Art. I.—MORAL AND RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION OF CONVICTS.
The readers of this Journal need not be told that we are not very sanguine in our expectations of the permanent reformation of the mass of convicts. There are doubtless instances enough of success in such efforts to warrant and encourage them, and we are not to suppose that they are ever wholly useless. The true position for us to take is this. The earlier we address ourselves to the cultivation of right principles and habits in a human being, the more hopeful is the prospect of success; but there is a power in truth and love, which has not seldom overcome the most sturdy depravity; and while we have the precept and example of Him who “came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance,” to prompt and stimulate our efforts in that direction, we have His promise too, that whatever is done in His name, and out of love to Him, shall in no wise lose its reward.
It is under the influence of these views that we have looked with interest and anxiety to the religious and moral influences which enter into the discipline of our penitentiaries. To no section of their annual reports, do we turn with more eagerness than to that from the chaplain or moral instructor; and though now and then a well-digested and satisfactory account is furnished, we are often compelled to be content with very vague generalities. A specimen of the religious discourses addressed to these unhappy congregations; a true sketch of a dialogue on some religious or moral topic held with one of them in his cell; a synopsis of a month’s labors, showing the various methods employed, direct and incidental, to reach the sympathies, and awaken better motives and desires of the heart, or a brief analysis of those obstacles to moral and religious influences, which may be properly regarded as peculiar to prison life,—all these, or any of them would greatly relieve the monotony of the reports of chaplains and moral instructors, and would add materially to our means of judging of the fitness of their labors to the character and circumstances of those on whom they are bestowed. We are often favored with such specimens of the various methods in which instruction in secular knowledge is conveyed to the ignorant, and enabled to choose between them according to their apparent appropriateness. Why should not the like opportunity be afforded in respect to the more difficult and perplexing task of enlightening adult ignorance, counteracting deeply-depraved tendencies, and up-rooting established habits of evil?
It was with the hope of bringing this important department of our penitentiary discipline more distinctly to view, and of making its principles more practical and definite, that the Prison Society recently took the subject up, and referred it to a committee for consideration and report.
At the meeting in January last a full report was submitted, from which we make the following extracts:
It will be conceded on all hands, we presume, that moral instruction is an important element of every system of Prison Discipline. We are aware that in some of the largest prisons of Europe little, if any, importance is attached to it; but whenever there is any hope of reforming the character of a convict, or of establishing a permanent restraining principle, it must be founded on some improvement in his moral feelings and habits.
That peculiar difficulties and embarrassments should attend any approach to this unhappy class of our fellow beings, with a view to mould moral character, would seem very natural; but is it not possible that we exaggerate the difference between them and the mass of the world, in respect to their susceptibilities of good impressions? May we not easily forget that between a score of men in our prison cells, and twenty score of men that may be selected from society at large, the only difference is that the former are detected rogues, and the latter are (perhaps greater) rogues undetected? The ins and the outs are equally open to moral influences, and yet we should be very likely to think of the ins as almost hopelessly beyond their reach, while the outs might be esteemed fair subjects of them.
It is moreover surprising how much farther a conviction of crime goes to exclude men from the pale of sympathy and the offer of assistance, than crime itself. The guilt of hundreds of men at large is as fully established in the public mind, as that of any convict in our penitentiary; yet we do not regard it as at all impracticable to reach them with appropriate moral influences. We should not hesitate to commend books to their attention, to invite and urge them to attend some place of worship, nor to counsel them to abandon all evil courses. Why should we have less faith in the like means when employed upon no worse men, after their character has been defined by a judicial sentence? For though true it is that the presumption of innocence is only taken away by the proof of guilt, yet when looking at men as the subjects of moral influences and sympathies, the fact that one is in prison and another at large really makes much less difference than is generally supposed.
Thus much it seemed needful to say, by way of answer to those who distrust all efforts for the reformation of convicts, regarding them as visionary, if not Quixotic. It is to be regretted that such incredulity sometimes possesses the minds of those who have the chief oversight and direction of the discipline of our penal institutions. The deception, hypocrisy and treachery of convicts, which they so often witness, naturally confirms their distrust and may very easily excite prejudices against any attempt to improve their moral condition.
We are far from representing the moral and religious instruction of convicts as an easy task. It requires much patience, simplicity, tact and earnestness, a rare knowledge of human nature, and a combination of adjunct influences which are not always at command. We only mean to affirm that whatever force lies in the argument against efforts for the moral reformation of convicts, may be used against such efforts for any other class of men.
It would be a happy thing for our prisons, if the spirit of Christian benevolence were sufficiently awakened and active to ensure the needful measure of sympathy, instruction and moral culture from voluntary and unpaid service. But necessity seems to be laid upon us to provide a more permanent and reliable system of agencies and influences. One or more officers appointed to this specific work of giving instruction to the ignorant, and presenting motives and encouragements to a better life to those who are accustomed to do evil, seems to be indispensable to secure any thing like a proper attention to this important department. Hence the call for a chaplain or moral instructor.
In looking at the condition of our two Philadelphia prisons in respect to the provision for moral instruction, we are constrained to say, that it is not such either in efficiency or success, as we think desirable, attainable, and indeed absolutely necessary. Instead of bringing to view, however, what some of us might regard as grave defects in the present incumbents of the moral instructor’s office, we will suggest what we cannot but regard as indispensable requisites in such a functionary, and leave those who have the appointing and removing power to exercise it at their discretion.
