection of innocence, or a sense of repentance and full reparation, may appease the conscience, but they will not take away the remembrance of the incarceration; and it is to be feared that such painful reflections have, when acting upon a morbid sensibility, led to suicide, or to a return to crime. ”

“ Public opinion, which sent you to prison, and your gaolers, who have to keep you there, are mostly concerned with your failings. Every hour of prison existence will remind you of these afresh. Unless you are able to keep alight within yourself the remembrance of acts and thoughts which were good, [x] a belief in your own power to exist freely when you are once more out of prison, how can any other human being help you? If not the inward power, how can any external power avail? ”

“ A deeper investigation into prison life brings to light the fact that nothing is done to prevent or counteract the desire for suicide in prisoners, the evil is only met by artificial prevention of its consequences when the mutilation of all spontaneous wishes, human instincts and reasonable paths of self-interest have engendered the passionate longing to cease existing. ”

“ When, for a short while, I shared your lot, I asked myself through all my waking hours if there were any friendly thought which could act beneficently for all prisoners, no matter how various the training of their previous lives, no matter whether distress of circumstance, drunkenness, selfish action, cruelty, or madness had been the cause which brought them into prison.
And there seemed this one thing. It is a single idea, but needs many words to give it shape.
Lay hold of your inward self and keep tight hold. Reverence yourself. Be just, kind and forgiving to yourself. ”

“ It can scarcely be doubted, that almost every prisoner in the Penitentiary who has been frequently visited by those who evince an anxiety for his temporal and spiritual good, has been led to resolve to refrain from the crimes which placed him in prison, and to seek a maintenance in the world by means which that world sanctions and which God approves; but it is certain that a large portion of those who thus resolve, find it easier on their return to the world to resume their associations and habits and to become three fold more offenders against the laws than they had been. ”

“ We find 'Imprisonment' formally installed for the execution of offences against the law in the French Code of 1791. At this time Mirabeau is said to have anticipated modern penitentiary science by publishing a remarkable report, declaring Prisons to be 'maisons d'amélioration,' founded on the principle of labour, separation, rewards under a 'mark' system, conditional licence, and aid-on-discharge. We seem to be reading a modern treatise on Prisons—a sudden gleam of light, bursting on an age darkened by the shadow of much unutterable cruelty in the punishment of crime. ”

“ Moral reform [Pg x] is then only an accident of the system. Its value is in the habit of order, work, separation, education, obedience to inflexible rule. These have a profound moral value. If a man is not made honest, he contracts honest habits: he was a useless person, he now knows how to work: if he is not more virtuous, he is at least more reasonable: he has the morality of self-interest, if not of honour. ”

“ Given firm, thoughtful, humane administration in all that concerns the actual custody of all offenders of both sexes of the various categories, given a wise classification and treatment according to age, sex, and nature of the offence—the future lies in Preventive Science; on the one hand, medical science, strictly so-called, which shall, by diagnosis and therapeutics of the mental and physical state, in early age before it is too late, correct and restrain by suitable preventive means, institutional or otherwise, the tendency to anti-social conduct ”

“ An understanding of eugenic principles and practice, a new aptitude and alertness in the physician, a new type of clinic, special hospital and institution—"early treatment centres"—a system of "voluntary boarders" in approved homes and institutions, a wider education of the public in what causes and constitutes mental incapacity, a larger apprehension of the meaning of self-control—all this is necessary if we would prevent mental disease. It is obvious that such a policy raises many questions of science, law and administration. ”

“ A stranger coming into an institution frightens, confuses, and misleads the inmates, who are not then in a normal state. A permanent laboratory would be an adjunct of the institution, and would be accepted as a matter of course. The psychologist should be resident in the institution, and be familiar with the prison population. ”

“ We recommend a laboratory, furnished with the best modern instruments of precision, conducted by a specialist or trained observer, for the scientific study of prison populations, with special reference to obvious practical needs of the administration in the discipline, instruction, and training of prisoners. These studies would be: Physical: the anatomy and physiology of prisoners; measurements of sensation and other manifestations of mind through the body; and the hereditary factors. Psychical: the mental, emotional, voluntary life-activities ”

“ It is obvious to what extravagance such a system can be pushed, but the underlying principle is sound, and a perfect prison system, based on science, would adapt its treatment to a far greater degree than at present to the varying categories of offenders, who, under the old classical system, which recognized only the uniform and abstract type of crime and criminal, would be consigned equally to the one abstract and uniform type of penalty—the prison cell. ”

