In the Homes of the "Repeaters"
Persons were often brought before me who had been imprisoned many times and who were no better but obviously much worse as a result of such treatment. I found upon investigation that the city contained a very large number of these persons, who were known as "repeaters," and that the time of the police and the courts was much occupied in re-arresting and recommitting them to the House of Correction. Upon examining the records of this institution, I found that of the nine thousand persons imprisoned the previous year because of their inability to pay the fines imposed, nearly one-half had been there from two to two hundred and one times each. Eighteen women had each served one hundred terms. I was therefore convinced that this method of "correction" was not only harsh and unjust to the families of such persons, but was of no value as a corrective to the defendants themselves.
Startled by such disclosures, I resolved to study conditions at close range and went into the homes of some of these offenders against the law, taking with me interpreters, for the great majority of them were foreigners. In many of these homes poverty had done its worst. Every surrounding influence favored undesirable citizenship; every turn presented flagrant violations of the law; the tumble-down stairways, the defective plumbing, the overflowing garbage boxes, the uncleaned streets and alleys, all suggested that laws were not made to be enforced. Many of the unfortunates whom I saw there regarded the law as a revengeful monster, a sort of Juggernaut that would work fearful ruin upon any one who got in its way, but otherwise was not a matter of concern. When I explained to them that the law was their friend and not their enemy, they did not appear to comprehend.
In one place there was a broken-down woman with six children. Two of the children had been arrested for stealing coal from a car. The mother explained that her "man" was in the Bridewell sobering up from one of his frequent drunks and that they had no money to buy coal, which was plainly apparent. Here were children forced to become criminals because the law was helpless to correct their father.