I. A moral instructor should exemplify in the minutest particulars the moral principles he inculcates.—Any obvious neglect or evasion of duty, any appearance of hypocrisy or inconsistency, any sallies of ill-humour or fretfulness, any impatience of contradiction and unteachableness in his pupils, the most trivial breach of promise, or in a word, any departure from an upright, open and ingenuous deportment, will detract sensibly from his power to do good.
II. He should possess the faculty of adapting himself to the various characters and temperaments of convicts.—We do not mean by this that he should have any other faculty than such as shrewd men of common sense ordinarily possess, and on which they depend for much of their success in business. But it is by no means a rare thing to find a prison chaplain, or moral instructor peculiarly deficient in this point, and there is nothing which is likely to strike the class of people with whom he has to deal more quickly or more unhappily than a weakness of this kind, especially in one who is set to be their teacher and guide.
III. In such an office, the motive of benevolence and sympathy should be seen to have the predominance over the motive of self-interest.—The laborer in this department, as well as in all others, is worthy of his hire, but if those he would influence discover in the manner of doing his work, or in his general intercourse, that he acts the part of a mere functionary, having his beat like a police officer, and fulfilling an appointed task like a delver or ditcher, his usefulness will be greatly circumscribed. And this suggests
IV. A fourth quality in a chaplain or moral instructor, viz.: a warm, glowing, personal, enthusiastic sympathy with the population of the prison.—He is a physician among a company of diseased and dying patients. They are bidden to look to him for direction and to confide in his prescriptions, (though not in his power or skill,) for a cure of their maladies. If he has felt in his own person the presence of the same disease, (though perhaps in a less offensive and aggravated form,) and has known the value of a remedy, he will not look with indifference on their symptoms, nor hear unmoved their sighs and groans. He will have a tear of sympathy for the suffering; a helping hand for the weak and trembling, and will deal honestly but gently with the impatient and froward. They are guilty, and is he without sin? They are suffering the penalty of a wholesome law, and what but an unseen hand has restrained him from violating it? While therefore, he sets before them, honestly and faithfully, the evil of their ways, he will give power and persuasiveness to his words by the tender and sympathizing tones in which they are uttered. While he points them to a merciful and faithful high priest that has past into the heavens, and ever lives to make intercession for guilty, penitent men, he shows that, like that same high priest, he is touched with the feeling of their infirmities and sympathizes in their bondage.
V. A chaplain or moral instructor should have good judgment in the selection of subjects of conversation and instruction, and in his methods of illustration.—It is not unfrequently the case, that the most harsh and repulsive views of moral and religious truth are presented to those whose minds are already filled with prejudice and hostility, as if it were needful (as it is said to be in some bodily diseases) to make them worse before attempting to make them better. A man of ferocious temper is the last person to tame a wild beast; nor will a severe and offensive presentation of the most precious truth be likely to win an already alienated mind. To charge home their guilt on convicts, and make them feel that they have as good as they deserve, even if their situation were much worse than it is, will never pave the way for moral influences.
It requires good judgment to select topics for the moral and religious instruction of convicts, and much skill and tact to illustrate them. A false position on a moral subject will be quite as likely to strike a congregation of rogues as a congregation of honest men; and it is wonderful how the faith of a disciple is weakened by a single material error in a teacher. The moral instructor of prisoners, having nothing to do with points of polemic theology or subtle casuistry, has a plain and easy path if he is only willing to keep it. The elementary truths of religion and morality, which lie within the comprehension alike of a child and of an angel, and which are recognized by all sober-minded men as the basis and stamina of all true moral reformation, are to be explained and enforced, and their influence in promoting happiness, respectability and prosperity in this life and in preparing us for the future, is to be clearly exhibited.
In illustrating these truths, much depends on a seasonable reference to those things within the knowledge or present consciousness of the convicts. Incidents of daily observation—the familiar phenomena of nature, their own history in its social and moral relations, (with which the teacher is supposed to have made himself acquainted) will furnish topics appropriate in character and abundant in variety.
VI. It is very important that a moral instructor should possess the faculty of casual teaching.—It is an easy thing to occupy ten or fifteen minutes in talking with a convict, but if he would leave something behind him for the man to ponder and reflect on when the cell-door closes again, the visitor or instructor must weigh well what he says, and seize the opportunity to drop a casual word of admonition, or encouragement, or intimidation, as the condition and habits of each individual may warrant.
These casual suggestions often have far more weight than a studied sermon, or an elaborate and earnest exhortation. The methods of exerting an influence over others, and especially over thoughtless and perverse persons, would be much more appropriate and effective were they governed less by the teacher’s own state of mind, and more by the state of the mind which he wishes to change. Moral instructors of all grades are oftentimes in the dark respecting the mental condition and habits of their catechumens; and prison chaplains or instructors not unfrequently err in occupying so much of their interviews in expostulation, reproof and entreaty, as to leave no proper opportunity to hear, much less to draw out, an expression of the convict’s own feelings. In such a case their labors, however well meant, lose much of their value, and are sometimes worse than wasted.
