Penal labor

“ We have cited the case for the proposition that imprisonment with the accompaniment of hard labor is an infamous punishment, made so by the accompaniment of hard labor, and declared illegal because not upon presentment or indictment by a grand jury. ”

“ As I have already said in a previous chapter, one of the most glaring defects in our present system of penal servitude, viewed as a means of reformation as well as of punishment, is the indiscriminate association of all classes of criminals, or rather all criminals with a certain sentence, irrespective of the nature of the crime they have committed, the previous character of the criminal or the probability of his re-admission into society as an honest and useful member of it. ”

“ Make a breach of labor contract by either party to it a criminal offense punishable by imprisonment "Fine or imprisonment" will not do—the employee, unable to pay the fine, would commonly go to jail, the employer seldom. ”

“ Justice Harlan said: 'An offense which the statute imperatively requires to be punished by imprisonment 'at hard labor,' and one that must be punished by 'imprisonment,' but the sentence to which imprisonment the court may, in certain cases, and in its discretion, require to be executed in a penitentiary where hard labor is prescribed for convicts, are each 'punishable' by imprisonment at hard labor. ”

“ A special class was formed in 1880, in which all convicts “not versed in crime,” first offenders and comparatively innocent men, are now kept apart from the older and more hardened criminals. The committee last quoted gave it as their opinion that “penal servitude as at present administered is on the whole satisfactory; it is effective as a punishment and free from serious abuses . . . a sentence of penal servitude is now generally an object of dread to the criminal population.” ”

“ It is piteous to see how a stout well-built man dwindles away on this régime. The men who are at work buy extras with their wages. Those who wear chains from ankle to wrist were sentenced under the old penal code. ”

“ It is not generally known that two years’ imprisonment is the limit of a sentence of hard labour, after which the next higher punishment involves five years’ penal servitude. There is a vast deal of ignorance displayed on this subject, even by those who might be supposed to know better. It is generally believed that imprisonment with hard labour is a severer punishment than penal servitude. No greater fallacy ever existed. ”

“ By its comparison with the French "travaux forcés" it has created an impression in foreign countries that it is a very severe penalty, applied only for the greatest crimes; at home it obscures the principle that in prison all labour is hard, i.e., that all prisoners are punished with an equal prescribed task, whether they be sentenced to imprisonment with or without hard labour: and in penal servitude, where the manual labour is of the hardest, the phrase has no legal existence. ”

“ For more than a century, imprisonment at hard labor in the state prison or penitentiary or other similar institution has been considered an infamous punishment in England and America. Among the punishments 'that consist principally in their ignominy,' Sir WILLIAM BLACKSTONE classes 'hard labor, in the house of correction or otherwise,' as well as whipping, the pillory, or the stocks. ”

“ Considered in his most favorable light, the convict is a scourge to himself, a menace to society and a burden to industry, and whatever system of convict labor may be tried, it will ultimately fail of its purpose at reformation of the criminal or the relief of industry as long as thousands of “free laborers,” who have committed no crime, are unable to get work and make an honest living. Not long ago I visited a penitentiary in which a convict expressed regret that his sentence was soon to expire. ”

“ The Magistrate was authorized by law to release any person charged with a misdemeanor on probation, or to sentence them from one month to twelve months' imprisonment at hard labor within the district, and the prisoners were paid for their work from five to twenty-five cents per day, according to their ability and skill, and the money they earned was sent to their wives and children, if they had any. If they were single, what they earned was paid to them at the expiration of their sentence. ”

“ In clause 2 a list of these offences is given, and they are brought within the punitive authority of the courts of summary jurisdiction, the punishment awardable by the court being six months' imprisonment, with or without hard labor (clause 11) . The offences are:
" (1) Any person who shall take part in any criminal conspiracy to compel or induce any person or persons either not to fulfil his or their legal obligations, or not to let, hire, use, or occupy any land, or not to deal with, or work for, or hire any person or persons in the ordinary course of trade, business, or occupation ”

“ It provided that all agreements whatever between journeymen or other workmen for obtaining an advance in wages for themselves (p. 280) or for other workmen, or for decreasing the number of hours of labor, or for endeavoring to prevent any employer from engaging any one whom he might choose, or for persuading any other workmen not to work, or for refusing to work with any other men, should be illegal. Any justice of the peace was empowered to convict by summary process and sentence to two months' imprisonment any workmen who entered into such a combination. ”

“ I know nothing about conditions there; but it is quite evident that here we might have such a demand resulting from an outbreak of crime, caused not by leniency of treatment of prisoners, not caused indeed by the way in which any part of our penal system acts, but due to the [Pg 184] impunity with which the sharpers and criminals in our midst are allowed to practise. So long as there is no provision whereby a man can obtain opportunity for honest work with a guarantee that the fruits of his labour will not be taken from him, there will be many unemployed. ”

“ No question arises here as to the power of a state, consistently with the Federal Constitution, to make it a criminal offense for an employer, in purely private work in which the public has no concern, to permit or to require his employees to perform daily labor in excess of a prescribed number of hours. ”

“ The Penal Class will be separately located and clothed in ordinary prison dress. They will be specially employed on hard manual or bodily labour. Failing such employment on the land in any capacity, they will be employed on the penal forms of labour already in existence, i.e., grain-grinding or stonebreaking. ”

