Recidivism

“ In reality the frequency of recidivism is even greater than appears from the official statistics. These relate to those persons only who are regarded as recidivists by the existing laws. They take no account of how many individuals leave the country after their first conviction for a criminal offence. ”

“ In reformatories he has small belief; statistics show that they in no way decrease the percentage of recidivists; the fact of recidivism shows the habitual criminal, and here no punishment will suffice. ”

“ We find in looking over the life histories of our habitual criminals that they had shown antisocial and abnormal traits from their earliest youth; that in their early manhood they populated the reformatories and that their recidivism is due to some underlying anomaly which always differentiates them from normal men. ”

“ If in the wisdom of the members of the legislature the crime calls for imprisonment in the penitentiary, then the ordinary sentences run one, two, five, ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty years, and life, according to the hazard of the legislature, the whim of the court, the gamble of the jury, or the feeling and means of expression of the unthinking and pitiless crowd who awe courts and juries with their cries for vengeance.
Neither does punishment affect any two alike; the sensitive and proud may suffer more from a day in jail or even from conviction than another would suffer from a year. ”

“ Prisoner at the bar, you have been convicted of the crime of murder, and one of the most heinous ever committed, but it is no part of my office to dwell on the enormity of your guilt. It is my only duty to pass upon the sentence of the law, and that sentence is—That you be taken to the prison from whence you came, and then to the place of execution, and there be hanged by the neck until you are dead. May the Lord have mercy on your miserable soul! ”

“ When I say that every State prison is to be a reformatory, I except, of course, from its operation, those sentenced for life for murder, or other capital offenses, and those who have proved themselves incorrigible by repeated violations of their parole. ”

“ Many cruelties have been enacted in the past in the name of prison discipline—solitude, darkness, chains, floggings, tread wheels and cranks, even until a comparatively recent period, were regarded as the essential accessories of punishment. In studying the history of punishment, we cannot fail to be struck by the singular inventiveness of the human mind in designing forms of suffering for those who broke the law—crucifixion, mutilation, stoning, drowning, torture. ”

“ To be very accurate, we should say that justice is satisfied by punishment, and the wrongdoer is disciplined by chastisement. Punishment is for the good of the law, and chastisement is for the good of the sufferer. Incarceration is intended to reform the prisoner as much as to punish him. While rebuking the lawless, you seek to help him back to an honorable career. This you attempt, not by a maudlin and demoralizing sentiment, which minimizes guilt or ignores wrong, but by a sympathetic and educational administration of prisons. ”

“ If it is a principle of our criminal jurisprudence, that the guilty should escape rather than the innocent suffer, it appears equally a principle, in the infliction of punishment, that every regulation connected with it, from the first committal of a prisoner to gaol to the termination of his sentence of transportation, should be characterized rather by an anxious care for the health and convenience of the criminal than for anything which might even by implication appear to bear on him with undue severity. ”

“ Imagine a prisoner under sentence of death in his lonely cell; the last morning sun he ever expects to gaze on streaming through his grated window, and the sound of busy hammers erecting his gallows ringing in his ears, and, then, unbar the bolts of his prison, and instead of leading him out to execution, put into his hands the Governor's pardon, and bid him go forth and enjoy till life's latest time the best and sweetest it can offer. ”

“ Did the law ever suppose that the court, after having sentenced a man to eight hundred years’ imprisonment, or even to two hundred and eighty years’ imprisonment, should go on, and sentence him to twenty years, or even to seven years more?—when the court must know that it would be imposing sentences to be executed centuries after the prisoner would be dead, and after he would have left his prison, not to return to this world, but to go to another. ”

“ Taking your case as a whole, I am convinced that it is one which, for the sake of the example, deserves a severe punishment. Nevertheless, I do not feel disposed to give you the full extent of the law, which would be twenty years in the penitentiary, [1] but, considering the fact that you have a family, and have heretofore borne a good reputation in the community, I will impose upon you the light sentence of imprisonment for five years in the penitentiary at hard labor. ”

“ A sentence simply of 'imprisonment,' in the case of a person convicted of an offense against the United States,-where the statute prescribing the punishment does not require that the accused shall be confined in a penitentiary,-cannot be executed by confinement in a penitentiary, except in cases in which the sentence is 'for a period longer than one year.' In neither of the cases against the accused was he sentenced to imprisonment for a period longer than one year. ”

“ DESIGN OF PENITENTIARIES IN RESPECT TO THE TREATMENT OF CONVICTS, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE CONNECTICUT STATE PRISON, WITH REMARKS. "Upon the subject of the general treatment of the convicts, and the discipline of the institution, we would remark that the State Prison is designed to be, and emphatically is, a place of PUNISHMENT. The feelings of humanity and mistaken mercy should not be suffered to interpose, to disarm its punishment of that rigor due to justice and the violated laws of the land. ”

“ But there is a still further uncertainty of punishment, for it is as well known in the criminal world as elsewhere that the sentence pronounced in court is not the real sentence, and that neither penal servitude for [96] five years nor penal servitude for life mean necessarily anything of the sort. The humanity of modern legislation insists on a remission of punishment, dependent on a convict’s life in the public works prisons, in order that the element of hope may brighten his lot and perchance reform his character. ”

“ In any case the days are long when spent in a separate cell, awaiting judgment, the nights dark and often sleepless 169 and interminable. We have authentic assurance that the end of it all, the very worst,—conviction, sentence, the heaviest, the extreme penalty of the law,—comes as a distinct relief, and although a certain, shameful death is now before him, the condemned prisoner sleeps soundly on his final return from court. The prisoner condemned to death is generally worn out with the struggle for life. ”