VII. It is highly desirable that instruction in sound learning should be combined with instruction in religious and moral duties.—He who opens our minds to the apprehension of new and valuable ideas, gains an important ascendancy over us. The labors of a faithful and skilful teacher are always remembered with gratitude. Now there are a thousand opportunities in the course of ordinary instruction, even in the simple branches of reading and writing, to throw out suggestions of duty and interest, which a watchful teacher will eagerly improve. In the setting of a copy, in the reading of a paragraph, and even in the spelling of a word, such an opportunity may present itself. Powerful and lasting associations are often established in this way. The familiar sentence—
“Evil communications corrupt good manners,”
which has for a century perhaps, been used as a copy in writing-schools and classes, and which was originally selected, probably, because there is so large a proportion of letters of the simplest formation, has doubtless been fixed in the minds of thousands by the use of it in such a connection. When it is remembered how transient, uncertain and unfavorable is the opportunity to impress at all the minds of convicts, we may well insist upon the strictest economy in the use of such as we have.
VIII. As a library has become an almost indispensable appendage to our prisons, the moral instructor should be competent, not only to select the most appropriate book for the use of the convicts, but also to distribute them with judgment when under his care.—The most preposterous errors are often detected in some of our prisons on both these points. Where books are kindly given for such a purpose, reference is seldom had to the appropriateness of them. They are not wanted by the donor, and are therefore given to the prison. The moral instructor should be held responsible for every book that goes upon the shelves of the prison library, and he should be so familiar with the general character and design of each volume, as to determine as to its appropriateness to the condition, capacity and present habit of each prisoner’s mind.
IX. We are clear that the moral instructor should reside within the prison walls, and be expected to have the same constancy in duties and responsibilities as the warden, or any other resident officer. There is no hour of the day in which he may not find or make an opportunity of doing good, and it is only by identifying himself with the daily routine of prison-duties, and with the interests of all concerned in their administration, that he can properly execute his work.
X. The character and position of the moral instructor should be such as to command the respect and confidence of the officers and inspectors.—There is no such thing as hood-winking prisoners on such a subject as this. They soon discover how much respect the executive authorities feel for the man who is appointed to such an office, and it is vain to suppose their estimation of him by those within the cells will be any higher. The moral thermometer on the outside and the inside of the partition wall, will indicate a similar temperature on this, and on most other subjects. There are prison chaplains and moral instructors in the world, whose characters and opinions challenge the regard and respect not only of prison officers and visitors, but of the public at large; and such have uniformly exerted a most sensible and happy influence on the wretched congregations committed to their charge. If the moral instructors in our State and County prisons are of this stamp, we may well congratulate ourselves that so important a post is adequately filled. If they are not possessed, in some good degree, of the qualities which have been enumerated, the sooner they are removed the better shall we regard it for the prison and for the public, for we are clear that an incompetent incumbent of such an office is an instrument of more evil than good.
Art. II.—REPORT OF THE DISCIPLINE AND MANAGEMENT OF THE CONVICT PRISONS AND DISPOSAL OF CONVICTS,
1851-2, with notes on the Construction of Prisons, Treatment and Disposal of Juvenile Offenders, &c. By Lieutenant Colonel Jebb, Surveyor General of prisons of England, &c., pp. 218, with numerous plates.
This document is dated in June last, and came to hand since our January number was issued. In a cursory reading of it, we have noted several points of general interest, and without attempting a classification of the topics, we will imagine our readers to be looking over our shoulder as we rapidly turn the leaves, making now and then a brief comment or two.
In the ten prisons for separate confinement in England proper, there is room for 2,459 convicts, and 2,193 were in prison, leaving unoccupied accommodations for 266. In the three prisons for labor on the public works there were 1,931 confined, and only 17 more could have been received. In the hulks, there were 1,780 and only two vacancies; and in the Juvenile Prison at Parkhurst, there were 577 tenants and 29 vacancies. The total convict population of the year was 9,033, and there were 355 more on hand December 31, 1851, than at the same date in the previous year. Of the whole number, 13 were removed to Lunatic Asylums during the year, 147 were pardoned, (of whom 76 were on medical grounds,) and 111 died.
In the report of the Millbank prison, we have an incidental testimony from the chaplain to the moral advantages of separation, which we think valuable.
Of moral improvement, however, as regards the many, embracing change of principle and real amendment of character, he feels (he says) considerable diffidence. Bearing in mind the circumstances of the prison,—the period of separate confinement, rarely exceeding six months, being somewhat brief to be permanently effective for reformatory purposes—the danger of any good impressions made during that period (the seed-time of reformation) being effaced when prisoners are transferred to the large rooms and general ward, where the opportunity is withdrawn from those under incipient convictions of being ever left alone with their conscience, and the spiritual exercises of the more advanced in religion, both meditation and prayer, are subject to disturbance.
If this opinion is the result of intelligent and long continued observation, (as we suppose it to be,) it is certainly very conclusive as to the value and indispensableness of convict-separation as a means of reform. The italic words are all found of the same character in the original document. They form, when read by themselves, a memorable sentence, and one which we respectfully commend to all those who stand in doubt on the subject.
“Moral improvement or real amendment of character, to be permanently effective among the many, is not to be expected in large rooms and general wards. They require to be left alone with their conscience.”
From Pentonville, we have a very favorable report, especially as it regards the health, physical and mental. Only two cases of insanity have occurred during the year among 561 prisoners, and of these one had low intellectual development, which made him incapable of learning a trade; and the other, though only 26 years of age, had been previously convicted and imprisoned three times. He was suddenly seized with mania three weeks only after commitment, and cerebral disease was presumed by the physician to have been upon him when received. Concerning both of the cases the physician remarks, that the “insanity was not traceable to the operation of separation on the minds of the prisoners.”—p. 11.
