Inmate

“ A single and friendless female, the inmate of a prison for the last nineteen years, ignorant of law, unpractised in judicial forms, without papers, witnesses, or counsel, and with no other knowledge of the late transactions than the reports collected by her female servants, nor of the proofs to be adduced by her adversaries but what her own conjectures might supply, she could be no match for that array of lawyers, judges, and statesmen, who sat marshalled against her. ”

“ Where an inmate is believed to be exercising a bad influence, he shall be placed by the Governor in the Penal Class, for such time as the Governor considers necessary in the interest of the inmate himself, or others. ”

“ The next opinion is from a talented and educated man, who has thoughtfully and dispassionately written of what he has seen during the past six years as an inmate of the prison where our League started. ”

“ You are very earnest, and you are freezing. The next time you knock harder. After awhile with your fist you beat against the door. You must get in, but the inmate is careless or stubborn, and he does not want you in. Your errand is a failure. ”

“ The afternoon was devoted to expert testimony respecting the prisoner's sanity.
MEDICAL TESTIMONY. DR. ROY, of the Beauport Asylum, Quebec, said the prisoner was an inmate of that institution for nineteen months. He was discharged in January, 1878. He suffered from ambitious mania. ”

“ Of all the abuses which used to disgrace our penal establishments, the most disastrous in its results, was the promiscuous herding together of male with female, adult with juvenile, habitual with casual offenders, under conditions calculated to lower the tone of the whole prison community to the level of the most degraded inmate. ”

“ Where an inmate obviously fails to profit by instruction, and there may be reason to think that this may be due to physical or mental causes, he will be specially examined by the Medical Officer, and such steps will be taken on his report as may be deemed suitable to meet the special circumstances of the case. ”

“ In fact the inmate might well be put where he could enjoy life more than he did before he was confined. It might and should be the case also that he could produce enough to amply take care of himself and provide for those who would naturally look to him for support, and perhaps make compensation for the injury he had caused to someone else. ”

“ Should a signal be given in the night that fire has broken out, every inmate must at once leave his bed, dress himself, and quietly await orders. Every mischievous or malicious disturbance on such occasions will be punished with special severity. ”

“ We visit appropriately enough—a neighboring graveyard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to become a willing inmate of the place. ”

“ Even the most unbending of the old type of prison official will concede that 80 per cent. of the inmates neither need nor deserve to be confined behind triple bars of steel or in cells like catacombs or within walls like those of Egyptian tombs. ”

“ And yet the inmates look hale and happy beyond what one would hope to see, and the thought at once suggests itself, how much might be accomplished by such a people, awaking to assert its dignity, and to discharge its duty. ”

“ They have seldom more than one room, and are generally without a floor. Here the inmates sit, sleep, and work in wigwam-life. They seldom look beyond their present wants. Their industry ebbs or flows as plenty or penury prevail. ”

“ Whereas, the prison is a place for punishment, requiring you to keep the inmates on poorer food, and food so prepared that it shall be a punishment to eat it, and make everything around them a source of discomfort, that, after leaving, they may thereby be deterred from crime through dread of being returned. ”

“ Two weeks in the cell made me realize why prisoners preferred the torture of the task. Some sort of occupation is the only escape from despair. None of the inmates enjoyed being idle. The shop, terrible as it was, was better than being locked up in the cells. ”

“ Read at New York State Conference of Charities and Corrections, Buffalo, Nov. 1913.
THE OFFICIAL AND THE PRISONER
(Here is an article from “Good Words,” the prison monthly from the Federal Prison at Atlanta. It gives an anonymous prisoner’s views on a vital subject.)
Inmates of prisons may be regarded as a composite man, for in any collection of human beings, from a family to a nation, there is the larger man, which organizes itself in human form—with head, trunk, limbs, and organs. One group represents the brains, another the physical powers ”

“ The inmates, who were composed of both sexes, confined for offences of smuggling a bar of soap, up to those of a graver character, are allowed to indulge in any handiwork for which they are competent, and the product of their hands, tied on the ends of poles, is25 thrust through their prison-windows into the street, of which they solicit the purchase by the passer-by. ”

“ That was an evil terror—an ugly inmate to have found a nestling-place in Godfrey’s kindly disposition; but no disposition is a security from evil wishes to a man whose happiness hangs on duplicity. ”

“ Many of them, who for the first time, find themselves within the limits of a cell, of which they are to be the inmates for a series of years, experience a shock, which operates with great force upon their feelings ”

“ The manner of meeting the prisoners is in a kindly spirit, approaching them not as convicts, but as men, the consequence of which is, that the entrance of a member of the Committee into a cell proves, with rare exceptions, a source of real satisfaction to the inmates; confidence being by this means established, an avenue is opened to their better feelings, and on being inquired of, they freely give a history of their past lives, and state what were the immediate influences under which the crime 25 was committed, which resulted in their being confined in a felon’s cell. ”

“ The inmates are divided into four grades with different privileges. Conduct marks based upon performance of duty, cleanliness, progress, etc., are given, and promotion to a higher or removal to a lower grade depend upon the prisoner's record. When a boy or young man has been in the upper first grade for six months he becomes a candidate for release on parole. ”

“ When I commenced my labors at the institution, it was about emerging from an experience which had brought no little opposition to the warden from some in the city, especially in the line of his reform moves.
He took the prison in '65, the inmates, numbering seventy, being let on a contract of forty cents per day; the bedding extremely limited; the cells swarming with those pestiferous attendants on sleeping hours, every crevice between the stones and bricks affording a safe resort; the food for the inmates insufficient for prison demands. ”