“ The penitentiary and reformatory, to which offenders are condemned by courts of law, have, as is well known, never been generally successful in reorganizing the attitudes of their inmates on a social basis. They represent the legal concept of crime and punishment and the theological concept of sin and atonement. Where society is not able to organize the wishes of one of its members in a social way it may exterminate him or banish him to a society of the bad, which corresponds to the theological purgatory from which there is a chance to return to a society of the good. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In criminal law the death penalty has been abolished, and the various modes of punishment consist of solitary imprisonment, exile, deprivations, suspension from public employment, ordinary imprisonment, and fines. ”

“ The convict is placed in a public place of punishment, common to the whole state, subject to solitary imprisonment, to have his hair cropped, to be clothed in conspicuous prison dress, subjected to hard labor without pay, to hard fare, coarse and meager food, and to severe discipline. ”

“ Criminals of the worst class—murderers and the like—are not admitted here. Those who have life sentences have no business among those who are going out. About 75 per cent. of the convicts pass through the Intermediate Prison,—the other 25 per cent. consisting of the excluded class and of those whose health, commutation of sentence, or other circumstances interfere. Almost all, however, who are found in that establishment are grave offenders, and old offenders—often punished, but never before in the way of restoration as they are now. ”

“ This sketch shows on what principle the prison is conducted. There may be many minor principles. Of these the reformation of the prisoners may be a fraction. Their punishment may be a unit. But the major point of all is, PECUNIARY ADVANTAGE. The interest of the captives is not a grain in the calculations of the prison. If they live, they live, and if they die, they die. But living or dead, (p. 133) sick or well, sinning or praying, saved or lost, they are estimated in pounds, shillings, and pence, and one farthing would turn the scale of their destiny to heaven or hell. ”

“ We look upon this simplification of our penal operations as an advantage; and we are by no means disposed to favour those inventive gentlemen who would devise new punishments, or revive old ones, for the purpose, it would seem, of having a variety of inflictions corresponding to the variety of offences. A well-regulated prison, where the severity of the taskwork, the nature of the diet, the duration and the strictness of the confinement, all admit of apportionment to the offence, seems to include all that is desirable in this matter of punishment. ”

“ Preventive Detention is the name given to a form of custody, provided by the Prevention of Crime Act, 1908, for the protection of the public from the Habitual Criminal. The Judge has the power of passing a sentence of penal servitude for the particular crime charged in the indictment, and to pass a further sentence ordering, from the determination of the sentence of penal servitude, that the prisoner shall be detained for a period not exceeding ten years in Preventive Detention. ”

“ We can only hope that in the record we have now given, we have furnished some suggestions for general application to those who, like ourselves, are concerned not merely with the punishment of the criminal, but also with his reformation, both as a question of social science, and to the prisoner's own ulterior benefit. ”

“ Justice GRAY, 'that at the present day imprisonment in a state prison or penitentiary, with or without hard labor, is an infamous punishment.' That case is decisive of this, and the order appealed from must be affirmed. ”

“ In the main we treat all criminals alike if guilty of the same offence, though the same act denotes very different degrees of culpability in the different men, and the same punishment is attended with quite opposite results. Two men commit similar crimes, we sentence them both to the State Prison for ten years. At the expiration of one year let us suppose one man has thoroughly reformed, and has made strict and solemn resolutions to pursue an honest and useful life. ”

“ It is hardly necessary for me to dwell upon my feelings when I received this unexpected sentence. They were of course more interesting to me than to my readers. My narrative of the history of the case here properly terminates, it being only necessary for me to state that I was immediately incarcerated, and spent the month within the walls of a prison, one week of which was passed in sickness. I received every allowable attention from the jailor and his amiable wife, and even remained with them a day or two after my sentence expired. ”

“ Penitentiary is better off without him. In the morning we will have several of our leading doctors exhume the body to verify the statement. I'll attend to it. Yes, sir. A certain form must be observed. A jury will be impaneled, the statement will be read, and the judge will, in a sort of a charge, declare that the prisoner is innocent. Some things are strange after all. A venomous scoundrel, but let him go. Yes, I'll attend to everything in the morning. You'd better sleep here."
"No, I'm going to the jail and then to the telegraph office." ”

“ In prison there is at least a community of punishment, and the sense of this goes far to relieve the tedium of incarceration; for, bad though it be, many a one has found it preferable to the perpetual and dreadful solitude to which liberty condemned them. ”

“ Fine keepers! Fit men to reform the guilty! Assist the prisoners to steal, and divide the plunder!
But when we come to those crimes which are specified in the By-Laws, the most frequent grow out of the following sources:—
1. Defects in the work. For the smallest defect here, the prisoner is often made to feel severely. What is so small that none but a malignant eye would notice it, some variation in the shade, something that could not have been avoided, is too often carried on to the books as a great crime, for which only ten days in the solitary cell can atone. ”

“ A prisoner may certainly be tried, convicted, and sentenced for another crime, committed either prior to or during his imprisonment, and may suffer capital punishment and be executed during the term. The penitentiary is no sanctuary, and life in it does not confer immunity from capital punishment provided by law. ”

“ When under punishment, wilfully making a disturbance tending to interrupt the order and discipline of the prison, and any other act of gross misconduct or insubordination requiring to be suppressed by extraordinary means.
13. A prisoner committing a breach of any of the regulations is liable to be sentenced to confinement in a punishment cell, and such dietary and other punishments as the rules allow.
p. 15514. Any gratuity granted to a prisoner may be paid to him through a Prisoners’ Aid Society, or in such way as the Commissioners may direct. ”