We venture to say that no prison on any plan or system can show cleaner papers respecting the health of an equal number of convicts.
It seems that immediately succeeding this year of remarkable health, in the course of the first half of the year 1852, “an unusually large number of cases of mental affection” occurred, which led to the substitution of brisk walking in concentric rings for exercise in separate airing yards—the abolition of the mask or peak which was found useless as a preventive of recognition, and the doing away of the chapel stalls. It is well known that these three features of the Pentonville system were designed to carry out the principle of strict separation. If they were found ineffectual for this purpose, their abandonment is a matter of no moment; and as the term of imprisonment in this penitentiary is regarded as probationary, and is moreover restricted to twelve months, we can scarcely suppose that such changes were required by way of relaxing the discipline. Colonel Jebb gives us to understand that the prejudices of the public against separate confinement are gradually subsiding, and he thinks it “of greater importance to the more general introduction of the system that every effort should be made to secure its great advantages without again raising the question of its safety.” Is there no danger, however, that its efficacy may be so far diminished by needless relaxation, as to make it scarcely worth the trouble of introducing it?
We have not a shadow of evidence, nor even an intimation that the supposed increase of insanity was in the slightest degree the result of severe discipline; nor have we any report from the medical officer, visiting or resident, as to the existence of such “an unusually large number of cases of mental affection.” But whether they existed or not, “they were believed to exist,” and the Board of Commissioners directed the changes to which we have above adverted. In the progress of the inquiries on the subject, it was suggested to the visiting director, that he should obtain the joint opinion of the Governor, Chaplain and Medical Officer on sundry points, among which were the following:
1. Whether it appears necessary to reject any particular description of prisoners as being unfit subjects for separate confinement, such, for instance, as those of dull intellect, or others who do not speak the language, and are, therefore, less capable of instruction.
2. Whether the arrangements at Wakefield and Leicester, with regard to assembling for public worship, school instruction, exercise in association, &c., are likely to be the cause of a more favorable effect of separate (?) confinement on apparently the same class of prisoners.
3. Whether a greater stimulus or a greater degree of vigor cannot be imparted to the trades and occupations in the cells.
4. Whether it will be necessary and desirable, after a certain period of confinement, to exercise all prisoners in association, and whether the removal of both the long ranges of exercising-yards will be sufficient for such purpose.
5. Whether the garden at the back of the prison might not be advantageously cultivated by prisoners selected from those who may have been a certain period in confinement.
6. Whether dispensing with the mask would be likely to be attended with a beneficial effect.
We should have been gratified to know the answers which were returned to these pertinent and important inquiries. We think the second question would puzzle the wisest commissioner that could be found, whether association will be the cause of a more favorable effect of separate confinement on apparently the same class of prisoners! Or to vary the phraseology, what is likely to be the effect of association upon separation! In the absence of any report from the medical officer, and with the health report of the preceding twelvemonth before us, we cannot doubt that some misapprehension has arisen from exaggerated and possibly fictitious representations.
A new chapter of observations and conclusions is opened to us at Millbank by Dr. Baly, the visiting physician. It will be remembered that no little discrepancy of opinion occurred a short time since between the resident and visiting physician of the penitentiary at Pentonville,[A] and hence we should feel disposed to suspend full confidence in the present statement, till we know what the other doctor has to say. But one or two facts may be safely cited, which will serve to show how entirely irreconcilable some theories on this subject are with each other, and with the actual phenomena. Of eight insane convicts transferred during the year 1851 from Millbank to the Lunatic Hospital, five were decidedly insane when received into the prison. The aggregate of eight years gives us sixty-five cases of insanity among 7,393 convicts, of whom thirty-five were insane when received, and nine of the remainder were of very low intellect, and only twenty-one were of sound mind; of these twenty-one, thirteen recovered in the prison, leaving only eight all told, or about one in 1,000 as sufferers, in this form, from their incarceration! What prison or what mode of discipline can show a better result than this?
[ A] See Journal of Prison Discipline for April, 1852.
Among the very remarkable things disclosed in this report of Dr. Baly, we find that during the first four years of the period of time embraced in it, when the average term of imprisonment was less than one hundred days, the cases of insanity were 11 or 3.28 per 1,000 prisoners, and that in the last four years, in which fifty-six days were added to the average length of confinement, the cases of insanity rose to 19 or 4.70 per 1,000! So that, omitting those who recovered in prison, the ratio in the first four years was 1.49 per 1,000, and, the last 2.72, or nearly double! It has been generally conceded even by the most zealous opponents of separation, that its tendencies are quite harmless and even wholesome, when not extended much beyond twelve months; but Dr. Baly’s report presents an entirely new view of the case. He tells us that the ratio of insanity is twice as high in the second three months of confinement, and more than three times as high in the third, as it is in the first. His table is as follows:
| Periods of Imprisonment. | Approximative Number of of Prisoners who passed through each Period. | Number of Cases of Insanity occurring in each Period. | Annual ratio per 1,000 of Cases of Insanity for each Period. |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Three Months | 16,000 | 9 | 2.25 |
| Second Three Months | 8,400 | 9 | 4.28 |
| Third Three Months | 4,200 | 8 | 7.61 |
| Fourth Three Months, or later | 1,200 | 4 | -- |
But it unfortunately happens that the reasons assigned for these results would go to disprove them. “The various feelings of remorse, shame and despondency,” and the “withdrawal of the external sources of excitement,” would be much more likely to work upon convicts’ spirits during the first three months, than during the third three months, especially when the termination of the sentence is so near at hand. But the whole statement is so extravagant, and so contrary to the received opinions of even anti-separatists themselves, that we are disposed to give it very little weight. Dr. Given, late resident physician of the Eastern State Penitentiary, whom we must all regard as at least an uncommitted party, expresses his conviction of the entire safety of separation for the term of twelve months, even in the case of minors; but beyond that, in their case, he would seldom extend it. See his Report for 1852.