“ That comforting theory of the Lombroso school has been exploded, and the ordinary inmates of our prisons shown to be only in a very slight degree below the average in mental and physical fitness of the normal man, a difference easily explained by the environment and conditions in which the ordinary criminal is bred. ”

“ Hence the little hopes expressed of favorable results from advice and persuasive dealing with the inmates of the vagrant and drunkard’s cell, whose imprisonment does not extend beyond thirty-one days. We may remark that usually the convict is less a victim of vice than of crime; and he generally has more mind upon which to operate by argument, though, perhaps, he may have less conscience to be affected ”

“ I would have got past Mr. Rochester’s chamber without a pause; but my heart momentarily stopping its beat at that threshold, my foot was forced to stop also. No sleep was there: the inmate was walking restlessly from wall to wall; and again and again he sighed while I listened. There was a heaven—a temporary heaven—in this room for me, if I chose: I had but to go in and to say—
“Mr. ”

“ When the weather was too inclement for the outdoor life commanded by the regulations, and when the prisoners were crowded in the bare and dismal caserns, contentment and high spirits can scarcely have been the dominant tone of the inmates. ”

“ It is here, however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so busy in the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or no time for anything else. They study hard, and are under constant supervision as to conduct. And then their prospect of parole depends entirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical change of intention. At night they are separated in their cells. During the day they are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and this association is absolutely necessary to their training. ”

“ Eager eyes had been watching, and though the palisades surrounding each separate yard were much too lofty for men to climb up and look over, yet the inmates, though bereft of their liberty, were not bereft of their wits, as we shall see in more striking ways as the story proceeds; and some of them, from the topmost berths on the sides of their immensely high dormitories, had taken off the tiles, and from thence saw all that was going on.
We will not attempt to follow the prisoners generally to their quarters, but accompany the officers alone. ”

“ So far as I know, there were no pains taken to preserve secrecy on this subject; that is, I saw no attempt made to keep any of the inmates of the Convent in ignorance of the murder of children. ”

“ One hundred and thirty convicts with terms ranging from 2 to 15 years, too busy with their day’s labor or their evening’s sports to think of evil, are building the new penitentiary or tilling the soil. Only nine hours a day, that time allotted for sleep, are the prisoners under lock and key. They go about their various duties under the direction of a guard or overseer, but the shotgun or rifle, usually accompanying such officer, is conspicuous by its absence.
The prison gives promise of being the ideal penal institution of the world.
The site is ideal for the work to be accomplished. ”

“ I have been in prison North, South, East and West, I have been in the dismal, solitary cell for one year, have been put in large tanks of ice water, have been punished over and over again, but it has always made me more of a demon. ”

“ Before my detention, I had thought that a prison would be at least a place of repose, where I could give myself up to study; but this was not the case at all, at least not in those where I stayed. Every moment the keeper, the jailers, the turnkeys, the purveyors, etc., came in. We were made to go down to the clerk's office to attend to our commissions. I could not read one single hour without interruption. One thing which I have heard spoken of, and which I have certainly verified, is the habit prisoners have of being destructive. It arises from their standing in need of a thousand things. ”

“ In a state prison, almost every action of the prisoners, not particularly mentioned in the By-Laws, is either a crime or not, according to the whim that happens to be in the breast of the keeper at the time it is done. ”

“ It would be true if a man were picked up on the street and taken directly to a penitentiary, but that isn’t done. He is first thrown into a dirty, lousy, foul-smelling cell in some city prison, sometimes with an awful beating in the bargain, and after two or three days of that nothing in the world can shock, stun, or humiliate him. He is actually happy to get removed to a county jail where he can perhaps get rid of the vermin and wash his body. ”

“ From such freedom of communication on my jailer's part, I began to hope for additional information, which never came. It was in vain that I conjured her to tell me where my prison was situated, whether at the edge of the city, or far away in the country, or to suffer me to have a glimpse from a window of my vicinity. To all such entreaties she was pitiless, and I was left to that vague and vain conjecture which so wears the intellect. ”

“ To the prisoner he said: “You may be seated, sir. I want to talk to you.”
Then to the guard: “I will excuse you, guard. I wish to question the prisoner alone.”
Turning to the prisoner: “Now, sir, I should like to hear something about yourself. Why were you sentenced, and have you registered under your real name?”
“I have, sir. I am not a criminal. I have been sentenced because of strong circumstantial evidence. I am innocent. I did not commit the crime for which I am here.”
“Well, my opinion of you is good. I do not believe that you are a murderer—at least, I hope not. ”

“ If we seek for the influence which it exercises on the intellectual faculties of the prisoners, we must recognize, that far from disturbing their reason, it produces on their minds the most salutary results. In proof of this, I may mention, that not a single case of insanity has occurred in the prison, and that many who have been condemned for a term which require their removal to the Maisons Centrales, solicit as a real favor, the permission to complete their imprisonment in their cell. ”

“ The prison is an incubator for those who are young in crime, a place of torture for those who possess the finer feelings of humanity, that is precisely the class of people, usually, who ought not to be sent to prison; but to habitual offenders, the confirmed recidivists, precisely the class of people on whom the prison ought to work as at once a reforming and deterring influence, it is simply a welcome and comfortable home. It is a well-known fact that the prison is preferred to the workhouse. ”

“ Women too, under the same variety of circumstances. Every prisoner who comes into the jail comes at night; is put into a bath, and dressed in the prison-garb; and then a black hood is drawn over his face and head, and he is led to the cell from which he never stirs again until his whole period of confinement has expired. ”

“ At present, every Prison is more or less a Training School for Crime, an introduction to the society of criminals, the petrifaction of any lingering human feeling and a very Bastille of Despair. The prison brand is stamped upon those who go in, and that so deeply, that it seems as if it clung to them for life. ”