Thursday, November 19
MORNING SESSION
Mr. T. B. Patton, Superintendent of the Industrial Reformatory, Huntingdon, Pa., presented the report of the Committee on Prevention and Reformatory Work; and Mrs. Frances A. Morton, Superintendent of the Reformatory Prison for Women, South Framingham, Mass., spoke on “Outdoor Employment for Women Prisoners,” describing especially the various forms of outdoor work in her own institution.
AFTERNOON SESSION
“Prison Discipline,” especially in reformatories, was the subject of a most interesting address by Mr. J. A. Leonard, Superintendent of the State Reformatory, Mansfield, Ohio.
“I wish to speak on discipline for certain exceptional types in our reformatory prisons. I would first consider the trusty. There have been trusties ever since there have been prisons. In our own work I had in mind to employ a great many young men committed to the reformatory in a trusted capacity—not to make them informers, not to make them a bulwark of safety to the institution, not to pamper them, not to make them envied by the other prisoners, but because the dictum to treat all prisoners alike is fallacious. All prisoners under certain given conditions should be treated alike. The even hand of justice is needed in a prison above any place else. But there are men sent to reformatories who would stay there if there was not a lock on the prison. I think fifty per cent. of the men sent to the Ohio State Reformatory would prove to be self-governing as to the matter of custody. It is to their interest to be so.
“In setting aside those who are trusties we appeal to intelligence and thoughtfulness. What has been the result? We had six hundred acres of land to farm, first as an economic proposition, and second as an agency for training. Originally our farm was a burden upon the institution, because all the farming was done under an armed guard. It was quite a spectacle for men to go along our public highways and see a boy, a convict, so-called, plowing corn with an $840 man following him with a gun. It made expensive corn and was a shock to public sense. What could we do about this matter? To make the farm profitable, economically and valuable industrially, it was necessary to employ in this outside work a large number of men. I believed it possible to find young men who would go out and work faithfully without a great degree of restraint. I wanted to make the test and we put out fifteen men without an armed guard. Three ran away. That was not a comfortable experience. I put out thirty and five ran away. I put out sixty and four ran away. Last year we had on an average one hundred and fifty men outside unrestrained by any physical force, and we did not lose a man. What produced this change? A change in human nature? Not at all. We simply gave free play to an idea and the sentiment within the institution underwent a change. Three men out of the one hundred and fifty tried to get away. Two of them conspired together, one running this way and one that way. The officer was fleet-footed and captured one of them. (By the way, I have come to employ officers because they can run fast rather than because of their ability to shoot straight.) This officer caught one and supposed that the other had gotten away, but when he came up over the hills by the roadside he found him. He was on the ground; a fellow-prisoner was sitting on him and saying to him: ‘You lie still. We are not knocking you; we are saving you trouble. You know you will be caught. We are doing you good, but that is not why we are holding you. You are knocking the system that the superintendent is trying to start here to give us a fair show, and we will not stand for it.’ Public opinion in the institution is what made that possible. How do we bring it about? Public opinion within the institution is largely influenced by our practical school of ethics. This school had discussed at great length this trusty system and had given full support to the idea. Discipline will not do it.
“The number trusted is growing larger and larger each year. We select them very carefully. I take a boy out quietly in the evening and have a talk with him. I ask him if he will voluntarily assume that responsibility. If he agrees, I produce a bond, one that has been prepared with some red ink, red ribbon and red seals and burdened with all the meaningless expressions that our legal brethren have burdened us with. At the bottom of it there are two clauses of plain English that the boy is supposed to understand. There is nothing like being impressive as he signs the bond. I say to him: ‘Now here is the place for your surety. Where are you going to get it?’ He replies, ‘I believe my folks will give it.’ ‘That cannot be done, my boy. This is an honor bond.’ Then, ‘I will do it,’ I tell him. ‘I will be your first friend and stand for you with the deputy.’