We have yet to be informed of the first case of the loss or serious impairment of a convict’s mental or bodily health from the judicious and faithful administration of the separate system of discipline; but whatever real or fancied dangers to body or mind attend it, one thing is made clear by the report before us, viz., that it is wonderfully efficacious.
We infer from several passages in this document, what we have not seen more specifically stated elsewhere, that “the principle of the discipline now established in the English prisons, contemplates a confinement of the convict in strict separation twelve months, to prepare him for a term of labor in association;” and this latter stage, from its “exposing prisoners to many temptations, which they would have to encounter on their final release from penal restrictions in England, is to prepare them for that event.” So that we have three grades or stages in the process; separation follows conviction and introduces to association, which is preparatory to transportation.
The convict, having passed the appointed term in separate confinement, is removed to the establishment in Portland Island (or, it may be, when suitable arrangements are made, to one of our Dockyards), to labor in the formation of the harbor of refuge, or on some public work. There, although he is still under religious instruction and very judicious superintendence, his principles and the reality of his reformation are subjected to a severe test. He is associated with other convicts, and, as it cannot be supposed that all have been reclaimed, he meets with many temptations.
The officer in charge of the Portland Island establishment, says:
The subdued, improved, and disciplined state in which the convicts generally arrive at Portland, from the stage of separate confinement, appears to be an admirable preparative for their transfer to the greater degree of freedom unavoidable on public works. Those convicts who have been for a considerable time at Portland, have not usually indicated any falling off in morals or conduct, but, on the contrary, several instances have occurred in which men, on whose conduct the comparative degree of liberty here alluded to, appeared to have at first an unfavorable effect, have afterwards become orderly and industrious, and content to work their way cheerfully to the prospective advantages held out to convicts of that character.
Such strong testimony to the efficiency and powerful reformatory influence of separation, is of great value.
Some interesting items are furnished on the extent and expenses of transportation. The number of convicts sent to the Australian colonies from Great Britain in 1847, was 938, in 1851, 1568. The average number transported annually from Great Britain, is given at 1750—1300 males, and 450 females.
The estimates for 1852-53 for services connected with the transportation of convicts amount to the gross sum of 101,041l., which provides for the removal of 3,100 males and 800 females from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia, and of 800 to Bermuda and Gibraltar.
Deducting the probable expense devoted to the latter service, there might remain about 95,000l., as the amount required for the removal of 3,900 convicts, or 24l. per head.
From various movements in the present parliament, we are led to infer that transportation will soon be abandoned. This event is more than intimated in the report before us. It is inferred from the tenor of a brief discussion of the scheme of the select committee of the House of Commons, announced two years since, in the form of three specific propositions, viz.:
I. That after prisoners under long sentences have undergone a period of separate confinement, the remainder of their sentences ought to be passed under a system of combined labor, with effectual precautions against intercourse.
II. That this object would be greatly facilitated by the erection of district prisons, at the national cost, for the reception of prisoners under long sentences after they have undergone such previous separate confinement.
III. That such district prisons should be maintained at the national cost, and the government of such prisons, and all appointments and salaries of officers, ought to be under the control of Her Majesty’s Government.
Col. Jebb regards these plans with unqualified favor. “If it were only to avoid the inconvenience and expense of transportation,” he says, “it is well deserving of attention, especially in an economical point of view.”
It seems that lengthened “periods of imprisonment have not hitherto been resorted to, partly from there being no existing prison where sentences exceeding twelve months could be properly carried into effect, and partly, from a sentence of transportation in former times affording so easy a solution of all difficulty both as regarded expense and final disposal.” And Col. Jebb expresses the opinion, that “if facilities existed for carrying into effect sentences of imprisonment extending from eighteen months to three years without expense to the counties and boroughs, a large proportion of the present sentences to seven years’ transportation would be changed to imprisonment.” Allowing the average sentences to be from two and a half to three years, nine months would be past under the discipline of separation, and from twenty-one to twenty-seven months in the district prison.
As a general conclusion of the whole matter, Col. Jebb copies and adopts the opinion of the Parliamentary committee, that “if conducted under proper regulations and control, separate confinement is more efficient than any other system which has yet been tried, both in deterring from crime and in promoting reformation.”
It is quite evident that he is no convert to Dr. Baly’s views, for he does not propose to reduce the average term of separation below nine months, within which all the mischiefs of it, (according to the Dr.’s theory or statement,) are experienced. Indeed, if we are not under great misapprehension, Col. Jebb has over and over again expressed his confidence in the principle of separation, when applied to periods varying from twelve to eighteen months.
So far from yielding to a suggestion of relaxation, the present report urges a uniform system of discipline in all prisons, and the enforcing of separate confinement alike to the tried and the untried. It endorses the declaration of a committee of the House of Commons, that “the combination of hard labor with individual separation, has been remarkable in its effect to decrease the number of committals.” The prison of Leicester is cited as an example.