“ The fourth section provides a penalty against any person, who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct or hinder such claimant, his agent or attorney, in so seizing or arresting such fugitive from labor, or rescue such fugitive from the claimant, or his agent or attorney, when so arrested, or who shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, after notice that he is such; and it also saves to the person claiming such labor or service, his right of action for or on account of such injuries. ”

“ Imprisonment at hard labor, compulsory and unpaid, is, in the strongest sense of the words, 'involuntary servitude for crime,' spoken of in the provision of the ordinance of 1787, and of the thirteenth amendment of the constitution, by which all other slavery was abolished. ”

“ For a group of offenses related to poor working discipline, an individual can be given a corrective labor sentence. This usually involves harder work, somewhat longer hours, and strict supervision on the job. The law also provides for sentences that restrict the movement of an individual. In the most severe of these, he may be banished to and be required to remain in one certain area. ”

“ By this method the prisoners will 19 not be relieved from paying the penalty for the crimes for which they have been convicted in many instances of a minor character, but neither will their families be deprived of their supporting labor during their imprisonment. ”

“ It does not alter its character as cruel and unusual that for each distinct offense there is a small punishment, if, when they are brought together, and one punishment for the whole is inflicted, it becomes one of excessive severity. And the cruelty of it, in this case, by the imprisonment at hard labor, is further increased by the offenses being thus made infamous crimes. ”

“ And the further views announced by the court that when congress sees fit to promote such a policy by subjecting the persons of such aliens to infamous punishment at hard labor, or by confiscating their property, such legislation, to be valid, must provide for an arrest and trial to establish the guilt of the accused, are also accepted and adopted. ”

“ There are a considerable number of senile and debilitated convicts here, many of whom have several convictions recorded against them. They are absolutely unfitted for employment, and on release have to face one of two alternatives—the workhouse or another period of imprisonment. The great majority openly confess their preference for a penal establishment, and I am convinced that a large number deliberately commit a crime which will ensure their return to this prison. ”

“ As an aversion to honest industry and labor has been the chief cause of most of the convicts incurring the penalties of the law, they shall be employed at some species of labor, of an uniform kind, which they cannot evade, and by which they will have an opportunity of becoming habituated to regular employment. ”

“ But it appears from the record that the fine and punishment in the case before us was fifty dollars and imprisonment at hard labor in the house of correction for three months. We perceive nothing excessive, or cruel, or unusual in this. ”

“ If, however, you are in your heart persuaded of your guilt, and wish to spare the People the expense and labor of a trial before a jury, I will accept a plea of murder in the second degree, the punishment for which, I must beg you to recollect, is confinement at hard labor in the State Prison for the term of your natural life. ”

“ Those who really could not earn a living in the penal workhouses, and those who would not earn their living, I would transfer to the prison for criminal incurables. I would not have any first offenders against property in prison, I would punish them as ticket-of-leave men. In the penal workshops I would only have persistent thieves. In the convict prisons only great offenders against the person and traitors. All the persistent criminals of the petty class, I would consign to the workhouses ”

“ Remember the instances I have cited in which the experiment has been tried—ten years in the reformatories and six convictions since; penal servitude on a lad's third conviction, and a second five years' penal servitude since, followed by the Prison's Office circular to me in January recommending a third more lengthened imprisonment then. It is plain that habitues in street crime cannot maintain reform in the streets. ”

“ I suppose the Legislature understands the workings of the criminal mind, but I sometimes wonder whether men can be deterred from crime by dread of seven years penal servitude, if they are not deterred by dread of five. If they reckon things up at all, they probably pick out the biggest crime they can commit for any specified sentence—“may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb”—and then act accordingly. ”

“ As for penal servitude, the punishment reserved for the gravest offences, great changes had been introduced. We left this branch of the subject at a parliamentary inquiry. The verdict given was in the main satisfactory; but doubts were expressed as to the severity of the discipline inflicted, the principal features of which were moderate labour, ample diet and substantial gratuities. The first was far less than the work free men did for a livelihood, the second larger, the third excessive, so that convicts often left prisons with thirty, forty, , even eighty pounds in their pockets. ”

“ They were punished, just as we punish criminals—with confinement at hard labor. The great mass of the people were forced to labor for cruelly long hours at dull, distasteful occupations; is not that punishment? ”

“ To personate the owner of any share, stock, or annuity, &c., is felony, and renders the offender liable to penal servitude for life, or to a modified term of penal servitude or imprisonment. The false personation of voters at an election is a misdemeanour punishable with imprisonment and hard labour, for a term not exceeding two years. ”

“ Evidence of the truth of this is so abundant that any person can obtain it by visiting the factories and workshops and other centres of paid workers, by inquiring what is the manner of life of those in the higher and those in the lower social rank, by frequenting what are called courts of justice, and by asking the prisoners in our penal institutions what were the motives for their misconduct. ”

“ SECTION XXXV. To deter more effectually from the commission of crimes, by continued visible punishment of long duration, and to make sanguinary punishments less necessary; houses ought to be provided for punishing, by hard labor, those who shall be convicted of crimes not capital; wherein the criminal shall be employed for the benefit of the public, or for reparation of injuries done to private persons; and all persons, at proper times, shall be admitted to see the prisoners at their labor. ”