Wednesday, November 18
MORNING SESSION
The morning session of Wednesday was given over to the Prison Physicians’ Association. Dr. Charles V. Carrington, of Richmond, read a paper on “Sterilization of Habitual Criminals.” As a believer in the theory of transmitted criminality, Dr. Carrington proved himself a strong advocate of sterilization as a method of preventing the multiplication of criminals.
“Prevention of crime is the motto of our juvenile courts, reformatories, probation officers and societies for the aid of the discharged convict.
“After ten years of investigation as prison surgeon, I am unreservedly of the opinion that sterilization of our habitual criminals is a proper measure, and I believe that if habitually enforced it will lessen their number.
“The punitive side of our dealings with criminals is always to the front. Punish him is the first proposition. Lock him up. There are our Christianizing reformative measures, splendid in their way, but for the habitual criminal there must be some powerful deterrent remedy, and sterilization is undoubtedly that remedy.
“When I say sterilize the habitual criminal, I know that an understanding of the term is necessary before my remedy would be a just one to enforce. The incorrigible ‘second-term’ man, as well as those guilty of arson, assault, train wrecking and murder, should be treated as habituals.
“All of us know that in many instances the criminal inherits his instincts. The detective of forty years’ experience will tell you that a large percentage of prison inmates are hereditary criminals. Now, if the grandfather had been sterilized, what a lot of crime and suffering would have been prevented. In our enlightened age we should stop this hideous reproduction of criminals and sterilize the grandson for the good it will do in the coming years.
“Certain families in Virginia have been regularly represented on our prison rolls for the past fifty years, and will go on unless the breed is stopped. I have sterilized two prisoners in my connection with the State Penitentiary, and in each case it proved as proper a health measure as the removal of an appendix.”
In a paper on “Tuberculosis and the Colored Convict,” Dr. Julian W. Sloan, of Richmond, said in part:
“Taking up the colored convict himself as a cause we readily recognize in his heredity, his racial predilection for tuberculosis, his poverty with its attendant evils, his almost total ignorance of proper living methods, factors potent for the propagation and spread of tuberculosis.
“Add to these factors inherent in nearly all our colored convicts the devitalizing and resistance-lowering factor of cell life—a factor in itself capable of so increasing the receptivity of convicts as to leap with a single bound to the first place as a means by which tuberculosis is propagated and spread. Add again labor in factories where hygiene and sanitation do not hold sway, where factory dust constantly fills the lungs of the convict. Add yet again the depressing effects inevitable from even the best prison discipline—add these causes together, I say, and we have a sum total that appals us and seems to deprive the poor convict of every chance to escape this terrible scourge.
“Conquering tuberculosis in our prisons, as elsewhere, is not to follow upon any one method or agency or from the unaided efforts of the medical profession. I am here reminded to quote to this effect from Dr. Alfred Meyer, of New York: ‘The most hopeful sign in the world-wide combat with tuberculosis is the steady growth and coöperation among all the agencies engaged. The first impulse in the campaign came from the medical profession. Then gradually there came to our assistance sociologists, philanthropists, charitable and religious organizations, and finally municipal, State and national governments. If the chain which is to bind the scourge is ever to be forged it will be by the union of all the links hitherto disunited and by the substitution of systematic for sporadic efforts. That we are on our way toward this end was well illustrated during the recent session of the International Congress and Exhibition on Tuberculosis at Washington.’
“With the municipal, State and national governments awakening, as we see they are, to their sense of duty toward the man who goes wrong, and in their awakening providing that the square deal shall be given him—that he shall no longer be the object of vengeance, but a man to be detained and reformed and educated, I say, with this awakening a great stride has been taken toward the control of tuberculosis.
“I believe that Virginia has advanced pari passu with other States. To begin with, the indeterminate sentence, with its inspiring hope, holds much not only for the future of the convict, but for every day of his prison life. It insures, too, to a great extent, better everyday conduct. This in turn helps largely to eliminate corporal punishment, which is one of the most potent causes of mental and physical wrecks among our convicts. Of course, with lessened need for corporal punishment comes lessened need for other punitive measures, namely, solitary confinement, bread-and-water diet, dark cell, etc., all of which present dangers to the physical welfare of the convicts that check our criticisms of the horrors of barbarism.