In one section of the report, the subject of enforcing hard labor is discussed; Lord Denman’s remarks are cited, in which he speaks of “the only legitimate end of punishment being to deter from crime; but I think I perceive,” he says, “in some of the theories of benevolent men, such a mode of administering the criminal law as to encourage instead of deterring. I greatly dread the effect of giving convicts benefits and privileges which they never could have hoped for but from the commission of crime.”
In allusion to this subject Col. Jebb, in his report for the preceding year, suggests whether among “the means of increasing the stringency of the discipline, and bringing it to bear with greater effect on the lowest class of prisoners, and on such as prove to be incorrigible, also on prisoners re-committed to prison, giving them a less comfortable bed for certain periods, or on alternate nights,—might not be desirable. The physical comforts of a prison are of necessity greater than the majority of prisoners enjoy when at liberty; and if, without injury to health, these can be abridged, a more deterring effect will be produced by the discipline, both on the individual himself and the criminal population generally.”
We have often and earnestly contended for a more liberal use of those methods of discipline which apply to the sources or organs of criminal indulgence. Moral diseases have corresponding remedies. No more suitable remedy can be prescribed for idleness and indolence than hard work. Nothing is more irksome to a man given to depraved appetite, than short commons. The difference between a good dinner on corned beef and potatoes, and a ration of bread and water, is felt at points which reproof and the shower-bath, and even the cat-o’-nine-tails, will none of them reach. The former, by itself, will subdue a spirit which the three latter combined will only rouse to indomitable stubbornness.
On the whole, we regard this document as decidedly confirmatory of the views which have been uniformly advocated by the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of Public Prisons, and in the pages of this Journal. It contains not a statement nor a tittle of evidence that impairs in the slightest degree our confidence in the safety, efficacy and humanity of convict-separation. That it has been, and may be abused or ill-administered, and that it requires judgment and discrimination to adapt its provisions to the various classes of persons who are subjected to it, is not more true of this than it is of the gregarious or any other system. The only substantial fault that we have ever known to be found with it, is that it costs more than association, and the only answer to be made to this is, that (admitting the statement to be true) it is worth as much more as it costs.
Art. III.—SOURCES AND CHECKS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.
When the farmer finds his fruit trees exposed to the ravages of the caterpillar, he makes but slow and unsatisfactory work, if he takes the worms one by one as they are feasting on the leaf, or crawling along the stem, or dangling in the air. There is a period of the day, however, when they are all in their nest, and if he can apply a torch to their curious fabric and consume it, or riddle it with shot, or wind it and its wriggling population upon a brush or broom well besmeared with pitch or tar, to be forthwith put into the fire or under the foot, the work is thorough and the tree safe.
Not inaptly does this illustrate, or serve to point out the true process for the diminution of crime. The arrest, conviction and punishment of here and there a rogue, is scarcely felt. It is but a unit subtracted from the appalling aggregate of crime. If we would have the ratio of our criminal population palpably and permanently lessened, we must lay hold of the young ones in the nest, and whatever the trouble or cost, we may rest assured it is by all odds the cheapest and only effectual way of dealing with the pest.
Among the prominent causes of, or excitements to a criminal life which are operative upon childhood, especially in cities and populous towns, have been reckoned 1, and chiefly drunkenness. 2. The absence of education and industrial training. 3. The inadequacy of home-accommodation to secure the ordinary decencies of life. 4. The demoralizing influences of cheap theatres, and other low places of amusement, association with fire companies, and the liberty to dispose of the whole or a considerable portion of their own earnings. 5. The example, instruction or orders of parents constraining them to vicious acts, and 6, the connivance or co-operation of receivers of stolen goods to prompt them. We might indefinitely enlarge this catalogue, but these causes are adequate to account for the greater part of juvenile crime.
The readers of our Journal cannot fail to be aware of the unusual interest which has recently been awakened on this subject. Our present number contains sundry evidences of it, and by referring to the cover, a notice will be found, the design of which is to provoke inquiry and discussion, with a view to reformatory measures. As human nature is substantially the same all the world over, and as like causes produce like effects, we have transferred to our pages several interesting and important passages from the last report of the inspector general of English prisons, bearing particularly on this subject.
In respect to the first cause of juvenile depravity, which we just commented on, drunkenness—
“Statistical returns show that the amount of money expended in intoxicating drinks of one kind or another in Great Britain, is between fifty and sixty millions of pounds sterling per annum,—a sum fully equal to the whole national revenue.
“Now such an enormous expenditure on any one object must produce a noticeable effect upon our social condition. Were such a sum annually expended on the reclaiming of waste land and the improvement of what is but partially cultivated, and the erection of comfortable dwellings, in a few years our whole island would be a garden of beauty and fertility.
“But what are the results produced?
“The physicians of our lunatic asylums tell us that intemperance is the cause of a large proportion of the cases of insanity.
“The medical officers of our infirmaries and dispensaries tell us that many diseases are caused, and more are made fatal, by habits of intemperance.
“The masters of our poor houses tell us that they can trace the pauperism of most of their inmates to their own intemperance, or to that of their parents.
“The governors and chaplains of our prisons tell us that most of the crime in our gaols is directly or indirectly caused by strong drink.
“If the offences to which habitual drinking has ultimately led could be ascertained, I believe we should find that four-fifths of the recorded offences have sprung from it.”