“I have signed ten hundred and eighteen of those bonds and only five have been dishonored. That experiment has been worth a great deal more than it costs. It costs some anxiety. Next year I expect to put out about two hundred men if I live. I shall put out more and more each year and I shall expect this good record to continue, simply because the fellows inside are standing for it and even in their language they distinguish. The fellow who scales the walls gets the applause that always goes with the deed of daring, but the fellow who goes out after signing a bond with the superintendent’s name to it, ‘takes a sneak,’ and when he is brought back he is made to feel it.
“Those trusties are never informers with us. We have never let them inform us. The other boys have no prejudices against them. They want to be with them, but I keep them as far separated as possible. If I were building a new reformatory the ground plan would look like a spider’s web and I would have a detached cottage for those who have proven their trustworthiness.
“The second exceptional class calling for special discipline is the bankrupt. You men who have to deal with the indeterminate sentence know that no board of managers or set of men can make rules that will meet the peculiar needs of individual cases. You and I know that in every prison there are boys who cannot gain eligibility for parole under rules made for the average, notwithstanding the fact that they are not guilty of serious offenses, nor are they regarded as malicious or dangerous. They become bankrupt because of the accumulation of demerits for this thing and that. What are we going to do? If I excuse those reports it becomes a personal favor, which is wrong and leads to bad feeling. I asked myself the question: ‘What has society in all time done to meet such cases? What is done in the economic world?’ I recently read an article which said that sixty per cent. of the successful merchants were bankrupt some time in their life. If a man who has carried on a business comes into court with clean hands he is given the benefit of bankruptcy; his obligations are canceled and a new opportunity is afforded him. I asked myself the question, ‘Why can we not have something of like character here?’ So I instituted a bankruptcy court. Our general disciplinarian holds court on all offenses and fixes penalties under the general rules. There is, however, a right of appeal, first to the superintendent, and finally to the president of the Board of Managers. Why then another court? I wanted a court which would be free from any prejudice on account of the boys’ record, so I selected the assistant superintendent, who, while charged with the discipline in a general way, does not pass upon the original offenses, and then the chaplain, who has no embarrassing relations at all as to discipline. With these two officers we instituted a court in which were represented both the law and the gospel. The Board of Managers heartily approved the innovation. The rules governing that court are as follows:
“Any inmate, who because of misconduct has lost so much time as to render the prospects of his parole extremely remote, and who, in good faith, has resolved to establish a good record in the institution, may make written application to the superintendent for an exercise of clemency that may come within the superintendent’s discretion under the rules of the institution.
“If the party making the appeal for clemency has a clear record for thirty days next preceding the date of the application, the appeal will be referred to the Bankruptcy Court, consisting of the assistant superintendent and the chaplain, who will give the applicant a hearing, carefully review his case, and make a report of their findings to the superintendent. In case the appeal is granted, the applicant will be placed in the second grade under the same conditions as apply to inmates on first entering the institution, and his consideration for parole will not be prejudiced by his previous record.
“Any inmate who shall have served one year in the second grade, and who has failed of promotion to the first grade because of minor acts of omission or commission, may make written appeal to the superintendent for promotion to the first grade, and his case will be dealt with in like manner and on like conditions as stated above. The superintendent will not remit time lost or make special promotions except in the manner above indicated.
“People who come to our institution sometimes ask, What is the best thing you have done? In making reply I do not point to any material thing. I call attention to the bankruptcy court. It has relieved us of embarrassment, strengthened our discipline, opened the door of hope, extracted the teeth of criticism. It has done wonders in this direction. I had a talk with one of those sinister, embittered boys one day. He was sullen, not personally insolent to me, except in a degree unconsciously, and I said to him, ‘I am thinking, my boy, of that good day coming when you will do just the opposite.’ He said, ‘Why do you think that day will ever come?’ ‘Simply because you have sense enough in your head; it is sure to come. You are not so bad. You fancy you are a bad fellow. You are bad enough for all practical purposes, but you are not so bad as you think. All you have to do is to turn around. You are a six-cylinder fellow. You have force and will, and you have obstinacy and lots of other things you ought not to have, and when you turn around, then we are going to have one of the best boys instead of the worst.’ He said, ‘You cannot make the officers of this institution believe I would turn around.’ I said, ‘No, but you and I can make them believe it, not I, but you and I, and I shall expect it some day.’ After six weeks there came this letter from him: ‘I have turned around, but in doing so I’m face to face with a hopeless lot of demerits, and I therefore appeal for the benefit of the bankruptcy court.’ He was working in the right direction. I would not take the time to tell you his career afterwards. It was all I hoped for.