“Another step taken here in Virginia that has reached far forward was the erection and fitting of the modern sanitary building which takes care in the most approved manner of about one half of our convicts at the penitentiary proper.
“Another step forward, and one of which the wisdom and far-reaching consequences for good cannot be over-emphasized, is the law that directs that, at the discretion of the judge, all men with jail sentences, and all men sentenced to the penitentiary for from one to five years, shall serve their sentences at hard labor on the State road force.
“This is a great advance, especially in ridding our jails of short-sentence men, who formerly served their time in idleness, filth and disease—men who usually entered jail as criminals and in fair health, to leave as devils incarnate and probably tuberculous.
“At the Virginia Penitentiary we have the constant and loyal support of the Board of Directors, Superintendent and their aides in obtaining and maintaining hygienic and sanitary conditions and in all that pertains to the health of the convict. I venture the assertion that few places, whether prisons or private dwellings, are kept more rigidly clean and sanitary than the cells of the Virginia Penitentiary. As an educating feature alone to the colored convict, this is well worth treble its cost and trouble. Sufficient ventilation is looked after constantly. In the old building we cannot claim perfection on this important score, but in the new building I believe we can. Ample bed covering is provided—this appeals to everyone as a very necessary adjunct to proper guarding against tuberculosis. The food at our penitentiary is ample, and after hundreds of examinations I can say that I have always found it wholesome. However, whenever a convict comes before the daily call and appears to need more nourishment it is our custom to give him milk as long as it seems necessary. It has been our plan for several years at the penitentiary to diagnose any cases of tuberculosis as early as possible and then have them sent immediately to our State farm to receive the benefits of open air combined with dietetic and other treatment deemed wise by our farm surgeon. The tent system at our State farm has been of inestimable benefit.
“It is a blot on our good name that we still have the bucket system in our old building. I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to strongly urge the necessity for the abolition of this system here and elsewhere.
“At the Virginia Penitentiary it is our custom to thoroughly fumigate the cells that have had in them tuberculous convicts. Our hospital wards are all regularly fumigated. Especial care is given to the fumigation of mattresses and convict clothing. Our convicts are taught from time to time the necessity of not expectorating on the cell and factory floors and walls, and we post liberally signs admonishing everyone not to expectorate on the walks.
“As will be seen we are merely endeavoring to put into operation those methods known nearly universally as the methods whereby tuberculosis may be prevented and cured.
“One recommendation I desire to make—and it is one that we will all agree is of very considerable importance—is that all cells, hospital, kitchen, dining room, factory, etc., be screened from flies.
“In my opinion this one recommendation, if carried out, would be a strong check to the spread not only of tuberculosis, but to other diseases as well. Another recommendation that would prove of undoubted profit to the State and a check to the spread of tuberculosis is that all convicts be required by law to spend as much as one to two hours or more a day in the open air exercising systematically. This—shall we call it recreation-health-exercise?—time, of one or two hours, could be arranged when contracts for convict labor were made.”
In his paper on “The Position a Physician Should Occupy in the Trial, Sentencing and Care of Criminals,” Dr. Theodore Cook, Jr., of Baltimore, made a strong plea for a larger recognition of the medical profession in all questions relating to the condition and treatment of the degenerate, sick and insane prisoner. His contention was that a great many criminals are sick either mentally or physically, and that when these appear for trial the State should see that their infirmities are recognized and treated scientifically. A recommendation made by him before the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of Maryland was to the effect that before a person is tried for a serious offense his mental and physical condition should be examined into by a committee consisting of the jail physician and prosecuting attorney of the county where the defendant is to be tried and an alienist; the alienist to be appointed by the Governor on recommendation of the State Medical Society at a stipulated salary, and required to organize this committee in each county at stated intervals. This committee would be required to pass on the fitness of the prisoner to stand trial and receive sentence and to see that any infirmities were properly attended to; the youthful degenerate being given special attention, the sick healed and the insane sent to a proper institution to remain there until discharged by this committee. This committee should have full power to summon witnesses to investigate the prisoner’s condition. Its findings should be filed with the other court records before trial. Under these circumstances the committee would determine the mental responsibility of the prisoner, and to this extent relieve judge, district attorney and jury of a burden.
