Pennsylvania Prison Society

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In whatever light the House of Correction is regarded, it presents the highest claims on society for its establishment. Is it to be a place into which the vicious are to be driven by the law, that they may be punished for their offence, and society saved the disgrace and danger of their presence? Society has a right to demand such a forceful withdrawal of the elements of crime from its midst. ”

“ It is dangerous—it is at least wrong—to make a low estimate of the labors that take a human being from the cells of a prison, when his character is such as to lead to a belief that he will do no wrong, by example, to society, nor sink in the scale of morals. It is wrong to say that the verdict of a jury fully acquits a man, restores him at once and entirely to society, and wipes away the stain which a prison cell has imparted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A man who has been imprisoned long, on a criminal charge, may, in his chamber, or in his family, feel the peace of a “conscience void of offence;” but, abroad in the world, he will feel himself continually on the defensive,—always anxious to show that he is still worthy of the confidence he seeks,—always fearful that some act or word of his, unnoticeable in others, may be construed as consistent with charges which he has publicly disproved; and he feels that the months or weeks of imprisonment which he has suffered, are not to be redeemed by a whole life of liberty and honorable conduct. ”

“ 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 state which made them contemplate and promise reformation is changed, and they seem to feel released from their pledges. They have before them a sense of the degradation to which their vices have reduced them, and they shrink from a contemplation of a perpetuation of that degradation. They feel that they stand in the presence of those whose superior moral or social position is only the result of superior virtue, and they think it easy to check the appetites whose indulgence is vice, when the reward is near. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Aldermen of the city are elected by the voters of their own wards, and he who can command the most votes, can, if he desire it, be chosen Alderman. No man of wealth seeks the place,—no man of business habits asks for a nomination. The rewards of the office are, at best, below that of ordinary business; and the distinction which the place confers is not that which gratifies the wishes of the ambitious. But the place is coveted and obtained, its emoluments spring from the fees paid by those who come or are brought before the magistrate. ”

“ The released half converted criminal feels all this, but he feels the difficulty of relinquishing plans of life which seem to have been devested of a part of their chances of defeat by the very imprisonment into which they led him; and, as a resolution to reform does not always include the means by which virtuous living may be obtained, the outgoing prisoner finds in his circumstances an excuse for violating the resolutions of good, or postponing their fulfilment till at length he becomes involved in the same labyrinth of difficulties and crimes that caused his former incarceration. ”

“ Prevention! domestic discipline, social care, and social censure, can alone diminish this evil, and free our community from that awful scourge—a drunken woman—and alleviate the miseries which are found in the cell of the inebriate prisoner.
It is not to be denied that there has been a great increase in the habit of using intoxicating liquors within a few years. It is a growing evil of terrible dimensions and appalling effects; and the worst part of the curse is its continued augmentation. How is this evil to be lessened? ”

“ To all visitors of prisons it is known that hundreds, who commit a violation of the criminal law, never feel the degradation of their act, or submit their minds to its disgraceful consequences, till they are made companions of culprits in the prison cells,—that to be known to the good as having done a notable wrong, is a mortifying means for repentance and amendment; while to be in companionship with the admitted bad, is to be almost certainly sealed to future infamy. ”

“ But why—when authority is given, why not provide a Hospital for those struck with the pestilence of drunkenness and the accumulated miseries that come in its train? Is there a disease in the whole catalogue of human suffering that is more epidemic, if not contagious, than intoxication? ”

“ The experience of those who have spent years at the doors of the prison cells, is not that of multiplied fruits. The value of a single soul must be fully appreciated, that the one redeemed from vice may be regarded as a consolation for the hundreds that make no improvement from efforts in their behalf. In short, we must find our pleasure in the discharge of a duty, and leave to Him, whose commands we obey, to give the increase for which we labor. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And why then should the vagrant, the breaker of the peace, the drunkard, multiply his or her disease more than the sufferer by the small-pox or cholera? If the hospital for the small-pox is a retreat for the sufferer, and his family and neighborhood need to be relieved from the danger of his condition, the House of Correction would be no less an asylum for the vicious, in which they could grow better by care, and escape the evil of communicating their mental disease to their neighbors. ”

“ Shall we say that this man or that woman has shown himself or herself irreclaimable, and therefore we will spend no more time, no more kindness, on such an one? Who shall say that all is lost while life remains? ”

“ The young are transferred from the cell of the prison to the care of the House of Refuge. Is it then less consistent with the objects of this society that it should put itself in harmonious action with those who would lessen the overwhelming vice of drunkenness by which the cells of our prison are crowded, not only by drunkenness, but by those who having by drunkenness forfeited the esteem of society and lost their own respect, sink into lower debasement and lose all distinction between vice and crime, and practice theft as the means and intoxication as the end of living. ”

“ We may spend days and weeks, as indeed many have spent months, in seeking to awaken the conscience of the hardened offender to the evils of his course, and arousing him to the danger of their tendencies; and when the object of this solicitude shall have passed from our care, and ceased to hear our lessons, we may hear of him in the midst of debauchery and villainies, apparently ten-fold more a child of the devil than when we sought to soften his heart, and succeeded in raising his tears in the criminal cell. ”

“ Shall this Society initiate a plan for promoting temperance, or shall it lend its hearty co-operation to some association that shall have for its principal object that which could only be a branch, a true, living branch, indeed, but only a branch of the duties of the Society for alleviating the miseries of prisons? ”

“ The right hand of fellowship extended through the aperture of the cell door, is the means of conveying a phial of brandy carefully deposited in the ample sleeve, and the affectionate friend that comes to sympathize with her incarcerated companion, exposes as she reaches forward to reciprocate a kiss, the forbidden bottle hidden in the bosom of her dress. It is then not only the appetite for whiskey against which opposition is to be made at our prison, but the deep sympathy which is manifested for those who suffer for a want of means and place to gratify that appetite. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is desirable that auxiliary societies should be established, in order to call into exercise, and direct into proper channels, the spirit of philanthropy that abounds in our State, and to give object and employment to that self-denying devotion which marks the character of woman, and is found in a class of men that rarely are named with public benefactors, though they are found, when opportunities present, where humanity has its most repulsive duties and earns its highest rewards. ”

“ It seems almost impossible to free our large cities from the haunts of the vicious into which these young men had been enticed, and while they exist it seems certain that crime will not only abound, but progress, not merely in amount but in impunity. The feelings of those interested in the welfare and character of these young men, may be imagined when they learn of their release from prison and their full acquittal of the charge of felony. ”

“ By the aid of humanity, their undue and illegal sufferings may be prevented; the links which should bind the whole family of mankind together, under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken; and such degrees and modes of punishment may be discovered and suggested, as may, instead of continuing habits of vice, become the means of restoring our fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness. From a conviction of the truth and obligation of these principles, the subscribers have associated themselves under the title of “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He knew how repulsive usually is the convict’s cell to those of his vocation; and he felt also how important to those who would be useful there, is a knowledge of modern languages; and especially did he resolve to devote himself to those of his own country, (Germany,) whom he could approach by many avenues which love of the “Father land” opens to the heart. And many who heard his kind monitions, lived to bless his benevolence. He was a man of steady and well regulated zeal, devoid of ostentation; practical in all his plans, and eminently useful in his labor in concurrence with this Society. ”