“ Then in connection with criminal courts, and especially in connection with juvenile courts, where the development of crime can be checked, there should be thoroughgoing study of the recidivist. The court should be acquainted with the practical value of such study and should act on it. No offender should be allowed on parole unless he is known to have the mental make-up which, on the whole, will in his environment tend to prevent his freedom from being inimical to society. Then, not a difficult matter to insure, there must be better classified institutional treatment. ”

“ All prisoners who go before a judge of the Municipal court and show indications of being weak mentally or who are believed to have physical defects will be sent to the new laboratory for expert examination in the hope that some way may be found to correct criminal tendencies and restore the victims to normal condition. ”

“ Already we have several recorded instances when a blow on the head had caused uncontrollable criminal impulses, where skilful brain surgery removed the pressure, and with the restoration of the normal brain the nature of the individual recovered its moral balance. Every large city should have its psychopathic detention hospital in connection with its courts, to be resorted to in all cases where there [Pg 300] is doubt of the responsibility of any person accused of crime, and every large penitentiary should have its psychopathic department for men sent to prison from smaller towns. ”

“ He is aided to form habits of industry and obedience, which tend to become fixed. He is trained and transformed.
“Under the indeterminate sentence the prison itself undergoes a gradual process of transformation. The moment that reformation rather than punishment becomes the watchword of the administration, a new spirit takes possession of it. The governor chooses better and abler men to govern it—men imbued with reformatory ideas and qualified to exert a reformatory influence; men of higher education, purer moral character, broader culture, loftier aims in life, greater devotion to their work. ”

“ In connection with the parole law we should have our prisoners graded as first, second and third class, giving to the second grade or class advantages above the third, and to the first above the second, giving them a motive to reform their ways while yet in prison, and their partial liberty from the first class by parole. By this means you instill into the prisoner a habit for good which in time will take root and prove a blessing, not only to the prisoner, but also a source of pleasure to those bringing it about. It must be expected that some will fall again ”

“ The penitentiary system also seeks not so much to punish the deed as the man, in order to reform him. It thereby sets aside the real aim of punishment, determent from the deed, in order to attain the very problematic end of reformation. But it is always a doubtful thing to attempt to attain two different ends by one means: how much more so if the two are in any sense opposite ends. ”

“ Education is a benefit, punishment ought to be an evil; the penitentiary prison is supposed to accomplish both at once. Moreover, however large a share untutored ignorance, combined with outward distress, may have in many crimes, yet we dare not regard these as their principal cause, for innumerable persons living in the same ignorance and under absolutely similar circumstances commit no crimes. Thus the substance of the matter falls back upon the personal, moral character; but this, as I have shown in my prize essay on the freedom of the will, is absolutely unalterable. ”

“ The blackjack and the dungeon are surely not the proper means of reclamation, no matter what the social causes of crime. Restraint and penal methods can't reform. The very idea of punishment precludes betterment. True reformation can emanate only from voluntary impulse, inspired and cultivated by intelligent advice and kind treatment. But reformation which is the result of fear, lacks the very essentials of its object, and will vanish like smoke the moment fear abates. And you know, Aleck, the reformatories are even worse than the prisons. ”

“ The offender should be kept in confinement only until he is fitted by his prison experience to lead an honest and useful life; when this end is attained he should be released. The answer is that the prison doesn’t in fact reform the wrong-doer; that good behavior under the conditions of prison life is no assurance of the intention or capacity of the prisoner to lead an honest and useful life after his release, and that the inspectors or other paroling authority have no other guide to go by in determining the inmates’ fitness for a life of freedom than his prison record. ”

“ Among the evils which have grown out of the prison contract system, the number of which is legion, is that of turning out men and women, boys and girls, thoroughly educated in these schools of crime. They are thrown upon the world homeless and friendless to poison and destroy those with whom they come in contact. Many soon find their way back into prison, and some end their lives upon the gallows.
We sometimes on a Sabbath morning hear the President of the United States prayed for, but what minister ever prays for the poor parish behind prison bars? ”

“ The existence of contract labor is not the most serious fault, according to Dr. Ellwood. In the Missouri penitentiary, first offenders and hardened criminals intermingle. No school exists in the prison. Punishment, not reformation, is its dominant note. Several of the cell-houses are antiquated in their arrangements.
A warden once said he never knew a man who was benefited by his confinement there. A penitentiary physician told Dr. Ellwood there was as much dissipation within as outside the walls. The only separation of prisoners is for punishment. ”