Although the remedy for this enormous evil is justly regarded as lying to a considerable degree in the hands of educators, it is maintained that “much may be done to abate the evil by reducing the number of licensed public houses both in town and country, and by greatly raising the expense of strong drink.”
As an evidence of the effects of cheapening strong drink, it is stated that in 1825, the duty on whiskey was greatly reduced in Scotland, and that as a consequence, intemperance began to increase, so that “in the twenty-seven years which have since elapsed, the consumption has become nearly five-fold greater; crime, disease, and death have increased in similar proportion; and the sober, religious Scotland of other days is now proved, by its consumption of spirits, to be, without exception, the most drunken nation in Europe.”
As to the connection between intemperance and the other causes of juvenile depravity, “the records of the prison-house, if fully analyzed, would show that the first penny or the first pound taken by a son from his parents, or abstracted by the young man from his master’s desk, is for the theatre, not for the public-house. But youth, being corrupted by the pleasures of sin, drunkenness follows, and becomes the associate or the substitute of licentiousness, and completes the ruin. Money becomes indispensable, and it is gotten by some desperate and wicked means, at the possibility of which a few months before, the mind would have recoiled with indignation, like that of Hazael, when reproached by the prophet: ‘Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?’”
In the great majority of instances, it is believed, the only means by which the reformation of such can be rationally expected is by their thorough and permanent severance from those scenes and associations in which their evil habits were formed. Although suffering from hunger and misery, it must not be supposed that the lives led by these delinquent children are void of pleasurable sensations; “the very alternation from one extreme to another keeps the mind in a state of feverish excitement; the want of a penny to buy food on one day, is more than compensated by the reckless profusion of the next; and the despondency created by privation and long suffering is speedily supplanted by exultation on the success of some criminal feat of daring and dexterity.”
None will deny another position of the report, viz.:
“That it is impossible for children to be brought up as Christian children ought to be, when huddled together, male and female, old and young, like pigs in a stye; and yet this revolting expression is not too strong to designate the dwellings of tens of thousands in our land.
“How many of our honest industrious artisans have only one apartment, or, at most, a room and a closet for father and mother, and grown up sons and daughters!
“The physical condition of the poor cannot be viewed as separated from the moral. The want of a proper dwelling place for the working man is one of his greatest trials, and is as injurious to his spiritual as to his bodily health. The crowding together of a whole family in one room weakens domestic virtue, destroys all self-respect, modesty, and delicacy of feeling, and utterly removes all opportunities for self-improvement. A home which is miserable from physical or moral causes is the half-way house to the gin-palace or beer-shop.”
The inquiry might be opportunely raised, whether the habits of life which constitute such a social state as is here described, are not formed long before the state itself is entered. A girl or boy accustomed to street-associations either in the pursuit of some trading employment, as selling papers, matches, &c., &c., or from mere neglect and idleness, will soon fall into habits which no degree of loathsome infamy or social degradation will shock. The origin of the evil, in such cases, lies far back of its present stage and locality. It dates from the childhood of those who now act as the head of this filthy and brutalized little community.
Of the penny theatres, it is truly remarked, that “they present almost irresistible attractions;” and the annals of juvenile delinquents are full of cases of petty thefts committed in order to procure the penny or twopence required for admission.
Even if the price of admission be honestly obtained, as one of the reports says, the scenes to which the youthful spectator is there introduced are understood to be of the most flagitious and depraving nature, calculated only to inflame the passions, and deaden every virtuous feeling.
Singing-rooms and dancing-rooms, too, are represented as training up boys and girls to familiarity with vice in every shape. A magistrate sent two of his officers to visit one of them. Their report describes seven hundred boys and girls collected together to have their bodies poisoned with smoke and drink, and their minds with ribaldry and obscenity! Can any one have a doubt that the evil wrought in such a singing-room in a single night, outweighs all the good that can be effected by a dozen Sunday-schools in a whole year?
And finally the part played by the receivers of stolen goods is described as a profession.
So much for causes, and now as to remedies. These are emphatically preventive in their nature, “lying at the very foundation of our social arrangements, and until very recently, wholly disregarded and uncared for, viz., ‘organized and adequate means for education and industrial training.’”
It is remarkable how many of the prominent features of some of our modern schemes of juvenile reform here, have been long ago presented to the public eye. More than half a century ago, (1796) the renowned Earl of Chatham introduced to the British Parliament a bill, which had for its object the establishment of a school for work in every parish or incorporated district, for the purpose of instructing the children in different trades and manufactures. The parishes were to be at liberty to maintain their poor children in the working schools, or to lodge them there or keep them only during the hours of labor, and then feed them there or give them work to do at home. The overseers were to be charged with the direction of these schools, and were required to supply them with materials and utensils, &c. Parents burdened with infant children, and in the receipt of out-door relief, were required to send their children to the working school as soon as they were five years old, to be instructed and maintained there. It was provided that those fathers who might prefer to keep their children at home, should bring them up and employ them, receiving some direction and assistance from the local authorities until the children were in a condition to gain their livelihood. Upon leaving the working school, those children who could not return to their families were to have been apprenticed at the expense of the parishes, or provided with some means of service.
