Various

“ All prison reformers and all humanitarians agree that the object of all punishment is to prevent crime—remotely to cure the criminal. We are not discussing the cure of criminals. We are discussing the whipping post per se, and I submit that the whipping post has prevented two of the most terrible of all crimes short of murder—white slavery and burglary. There is a grave doubt in my mind if there has been a single burglary in Delaware within twenty years committed by a man who was entirely sane and wholly sober, and I do not recall any second offenders. ”

“ Delaware wants no undesirable citizen. This State offers nothing but the whip and the workhouse for the gunmen, white slavers, panders, highwaymen and common thieves which people the underworld of some of our larger cities and who seem to get a certain amount of applause for their more daring performances from the same type of people who demand that I shall set aside a fundamental law of my State and defy the decrees of our High Court. ”

“ Cells mean nothing at all to such men, white or black.
Delaware is absolutely free from all forms of white slavery. This particular form of crime is punished here without recourse to the Mann Act or aid from the Federal authorities. Did the whipping post do naught else but keep cadets out of Delaware it proves its eternal value here. In every other State in the Union in which there is a large city the white slave problem comes up with a degree of regularity. The same people who condemn the whipping post wring their hands and wonder what to do about the cadets and their wretched victims. ”

“ Congress cannot, and certainly will not, interfere in the exercise of proper authority under the law, and as the whipping post is an integral part of the criminal law of Delaware every law officer must consent to its use regardless of any personal views he may have in the matter. Hysterical women, weak men, bullies, cranks and blackguards in all parts of the country have written to me demanding that I set aside the law and prohibit whippings for crime in Delaware. These good souls give no heed to the fact that the whippings are quite as legal in Delaware as imprisonment. ”

“ This learned jurist is intimately familiar with social and political conditions in Delaware and, before the Sons of Delaware, most ably defended the whipping post as an aid to crime prevention.
Solitary confinement has been proved a failure. It rots out the prisoner, destroys all ambition, and when his hour of freedom comes he is without initiative, without occupation and without hope. Trades are now taught these men, but day after day they are “lined up” as professionals, and their lives become a misery to them. ”

“ All the rest of the State is strictly rural. 2 Our people are of the soil. They are typical farmers—plain, wholesome, God-fearing people who obey the law and who punish crime with severity. We have neither the means nor the machinery with which to patrol our rural districts with armed officers. It follows, then, that we must have laws carrying severe penalties and rigidly enforce them.
Half the people in Delaware south of Wilmington never lock their doors at night, window fasteners are uncommon, and thought of burglars is totally absent from the minds of our people. ”

“ Escutcheons can easily be traced at regular intervals from stem to stern, and the fo’c’sle head, raised high aloft forward, bears at its extremity a symbol of innocence and beautiful womanhood in the original figurehead of exquisite design—a strangely inappropriate emblem in the days when crime-stained convicts in clanking chains put to flight all thoughts of innocence and beauty. ”

“ In my opinion, the chief needs of the prison system are a plan of organization of the sort which the Legislature sought to provide in its recent act; abandonment of the big plantation scheme, and adequate operating capital. Many penologists coming to Texas from other states have praised the big plantation scheme; the idea of working prisoners in the open air and under “God’s sunshine,” rather than in shops, appeals to them. A more intimate knowledge of the plantation system might convince these persons that its alleged excellences are largely moonshine. ”

“ Those who criticise the whipping post adversely overlook the fact that Delaware is the broad highway between four chief American cities.
Our unthinking critics include those who do not know that time or the loss of time means nothing at all to a very large proportion of our population. A day, or a week, or a month, more or less, costs a low-grade negro nothing at all in opportunity or in money. The native negroes of Delaware know their place and make no trouble. ”

“ The negro with city habits is a worse proposition than the farm trained hand, who is usually law-abiding and useful. Delaware can handle her own negroes with little or no force, but the passing throng of bad men needs attention, and they file by with eyes front on the whipping posts. ”

“ To the mind of the Governor no steps in this direction should be taken until the entire felon population of the State has been studied, with a view to the construction of buildings which will provide for the classification of such offenders, and the establishment of a system of grading and separation of men who need different methods of treatment. This may involve the use of the modern part of the present prison for the worst men, and the construction of new buildings elsewhere, for other classes, with ample facilities for outdoor work for those who can be trusted. ”

“ The requirement that men shall become fit to be released is likely to lead to changes in the prison system, as it is manifestly unfair to require men to improve in confinement unless the State provides the means for improvement, and makes that the first purpose in dealing with them. ”

“ None of the men whipped in Delaware is punished to the point that very great physical torture follows. Such a lashing 4 would create a martyr of a criminal, and this must be avoided.
Criminals of the type that hold up trains, raid banks and rob Government buildings are jealous of their reputations in the underworld. Once whipped they become objects of derision and contempt in their own circles. Some of these men are inordinately vain. It is quite likely that this vanity, affectation or love of even doubtful glory deters them from invading Delaware and daring the post. ”

“ The new parole board is required to see all prisoners who are to be paroled, and is making fitness for free life the main consideration in releasing. Its members are paid for their work and can therefore give to it all the time needed. When the work is fully in hand, it will have information covering the entire history of every prisoner, enabling it to pass intelligently upon the case. The prison commission, which has the supervision of paroled prisoners, is changing its methods, and eventually will know the whereabouts and conduct of every individual. ”

“ The inspectors are hampered, also, in the expansion of the State farm and road making experiments by the supervisor, who is responsible for keeping the contracts 24 for prison labor; for the supervisor may requisition as many of the prisoners as he wishes for contract proviso of the law, of course; and the keeper must deliver them.
The second difficulty is that existing plans for their work offer employment for only a small percentage of the prisoners. At the expiration of the contracts—very soon—the great majority will be forced into idleness unless the contracts are temporarily extended. ”

