Pennsylvania Prison Society

“ Will separation be better, on the whole, even if the hope of reforming the culprit is but very faint and remote? Yes; under all ordinary circumstances, and at all times, it is best for a convict to be separated from other convicts. But does not this feature of separation involve, in the prison structure, great expense to the State? Not half so much as the absence of it. Once settle the principle, that the separation of convicts, each one from the other, is more likely to give the desired effect to their punishment than association, and the question of expense becomes very insignificant. ”

“ An unemployed prisoner is a future menace to society, and no effort should be spared to keep him busy—to impress upon him the dignity and necessity of work, and to make him know that he is stronger physically and better morally if he is regularly employed.
Prison labor should be approached with a desire to help the prisoner and restore him to society cured of his criminal ailment. If the only purpose in the minds of the authorities is to make a profit for their district, they are in grave danger of reverting to the old convict labor system, which at best was only a modified form of slavery. ”

“ Not merely to lessen the sufferings of the condemned, not alone to assist the innocent, not merely to teach sound morals to those who are suffering from a violation of the laws of God and man, not merely to prevent a too rigid enforcement of special enactments, not alone to prescribe and ensure a separate confinement to the condemned, but so to use that confinement that vice or crime, so communicable in its character, shall not propagate itself through the cells of the prison, and thus make a penitentiary a nursery for misconduct rather than a school for mental and moral discipline ”

“ The mission of the prison is for this more than for the protection of the innocent. It is for the reclamation and restoration of the delinquent. Leaving such an institution, the ex-prisoner might truly say: “I came in a thief, I leave an honest man; I entered a murderer, I depart loving God and man. My conscience, which once made me a coward, now makes me a true man.” ”

“ The great majority of our jail population does not consist of criminals, he said, but of men who have been the victims of their environment. With the proper environment, such as fresh air and sunshine, wholesome work, kind treatment, trust reposed in them, and the sympathy and help of men and women interested in their welfare, they become useful members of society.
“The first man created, so divine history tells us, proved a delinquent, and God’s sentence upon him was to go forth and till the soil; can man to-day impose a better sentence upon our delinquents?” ”

“ Philadelphia, March 20, 1861.
Dear Sir—The proposition to reduce monthly a portion of the sentences of such convicts as conduct themselves with uniform propriety, is one that meets my hearty concurrence; it is equally recommended by the strongest consideration of policy and humanity. It is the very best system of pardons which could be devised, since under it the remission of the sentence of the law against the offender is not the result of unjust favoritism or mistaken sympathy, but the fair reward of a meritorious effort on the part of the convict to amend his conduct. ”

“ We view labor, in connection with the prisoners, in a two-fold light. The possession of it is a positive good, not only as a comfort and companion in their solitary hours, but also as a reformatory agent. And the want of it is not only a negative, but a positive evil, especially with those of a low order of education and intelligence, who, being unable to read, and possessing very little matter for reflection, have no resource with which to occupy and interest the mind, and consequently there is danger that by constantly preying upon itself, it may become diseased. ”

“ England has its immense cities, abounding with ignorant and vicious classes of population—it has its London, its Liverpool, its Birmingham, its Manchester and its Leeds, and yet this single city of New York, if we may trust official tables, exceeds not only each of them in crime, but all put together! It cannot be ascribed to any peculiar character of our people, distinct from theirs—for it is notorious that the greater part of our criminality springs from the foreign element of our population. ”

“ And besides our own neglected and depraved population, the tide of emigration, now setting in stronger and stronger every year, while it enriches our country, leaves much of its refuse in our city. Pauper families, and even felons, are not unfrequently sent over to us, as a cheap way of disposing of them, by the selfishness or mistaken humanity of those whose duty it is to provide for them at home, thus swelling the number of houseless, friendless and lawless youth, drifting loose upon society, to become utterly ship-wrecked, unless the active hand of benevolence is stretched out to save them. ”

“ Every man who works in prison should, after his own board and clothing have been paid for, work for the support of his family or for those depending upon him. Some officials seem not to know that a convict may have a family, yet there is always this heart-saddened, home-broken circle of gloom, the mothers, wives and children of convicts, about every penal institution. Wherewith are they to be fed and clothed? What recognition does the state give to them from whom it has taken their only source of support? I know of one case where the state gets $500,000 a year from its convict labor. ”

“ Let us, then, sow the seeds by all waters; let us not withhold, morning or evening, our hands; and, when we have reason to believe that these seeds have found a place in the consenting mind of the listener, let us water them with the refreshing influences of our experience, and warm them into growth by that affection which is the basis of true philanthropy. It is thus we may alleviate the miseries of prisons, and make the criminal’s cell the vestibule to the temple of virtue and piety. ”

“ The public mind of England awakes periodically, and with a start, to a sense of the danger it incurs by the presence of a large criminal population in the very heart of the community, which is dealt with on no rational or consistent system, watched by no adequate police, and disposed of in no conclusive manner. We rave against the evil, we abuse our rulers, we insist upon a remedy being found, we listen eagerly to every quack and every philosopher, we discuss the subject passionately, illogically, and superficially ”

“ The mischief which a contemner of laws may do, single-handed, to society, is so indefinite, and, we may almost say, boundless, that we can scarcely conceive of a greater public benefit than his reformation, unless, indeed, it be such a training of his children or his neighbor’s children, or both, as shall prevent their following his example. To confine a convict three or five or seven years with a chafed and irritated temper during all that interval, and then dismiss him, a settled and irreconcileable enemy to himself and all about him, is the worst policy a State can pursue. ”

“ Society has no more perplexing question than the treatment of prisoners who have served out their sentence and desire to lead new lives. Minister as I am, I must confess that the average church member is unwilling to receive the ex-prisoner into his home, or even to look him in the face. People whose only superiority consists in that they have never been convicted scornfully raise their skirts and pass by on the other side. The punishment which society inflicts is more intolerable to the sensitive soul than confinement in prison walls. ”

“ The studied attempt to break the spirit of prisoners at Fort Leavenworth and elsewhere by unspeakable cruelty suggests the practices of a barbaric past rather than those of a civilized and enlightened people. Granting that a Nation must at times deal firmly with political offenders, can any crime ever justify the employment of cruel and inhumane treatment? If such barbarous punishment has the sanction of law, then an outraged sense of justice demands the immediate revision of our Military Code. ”

“ None of the keepers, or other officers in the penitentiary, go armed in any way, there being no occasion for it, as it is morally certain that no revolt, or insubordination, threatening violence, can ever take place. Each prisoner is fully sensible that an effort to escape, must necessarily be unsuccessful, and therefore, he never broods over its possibility, nor devises plans to subdue his keeper, or even murder him, if need be, to effect it. On the contrary, the whole system is one of kindness, it might almost be said, between the prisoners, the keepers and the visitors. ”

“ When the resolution is taken, the pain of punishment is felt, the sense of confinement is keen, and the view of personal degradation in presence of a virtuous teacher is mortifying; and the force of former habits forgotten, and the attractions of vice underrated, and especially the sense of shame among those who knew them, not calculated on, they go forth in the resolution of amendment—they meet the suspicions of the good and the imitation of the bad—and they allow passion to triumph over virtue. ”