ENFORCE IDLENESS OF PRISONERS
The law of Pennsylvania limits to thirty-five per cent. of the whole number of convicts, those who may be employed in any of the trades; as a consequence, the greater number of them are consigned to enforced idleness. No punishment could be more severe, and if punishment is the chief object of our penal system, it is certainly secured by Pennsylvania law. It is a system, however, which belongs to an age long since past, when the reformation of the criminal had little or no consideration.
It is proper that an evil-doer should suffer punishment and that society should be protected from his evil ways, but humanity and Christianity alike require that at the same time that he is subject to the restraints of the law, the wisest efforts should be made for his improvement and reformation, the correction of his evil propensities, and the formation of good habits, to the intent that when the prison gates are opened to him he may have a fair chance to become an upright and useful citizen.
This end cannot be attained by keeping the convict in idleness, the most fruitful source of immorality and mental and physical degeneracy. This law of enforced idleness is not only cruel and inhuman, as to the convict, it is improvident as to the State, for the convict, if employed, could not only earn a large part, if not the entire cost of his maintenance, and thus relieve the community of this burden, but he would be able to lift another and greater burden which must rest somewhere, the support of his family during his imprisonment.
Under the present system the guilty convict is not the chief sufferer. The severity of the punishment falls heaviest upon his family—the innocent wife and children.