It has long been our conviction, as the volumes of this Journal will show, that no very radical reform of the vicious children and youth of the land will be accomplished, so long as the government is so reluctant to enforce parental obligations, or to take upon itself all due attention to such obligations in those points where the welfare and safety of society are put in jeopardy by the disregard of them. Though our institutions are based on a principle of the utmost liberty, they are, for that very reason, peculiarly dependent on the proper education and training of children for their preservation. No country on the face of the globe has so much staked on the intelligence, industry and virtue of each succeeding generation as ours. We are fully satisfied that the timidity which our government manifests in laying fast and earnest hold of this great evil, parental neglect, exposes us to the loss of all that is worth preserving.
“Society has surely the right to guard itself against the evil practices of those neglected children; and, having the right, it ought also to have the power; but if such power exist, it seems very difficult to tell in whose hands it is vested. The child convicted of theft is whipped or imprisoned, but if he stole to appease the cravings of hunger which his worthless parent failed to satisfy, it is clear that chastisement has not fallen upon the proper party, and that the really guilty has profited by the vices prompted by his culpable neglect, while the whole cost has been defrayed by the public.”
“Power must be given,” says our report, “to send to school all neglected children—all found loitering in streets and lanes—whose parents take no charge of them, but leave them to grow up as they may, untutored and untaught, save in the practice of crime. If the parents neglect to perform their bounden duty, then the State may properly step in, loco parentis, and do the needful work; and surely this is no unjustifiable interference with the parental authority—it is only saying to the parent, ‘if you will not discharge the duty you owe to your child, both in the sight of God and of man, we, the public, will do it for you; we will not suffer your child to grow up a torment to himself and to all around him; we would much rather you did your duty yourself, but if you will not, then we must.’
“By law, the burden of uncared-for pauper children falls at present on the workhouse, but the poor-law authorities are not entitled to expend their money, unless under their own immediate control; and power must be given to them to do so, through the medium of industrial school managers. This will be as advantageous as it is economical. Better for the public, who must eventually pay in one form or other, to maintain the child in an industrial school at 4l. a year, than in a poor house at 10l. or 12l., especially as the smaller expenditure gives every prospect of making him a useful member of the community, and the larger gives little hope of ever raising him above the pauper class.
“A good education,” says one of the inspectors of the English National Schools, “so infallibly dispauperises, and raises its recipient above the necessity of ever again applying for relief, that except under gross mismanagement of the guardians in other points, we may be tolerably certain that vicious habits, easily eradicable by sound early training, have brought the great majority of those who burden the parochial rates to their state of dependence. Could this truth be more universally impressed on the managers of the poor, the difficulties in the way of forming industrial schools would vanish!
“It was said by the late stipendiary magistrate at Liverpool, that he had ascertained that ten such children, under fourteen years of age had cost, in apprehension and imprisonment, upwards of six hundred pounds; and, with so little effect, that all of them were then in prison, and one, only about ten years of age, lay under sentence of transportation for seven years.
“The remedy for these enormous evils appears simple and obvious. Let the committee or the magistrate be empowered to send all such mendicant children to the schools of industry at the expense of the parent or the parish, and let the worthless parent be punished if he neglects the sacred duty of maintaining his child, which at present he is allowed to do with impunity.”
We think the friends of our Houses of Refuge could scarcely ask a more sensible and cogent argument in support of such establishments, than is furnished in these brief extracts; and yet cogent and sensible as it may be, it fails to convince gainsayers, or at least, to constrain them to prompt and liberal action. Within a twelvemonth a project for such an establishment was lost in a neighboring State, (as it was alleged,) in some political whirlpool; and the public prints tell us, that a like wholesome measure was lately defeated in St. Louis by the jealousy or arrogance of a religious party. We do not vouch for the truth of either of these statements, but we hazard nothing in saying, that the problem, how to restrain and suppress crime, will never be solved, till politicians and religionists lose their selfishness and their bigotry in an earnest and efficient effort to provide for vicious and neglected children.
The following good old Saxon principle is adverted to in a report on Parochial Union Schools for 1851.
“Guardians are not always so open to considerations of ultimate as of immediate economy; and many a pauper who now, before his death, costs his parish one or two hundred pounds, might have lived without relief, had a different education, represented perhaps by the additional expense of a single pound, been bestowed upon him in his youth! This is strictly retributive justice; and I think it would be good policy to increase its effect, and it would give a prodigious stimulus to the diffusion of education, if the expense of every criminal, while in prison, were reimbursed to the country by the parish in which he had a settlement. What a stir would be created in any parish by the receipt of a demand from the Secretary of State for the Home Department for 80l. for the support of two criminals during the past year! I cannot but think that the locality where they had been brought up would be immediately investigated, perhaps some wretched hovels, before unregarded, made known, and means taken to educate and civilize families that had brought such grievous taxation on the parish. The expense of keeping criminals, as of paupers, must be borne somewhere; and it seems more just that it should fall on those parishes whose neglect has probably caused the crime than on the general purse.”
We would gladly pursue the discussion of these interesting topics did our limits allow, but we have indicated one important, and as it seems to us indispensable preliminary inquiry, viz.: Can we effectually carry out any general scheme of reform, except we withdraw neglected and vicious children from the associations and habits of their miserable and degraded homes, and put them upon a course of involuntary moral and industrial training, before they become what are technically called juvenile delinquents? Is not a compulsory process (much earlier in its application than the discipline of a House of Refuge) essential to the accomplishment of any general or comprehensive reform? Will such a process be authorized by any popular legislature in our country? If the question implies an answer, is the answer true?