Pennsylvania Prison Society

“ None will dissent, we presume, from the remark of the inspectors, that “it should be remembered by all those who are intrusted with the high prerogative of administering punishment, that the convict in the prison is sentenced by the law to expiate his crime by confinement and hard labor, and that every degree of punishment beyond what is needful for the due execution of this sentence, and the attainment of the best ends to be answered by it, is excessive, is beyond the sentence and intention of the law, and is without law or justice.” ”

“ All will be more or less reckless, and hard in mind and conduct; they have been formed by the cautious course of circumstances around them; poison to the mind, to the body, has been the course of their only education. Their maxim will be the heathen maxim of old, ‘Eat and drink, to-morrow we die;’ forced by their necessities to labor, experience and wisdom will be wanting; they will not husband their wages, but seek for excitement in intemperance, or low sensual indulgences; their consumption of spirits will be ten times that of the happier class. ”

“ The institution is deprived of the fruits of its good discipline as fast, nearly, as they appear. “By constantly sending out the best, we lose their influence, which might be of much service with the more vicious. If, in any community, the best members were constantly leaving, and only bad members coming in to supply their places, the condition of that community, with regard to morals, would become very low, if not hopeless.” ”

“ The rapid increase of crime in our city, and the constantly augmenting numbers of vicious and vagrant youth, is a subject of serious contemplation. It would be serious enough, if it only kept pace with the astonishing increase of our population, but it even outstrips it. ”

“ Our system of government supposes educated citizens; and will not be safe unless our citizens are more or less educated. Now there are great masses coming in upon us who are not educated, except to vice and crime; the creatures or the victims of the justice or the oppression, or the over-population of the old world. For the education of these, adult and juvenile, not only must provision be made, but means must be used to render the provision effective. It is not enough to say that provision is made for their education, if they will avail themselves of it at a proper time. ”

“ But, if the views we have ever held respecting the design of a House of Refuge are 57 just, viz., to rescue those whose childhood lies all open to evil examples and influences, and to put them under treatment, which shall resemble, in its main features, that of a good home, then are we clear, that a more rigid discrimination in the admission of inmates should be observed. The most hopeful subjects of such domestic discipline, are those who have not past into that stage of moral and intellectual stupor and impenetrability, on which ordinary sympathies fall as water-drops upon a marble slab. ”

“ The less abandoned are shut out from association with the hardened, who may have spent years in familiarity with crime. Each man has his books and his thoughts and his conscience for companions. His keepers, his physician when in sickness, his moral instructor, the superintendent of his daily labor, he soon learns all are his friends. A great deal is in their power, through the pleasant look, the friendly salutation, and the kind interest manifested in those little alleviations which in no degree interfere with the strictest and most wholesome discipline. ”

“ A thoroughly bad man, by himself, is the greatest coward, and without his accustomed stimulants, the most wretched of beings; we have no hesitation, therefore, in stating, that such a man would prefer even the scanty food, the vermin and the sloth of such a place as Newgate, where he might gamble for his supper, learn new tricks or instruct the novice, sing, play, and quarrel by turns in the night-room, than the very best treatment and the most abundant diet of a prison on the new plan. The reformatory character of such a gaol is, to such persons, an object of real terror. ”

“ This is the proper place to allude to a practice of which we have already complained more than once—that of sending to the Refuge, from mistaken ideas of humanity, subjects so far advanced in years and in crime as to give but faint hopes of their own reformation, while by example and influence they are calculated to do infinite harm to others. Those who have travelled long and far on the downward road of vice, are most unfit companions for such as have been arrested at the outset of their guilty career. ”

“ He justly animadverts upon the unreasonableness of those who expect “a House of Refuge will accomplish, in a few months, what respectable and even religious parents find it difficult to do even in a series of years.” They have their children from the first hour of their existence, and through all that precious period of childhood, while they are comparatively strangers to evil habits and associations, and yet how often do they fail to secure their standing in good habits and sound principles? ”

“ The prisoner’s self-respect will thus be encouraged and cultivated, as he sees that he is not by all the world regarded in the light of a hopeless outcast. He may be inspired with the noble ambition of regaining his character, and leading in future a reputable life. Such like benefits can be extended with four-fold advantage in the separate plan of imprisonment, while its solitude is relieved by the kind offices of a sympathizing friendship. ”

“ The separate system is free, certainly, from many things which impede the reformation of criminals; from the perpetual distrust and perpetual punishment which are necessary to enforce silence in association, and from the grosser vices of the older style of prisons, mutual contamination and hardening in villany. It allows a return to feelings of self-respect. It removes all possibility of combination for evil purposes, and prevents the exertion of that fascinating influence which the practised villain exerts so destructively over the novice in crime. ”

“ We have known cases, not a few, in which the manifestation of a real interest in the welfare of a child at a favorable moment, has been, in its effects, like the gushing forth of a living spring from the smitten rock. ”

“ We admit that all these are necessary the moment it receives a sturdy, hardened, hackneyed rogue of eighteen, sixteen or even fourteen; but it is a pity to force upon the whole establishment the gloomy appearance of a prison, rather than reject half a dozen youth of extra age and size, whom parents or friends naturally feel disposed to save from a felon’s doom. ”