“The third type that requires special methods of discipline is the sinister ‘smart Aleck.’ A boy of this type came to me in a very insolent way and said, ‘I am a worse man than when I came.’ I replied: ‘I have talked to you often, and for the first time your opinion coincides with mine. I believe you are, as you declare, a worse boy than when you came.’ He said, ‘What is the good of a reformatory?’ I was sorely puzzled how to deal with that boy. I said to him, ‘Do you think a place makes a man good or bad?’ ‘This place has made me bad. No reformatory reforms anybody.’ ‘My boy, do you believe heaven is a good place. Do you think the rules and regulations reasonable up there?’ He replied, ‘I expect so.’ ‘Do you not know that one of the excellent but opinionated inhabitants of that place got out of tune with it, found fault with the management, created dissatisfaction among the weaker angels and created no end of trouble, and the Creator had to provide another place? Do you know the identity of this trouble maker?’ ‘Yes, the devil.’ ‘Do you know where he is?’ ‘Yes, in hell.’ ‘He is not in hell all the time, as long as you feel as you do now.’
“After a little further discussion he was asked if he saw the point of the illustration. He said he guessed he saw where he was headed for, according to the example I had held up for him. I then showed him what a privilege it is to be able to profit from the example of those who have made a failure rather than to share their experiences. He thereupon threw aside his cynicism and admitted in the most candid way that he had been irritable and ugly and expected to be punished, but that my patience, taken with the illustration, had made him feel differently, and that he would demonstrate to me that he was not the devil or his accomplice, nor would he be a trouble maker. He on more than one occasion later referred to the fact that the devil had been a saving agency in his reformation.
“The cynical fellow is apt to have sufficient intellect to which to make successful appeal. I think of a prison as simply a fulcrum for the lever of reformatory effort. By the sentence of the court confining these two young men heretofore referred to, I was afforded the fulcrum to bring to bear the right kind of discipline.
“The next type calling for special discipline is the outrageous fellow. I have asked myself what reason there is in psychology, in humanity or in common sense for making a prison a silent tomb. How can we hope to socialize young men by denying them communication by speech? If a man refuses to talk or laugh, incipient insanity is at once suspected. With these thoughts in mind, I thought I would do away with the rule requiring silence in the dining room. Hoary-headed tradition forbade it; prison administrators in whose wisdom I have the greatest confidence questioned it; but I was impelled to try it. All went well until one day the ‘outrageous fellow’ referred to was brought to court charged with quarreling with his neighbor at table, hurling a large porcelain bowl of tea into his opponent’s face, slightly burning him and cutting an ugly gash in his head. The most serious offense, however, was creating a condition in a crowded dining room favorable to riot. It was the opinion of our officers that he should be severely punished, their idea of punishment including the infliction of bodily pain. I agreed that he deserved whipping, but reminded the officers that this world was not entirely established on the basis of desert; that the best of us had little claim to heaven on that basis. We did not whip him, not because he did not deserve it, but because we owed it to him and to the institution to do that thing that would most positively quicken the moral sense and create a wholesome public sentiment. Calling him up, I told him that he had put me to shame; that he had justified all my critics who said that I would get into trouble by allowing the boys to talk at the table; that he was the only one out of a thousand that failed to appreciate what had been done for him. ‘Now,’ I said to him, ‘$1’ This method, I believe, had the approval of practically every inmate of the institution. The boy himself said that he would rather be whipped, as he felt that he had been whipped every time he came into the dining room and turned his back to the other inmates; they would all feel that he was unfit to be with them. After three weeks he made full amends and was allowed to join his fellows, and never gave trouble afterwards.