Dr. Cook also strongly urged that the physician should be given more authority in the various institutions for the detention and correction of the criminal classes, and that for the sanitary and hygienic condition of such institutions he should be held strictly responsible.
EVENING SESSION
In his report of the Committee on Criminal Law Reform, Mr. Roger Phelps Clark, district attorney, Binghamton, N. Y., said in part:
“As the law is to-day no power can force a witness to go from the State of Pennsylvania into the adjoining State of New York to testify there either before a magistrate or a grand or petit jury in a criminal case other than federal. Consequently it is often the case that criminals escape punishment and sometimes even prosecution. The punishment of criminals should not be a local issue.
“Unfortunately the criminal laws are drafted by criminal lawyers, who, as legislators, are seeking to protect a line of clientage, present and prospective, rather than their constituents.
“Corporate interests that now possess as many avenues of escape from regulation that can be made effective only by criminal prosecution, as there are different State governments, are unwilling to have these regulations made and enforced by the undivided power and responsibility of one sovereign law. To them each State government is as a city of refuge. One of the great questions to-day is whether government shall control the corporations or the corporations the government.
“It is a deplorable fact that generally throughout this country the judges presiding in the trials of criminal cases in courts of record are not sufficiently versed in criminal law. This branch of law is as thoroughly distinct from civil law as admiralty law is from ecclesiastical law.
“Judge Taft, in his address on the administration of criminal law, in June, 1905, before the Yale Law School, called attention to the small proportion of murderers that were punished. Possibly this is due in a degree to the lack of courage on the part of jurors. It seems as though better results are secured in States that have abolished the death penalty.
“Insanity to-day is usually the moneyed defense. The fact that a rich man with a homicidal habit can produce experts, apparently respectable, who will swear that at the time of the commission of the crime he was insane by reason of a brain storm, but is sane at the time of trial, has brought such expert testimony into merited contempt and the administration of criminal law into deserved distrust. The only thing to do with such a criminal is to keep him under lock and key away from the stormy stress of free life.”
The Rev. Dr. A. J. McKelway, in speaking on “The Abolition of the Lease System in Georgia,” gave a history of the system, described its inhumanities and traced the steps by which its abolition came about. Beginning when one hundred convicts were first let out for $2,500 a year, the system grew to such proportions that in 1903 the price was $225 a man. Many of the men were sublet at $630 a year, and those who thus trafficked in human beings became known as “convict kings.” The abolition goes into effect on the first of April of the present year, and after that date the convicts are to be worked on the roads under State supervision, and on farms which are to be established. The reform was brought about by the overwhelming pressure of an aroused public sentiment; and Dr. McKelway summarized the present public opinion on this subject in the South as follows:
“First, it has been burned into the hearts of the people that it is not good for the State to make a profit on crime.
“Second, that the State should not delegate to any person or corporation not under its complete control the duty of punishing crime or of caring for the criminal, old or young, white or black.
“Third, that the working of felony convicts on the public roads or public works is an infinite improvement on the lease system; and that the working of misdemeanor convicts in the same way is an immense improvement over the old county jail system.
“Fourth, that the State farm is the best solution yet offered, with such manual and industrial training as may be given.
“Fifth, that the retributive idea of punishment is giving place at last to the reformatory idea.
“Sixth, that at least a fair proportion of the profits of the convict labor should be set aside for the helpless family, or as a fund for a start in the life of freedom.”
On motion of Joshua L. Baily, President of The Pennsylvania Prison Society, a resolution was passed congratulating the State of Georgia on its abolition of the convict lease system.