The Cruelty of Solitary Confinement
Solitary confinement is by far the most cruel feature of English penal servitude. It inflicts upon the prisoner at the commencement of her sentence, when most sensitive to the horrors which prison punishment entails, the voiceless solitude, the hopeless monotony, the long vista of to-morrow, to-morrow, to-morrow stretching before her, all filled with desolation and despair. Once a prisoner has crossed the threshold of a convict prison, not only is she dead to the world, but she is expected in word and deed to lose or forget every vestige of her personality. Verily,
The mills of the gods grind slowly,
But they grind exceeding small,
And woe to the wight unholy
On whom those millstones fall.
So it is with the Penal Code which directs this vast machinery, doing its utmost with tireless, ceaseless revolutions to mold body and soul slowly, remorselessly, into the shape demanded by Act of Parliament.