“ Let those who are in for the first offense be separated from those who are professional and debased criminals. Give these youthful offenders the benefit of schools, connected with the reformatory. Let them have moral instruction, and many of these young men will be reclaimed, However well a criminal is treated, when behind prison walls, however good the advantages granted him, all this will avail but little, if some provision is not made to aid him when he leaves the prison. ”

“ These prisoners, the writer says, have been guilty of some misdemeanor and being poor and unable to pay a fine are "sent to the road prison and there the lash is administered on the naked back contrary to the spirit of the constitution in abolishing imprisonment for debt and the lash at the whipping-post."
Now I would suggest that a society be formed for the prevention of cruelty to prisoners. While the good people are praying for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on other lands may they not forget that we need a baptism of fire right here in our own land. ”

“ The educational work of a prison is of the highest, I may say, of the first importance. The education of the hands to work comes naturally, partly as an incident of the necessary work carried on in prison.
Nearly all convicts are densely ignorant. The polished, scholarly, shrewd criminal of whom we hear so much, and to whom the papers and books give so much prominence, is the exception, not the rule, in prison.
If the prison is to have a reformatory feature, it must come very largely through the school. Many prison schools are such only in name. The work accomplished is very meager. ”

“ To one who is not a legislator it appears foolish to insist that offenders should be placed under conditions which do not fit them to live honestly outside prison, and that this process should be repeated until they have become habitual criminals, before it is ordered that steps shall be taken for their reform. What are the influences ordered by Parliament, and what is the work they have to be taught which will make them able and willing to earn an honest livelihood? ”

“ The great War—terrible and hard school of experience though it has been—has given us the great object lesson of what new conditions of life, resulting notably from the control of the Liquor Trade and facility of employment, can effect. A century of legislation directed to the changes of the penal code, or the methods of punishment, would not effect what social legislation, induced by the War, and affecting the daily habit and living of the people, has revealed during the last five years,—the numbers coming to prison reduced 75 per cent! ”

“ If, at the present time, there is a reversion to the former state of things—unrestricted sale of intoxicating liquor, or should recurring cycles of acute trade depression result in wide-spread unemployment and poverty,—it may be expected that the Prisons of the country will once again be occupied with thousands of tramps and vagrants, and petty offenders committed for short periods, and that the provisions of the Criminal Justice Administration Act as to checking committals in default of payment of fine will be largely nullified. ”

“ America, at its best, is compassionate. In the quiet of American conscience, we know that deep, persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation's promise. Whatever our views of its cause, we can agree that children at risk are not at fault. Abandonment and abuse are not acts of God, they are failures of love. The proliferation of prisons, however necessary, is no substitute for hope and order in our souls. Where there is suffering, there is duty. Americans in need are not strangers, they are citizens, not problems, but priorities, and all of us are diminished when any are hopeless. ”

“ It would be archaic to limit the definition of 'punishment' to 'retribution.' Punishment serves several purposes; retributive, rehabilitative, deterrent-and preventive. One of the reasons society imprisons those convicted of crimes is to keep them from inflicting future harm, but that does not make imprisonment any the less punishment.
Historical considerations by no means compel restriction of the bill of attainder ban to instances of retribution. ”

“ Society has outgrown the crude conception of punishment as mere retaliation or retribution incited by revenge. There is no doubt that even in the most enlightened countries, penology as a science is still in its infancy, and is only just beginning to feel the uncomfortable girding of its scanty swaddling-bands and blindly kicking itself free from them. ”

“ Custom, routine, and the fatal ease, and saving of trouble to all concerned, has, in the past, induced the tendency to regard the warrant of commitment to prison as the ordinary and only expedient for satisfying the claims of Justice. It is only of late years that the successful operation of Probation, or sursis á l'exécution de la peine in foreign countries, and notably in some of the States of America, has awakened a lively and growing interest in this method of finding an alternative to imprisonment ”

“ The object should be to convince every criminal that he has made a mistake; that he has taken the wrong way; that the right way is the easy way, and that the path of crime never did and never can lead to happiness; that that idea is a mistake, and that the Government wishes to convince him that he has made a mistake; wishes to open his intellectual eyes; wishes so to educate him, so to elevate him, that he will look back upon what he has done, only with horror. This is reformation. Punishment is not. ”

“ The substance of the paper was that labor, to be made useful and productive, follows natural laws, which are the same in prison as out of prison; that it is an advantage to the prisoner to fit him for usefulness and to make more easy his reform; that it will help pay the cost of his conviction and imprisonment; that upon release, he will be better armed against relapse into crime, as well as much better prepared to obtain an honest living than those whose labor has been merely penal ”