“ The case of the prisoner is always strongly stated in his favor, and that backed by the influence of friends or hired agents, and the incautious signing by citizens of a petition for pardon, usually produces the result of a liberation from that sentence.
“Nothing tends more to the suppression of crime than the certainty of punishment, no matter how short. Let people once be convinced that criminals will be punished as the law provides, and we should find the number of crimes rapidly diminishing. ”

“ If it be thought, from what has been written of late years on the subject, that a greater efficacy should be attributed to separate confinement, let it be borne in mind, that cotemporaneously with its adoption in any prison, there has been very much greater care taken than ever used to be in the selection of officers to superintend the discipline, and to convey moral and religious instruction to the prisoners. Wherever Christianity has been brought to bear upon criminals, in its real power and blessedness, good has been accomplished under the most untoward circumstances ”

“ But, whatever may be thought of the influence of separate confinement, as a means of reformation, there should be no doubt about its utility as a punishment, if not carried to an extreme. It is a most severe one, certainly; but this is not without great advantages, even in an economical point of view; for in proportion as it is severe, the sentence may be abridged, and its heaviest pressure is upon those who deserve it most. Criminals, of all men, can least bear to be alone. ”

“ He should be kept until he is thoroughly weaned from his former indolent ways. I have known boys who have remained three or four years in our institution and who have run away from their masters soon after they were bound out, come back to the city and resort to their old haunts and habits; but finding few if any of their old associates, they have soon felt that their former habits were not so pleasant, and having lost all relish for a vagabond life, have voluntarily returned to the house and asked admission and employment as a boon! ”

“ The discipline, as well as the construction of Refuge-buildings and the usual means of safe custody, evidently contemplate a very young class of boys and girls, say from eight to twelve years of age, who may be incorrigible truants, disobedient to parents, insubordinate to masters, petty thieves, street-strollers, without a home or worse,—uneducated, unaccustomed to any kind of restraint. Such youth come under the discipline of an establishment, like our Houses of Refuge, with a prospect of great advantage. ”

“ The cost of getting up a complete system of hot-water warming and exhaustive ventilation in a country where few examples or approximate specimens are to be found—in a climate which nullifies all European experience—where all parties, suggesters and mechanics, are obliged to acquire a certain experience as they go along, must be much greater than when this subject shall be well understood and generally adopted, as it eventually cannot fail to be. ”

“ Even those who have acquired fixed habits of lying, stealing, deceit and violence, are, at this age, physically reducible to order and industry. They are incapable of using dangerous weapons with effect—they are not likely to combine for outbreaks, nor to plot escapes. With wholesome food, and an hour or two’s recreation every day, they can be made to conform to stringent regulations, without great or long continued severity of discipline. ”

“ The combination of pious Christian zeal with good judgment and a knowledge of human nature, in the head of any prison establishment, we are convinced is more likely to lead to the reformation of its inmates, than any system of discipline without it. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ We are in no danger of attributing too much efficacy to the power of the truth over the mind when it has access to it. It may be questioned, however, whether its influence is not greatly hindered, and sometimes completely obstructed, by the debasing vices of convicts. We are not quite prepared to admit, that the lower the human mind sinks, the more commanding is the influence upon it of Christian doctrine and Christian character, though we would regard no case as beyond the reach of such an influence. ”

“ So, also, if one is presented, deformed in body, deficient in mind, or of sickly constitution, and not likely to succeed in acquiring the knowledge of a trade, or unfitted to bear the proper discipline, he has higher claims on some other form of public charity. A House of Refuge is not meant for him, nor is it likely to benefit him.
An institution designed to keep boys and girls in due order and subordination, ought to be able to dispense with some of the more revolting appendages of a prison—such as unscaleable walls—narrow stone cells—and massive bars and bolts. ”

“ But to bind a boy to a farmer till he is of age, is regarded by most parents as a very undesirable disposition to make of him, and when a boy is thus bound, he generally understands that his parents or friends will readily connive at his escape. The general wish is, that they should be bound to trades, if bound at all.
It seems to be admitted that, as a general thing, city boys are not likely to make good farmers, unless put to it very young, and by degrees accustomed to hard work. ”

“ There are a few minor differences to be adjusted regarding the treatment of convicts, the length of their separate confinement, and the mode of disposing of them for the rest of their sentence; but the principle is now fairly admitted, that the prison is to be a place of severe moral and religious discipline. The office of a gaol chaplain, instead of being the most loathsome and repulsive that a clergyman could hold, is now a work full of interest and promise and hope, bringing often a speedy return for labor. ”

“ We confess we had no idea that the exercise of the pardoning power had been such, either in character or extent, as to warrant a statement like the following from the same source:
“If any one will look at the records of conviction throughout the State for the last fifteen years, and then at the list of pardons, and the history and convictions of the convicts, it will be found, that rarely has a criminal served out the period of his sentence, if he were a person of wealth or previous influence, or who had wealthy connections, or friends and relations of great political influence. ”

“ We are not aware of any system of prison discipline that possesses or pretends to possess an “active agency for reforming criminals,” independent of Christian instruction. We imprison men to punish them, and we think the “active agency” of punishment is quickened by separation. And hence we hold, that apart from reformatory influences, separation during imprisonment is preferable to association, considered merely as a punishment. ”