“Another closely allied to this chap is the rebellious man. All prison men will agree that of the troublesome prisoners the rebellious man must be most promptly and effectually dealt with. I have friends who are my superiors in knowledge and wisdom who favor corporal punishment or handcuffs or the dark cell. I would not have a dark cell in the institution. Instead, I make the punishment cell lighter than any other. Why? That is not based on sentiment. If a bear wants to hibernate he hunts the dark cave. If you and I want rest we want the hours of darkness. If the creeping things of the earth want to get rest and dull their sensibilities they hunt a board or a log. The light is the most stimulating thing in all the world, and what I want to do with the rebellious inmate is to put him in a light cell. I want to stimulate him. Our reflection chambers are large, light and airy and so arranged that the occupants can smell every dinner that is cooked and hear the band and the boys playing ball. It gets to be uncomfortable and they want out and they want out badly. What is the result? They go to the deputy and say they are wrong and want to start new. If you whip a boy in prison he will suffer martyrdom if he can but have one admiring onlooker. But when you take a fool’s audience away, in prison or out, he loses the stimulation of his vanity. When he leaves our discipline department he cannot swagger that he endured this thing or that, because every person knows that there is only one way to regain his place among his fellows, and that is by the promise to conform. No handcuffs have been used in the Ohio State Reformatory for seven years. Our correction cells, known in the institution as ‘reflection chambers,’ have been all-sufficient.”
In the discussion which followed Mr. Leonard made the following additional remarks on the method of parole followed in his institution:
“The boys in our institution are eligible to parole after serving one year, but not before. When they are eligible, as laid down by law, they are presented by the superintendent and chaplain jointly to the Board of Managers for consideration. The Board of Managers has organized with a committee of six to meet from one to two days before the meeting and go over carefully the examination of the papers in each individual case. They make their findings separately and then bring them up and compare notes and get together. They then present their report added to that of the full board and the papers are gone over. Each boy is brought in and given a chance to make a personal plea. I believe that every boy has a right to make whatever impression he can on the board before they pass on his parole. After parole has been granted he cannot be released until there is a place of employment for him. We have regularly engaged, well-trained field workers who are also employment agents. If a boy cannot get employment we find it for him. They go out on parole for not less than a year, sometimes more. Occasionally we have a boy who asks for longer time for peculiar reasons, but usually not. He makes monthly reports to the superintendent, and our field officers visit him once a month until the expiration of the year. The field officer makes a report to the Board of Managers; then he is discharged and the governor issues a certificate to that effect.”
EVENING SESSION
At the evening session Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth delivered one of her characteristic and inspiring addresses, after which the congress adjourned, to meet at Seattle in the fall of 1909.
Among the resolutions adopted were the following:
That the committee appointed to arrange for the International Prison Congress be given authority to add to its membership as it seems desirable, and
That Whereas, the Congress of the United States had extended through its President an invitation to the International Prison Congress, which was first organized under the initiative of this government in 1870, to hold its Eighth Congress at our national capital in 1910, and said invitation has been accepted;
Resolved, that we respectfully ask Congress to make a suitable appropriation for the preparatory work of the International Association and for the entertainment of the Congress, as asked for in the estimates of the State Department, and we pledge the cordial coöperation of the American Association in making the Washington session memorable.
That the Congress of the American Prison Association indorse the plan advocated by the National Child Labor Committee and other organizations for the protection of children, for the establishment of a children’s bureau under one of the departments of the national government, for the investigation and publication of facts relating to child labor, including those relating to the correction and reformation of juvenile delinquents.
The following resolution was referred to the Board of Directors for action at the next congress:
In recognition of the high moral character of many life men in our penitentiaries, it is resolved that a committee be appointed who shall make suitable investigations and report next year upon the advisability of extending to this class of prisoners the benefits of parole.
The following are the Presidents for the year 1909: American Prison Association, Dr. J. T. Gilmour, Toronto; Wardens’ Association, E. F. Morgan, Richmond; Chaplains’ Association, the Rev. Aloys M. Fish, Trenton, N. J.; Physicians’ Association, Dr. Daniel Phelan, Kingston, Canada.
Reported for The Journal,
J. F. OHL, Official Delegate.