“ If there was nothing to it but a mere flogging by a prison warder of doubtful authority; simply one man in brief authority beating up another man but temporarily in his keeping, there would be, could be, no such result, and the whipping of criminals would probably degenerate into revolting performances with attending scandals. The Delaware system precludes any such possibility. ”

“ There are too few who mean to make penology a real career. What we need is the type of man who can see the possibilities of 16 service to the State in his kind of work.
“Another matter which has been already a subject of study with me here in Massachusetts is the practice we have of mixing in our institutions two classes who ought to be kept apart. We have the workhouse cases and the prison cases. The former will include probably the older and the more confirmed offenders, many who are less hopeful of reformation, the careless and the professionally delinquent. ”

“ It is a fact of common knowledge that ship masters of undoubted courage, of tested and proved valor, are as timid as little children when ashore; that firemen who never give a thought to personal peril at a conflagration, bawl and make an awful to-do about having a tooth filled. ”

“ If you have the right kind of warden there will be no danger of the abuse of any such power. He will be so sincere a friend of each and every prisoner that he will not use his influence to free a man until he is sure the convict is ready to return to society with safety to himself and to his fellowmen. When you have that kind of warden his opinion will be the very best that it is possible to have. ”

“ There ought to be some person of commercial ability, a trained business man, who should give his whole time to the dollars and cents of the penal establishment of the State. Let the commissioner give his attention predominantly to the humanitarian side of the work. But let us have a trained expert who shall develop new industries, improve the system of marketing the product, and look in general after the business side of the prisons just as the superintendent looks after these matters in any private enterprise. ”

“ I do not see much hope for the Texas prison system unless provision shall be made for a business like organization; unless there shall be substituted for the plantation system a line of industries which will admit of the convicts being under the actual control of competent and suitable officers instead of incompetent and poorly paid guards, nor unless adequate operating capital shall be provided. ”

“ Any person convicted of any felony, except murder, forcible rape, arson, or robbery, such convictions being for a first offense and imprisonment in the penitentiary, Kansas State Reformatory, or Industrial Schools for Boys and the Industrial School for Girls, the court before whom the conviction was made may parole such person either before or after sentence has been pronounced, if the court is satisfied that if permitted to go at large he would not again violate the law. ”

“ In 1857 the disclosures that had been made of the brutal and inhuman treatment meted out to prisoners created a fierce outcry in Australia, amounting almost to revolt against the English Government, and resulted in the abandonment of the hulk system. For some years 12 later—from 1860 to 1868 the “Success” was used as a women’s prison; then she became successively a reformatory ship and ammunition store, and later all the prison hulks were ordered to be sold on the express condition that they were to be broken up, and their associations lost to the recollection of the residents of Melbourne. ”

“ In the syllabus of the opinion Justice Garrison holds that the artificial regulation of the welfare of society by means of surgical operations for the prevention of procreation, being based upon the suppression of the personal liberty of individuals, must be accomplished, if at all, by a statute that does not deny to the persons thus injuriously affected the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the fourteenth amendment to the constitution of the United States. ”

“ I wish we might have some sort of central agency for the trying out of prospective guards. When they have made good and manifested a disposition seriously to study and practice the science of penology then they become very valuable to the State. Men who go into the occupation as a makeshift are expensive to the State in the long run. If we could test him in practice the credentials a man would bring from that central clearing house would be the best possible guarantee of fitness. ”

“ The United States has nothing to do except with a few federal prisons. Each State of the forty-eight has its own penal institutions. Thus, as you go about the country you may see almost every sort of plan, the most advanced and the most belated, in operation. For that reason deputations from foreign countries are sent here often for observation and study. Massachusetts ranks high, and deservedly so, although there are many opportunities for improvement. ”

“ It is idle to assume that these men are afraid to come to Delaware because we have police, a militia and all the other agencies for the enforcement of law. These are common to all communities. They are not in any degree afraid of the physical punishment involved in a Delaware whipping. Many of them in friendly boxing bouts are more thoroughly beaten up every few days while exercising. ”

“ The bill providing for the payment of wages to convicts provides that the Board of Corrections may allow a prisoner not less than $.10 nor more than $.25 each day for work done, over and above the day’s task as assigned. This money is to be sent to the family of the prisoner, which is dependent upon him for their care and keep. If the prisoner have no family, the money can accumulate until the expiration of the prisoner’s term and is then given to him. He may draw at any time from such fund for his personal needs so long as he does not use it improperly. ”

“ It will not be seriously questioned that society has a right to protect itself. If 3 the whipping post proves to be a perpetual and potential protector against the burglar, the highwayman and the cadet, why cry down its effectiveness? New York had an epidemic of gunmen; Chicago had an epidemic of highwaymen; Boston and Philadelphia made war on cadets. Delaware simply painted her whipping posts and multiplied school houses. ”

“ The prison cows are driven out to pasture, some distance from the institution, but there is nothing in the garb or manner of the persons who drive them to suggest that they are convicts, but nevertheless they are. They are allowed to go unattended—in a word are trusted—put on honor.
The women inmates, who do all the housework of the prison with the exception of the cooking, which is done by the men, have unprecedented liberties. ”

“ Some of our good friends who call themselves penologists, philanthropists, humanitarians and prison reformers overlook one all important matter in their crusades. This essential is the prevention of crime. ”

“ Many now are opposed to operating the plantations now owned by the State, but most of these would have the State buy other large farms in a different section, abandoning the growing of sugar-cane.
Practically all of the able-bodied convicts of the prison system have been put to work on the plantations regardless of their former occupations and regardless of their inclination to flee or to foment trouble. ”