SAFEGUARDING OUR YOUTHS FROM PRISON
By A Prison Graduate
[Written for The Delinquent by a “Long-Termer.”]
One dull grey morning during the closing days of September, 1912, I sat poring over the records of the —— State Prison at a desk in the administrative offices where I was employed, when the shrill voice of a woman rang out on the street directly outside my barred window, attracting the startled attention of the prison clerk, the doorkeeper and myself. They rushed into the room past me and raised the sash. And what a sight met our eyes! There, beneath the stone ledge, stood a poor wild-eyed Slav woman, tying a stout rope from behind both wrists of her son, a lad of about twelve years, punctuating each knot with cuffs on his ears and wild gesticulations and admonitions in her native tongue and in broken English.
“Now you go to school, huh?” the woman cried when she had tied the last knot behind the lad’s back. But the little fellow seemed as unmoved and dogged as she was excited and persistent. With another cuff behind his ear she sent him sprawling along the sidewalk. But never a whimper from the lad. The doorkeeper, accustomed as he is to the hardest of characters that pass in and out the grey prison doors, and to pathetic scenes on visiting days, melted at the sight.
“What are you doing to that boy?” he shouted at the woman from the prison window. She turned quickly, and with eyes ablaze, retorted: “Dot’s not you’ business!” and then gave her attention to the boy, cuffing and pushing him on ahead of her. “You’ll get arrested, if you don’t stop treating your boy that way!” the doorkeeper warned her. But the woman kept on cuffing and pushing the little fellow while shouting back over her shoulder as she moved away: “Dot’s not you’ business!”
The doorkeeper and clerk shook their heads, looked at each other and left the office in silence. We were stunned by what we had seen, and marvelled that such a thing could happen in the capital city of one of our foremost states in this civilized century which boasts its wonderful advancement in every branch of life.
“Is that mother right?” I asked myself. “Will her boy bend and become a dutiful son and worthy citizen? Or will he mistake his mother’s good intentions, administered so cruelly, run away from home and finally land here in prison?”
From whatever side I viewed it, the situation was pathetic. The poor mother, no doubt, had great hopes for her boy through giving him an education which, perhaps, she and her laboring husband were denied. But what boy, with his misdirected faculties ahunger for adventure and mischief, can see things with the mature eyes of an ambitious parent? Would that the Slav woman might have known how much of the rod (in this case the rope) to administer and how much to spare in her boy’s case! But what parent knows?
I kept thinking of that Slav mother dragging her child along the street on the end of a rope; thinking of the stubbornness of a boy, so tender in years, yet so indifferent to such barbarous treatment. I thought also of how much good so self-willed a lad was capable if properly guided; how much harm, if nourished by evil influences. My mind travelled into the interior of the prison, whither so many men and women have drifted and are still drifting, from just such a start as that truant boy’s. Not that their parents had tried to put their good intentions into execution so barbarously, but the fatal misunderstanding between parent and child was there just the same. I have seen men come in, serve their time, go out and then come back again and again for similar offenses. And yet they were once good innocent boys, born of good, industrious and well-meaning parents, who had great hopes for their future careers. In the end Society suffered from the repeated damage they had done, their parents grieved in disappointment and sorrow, and the erring boys finally become social outcasts and parasites, of no use to themselves nor to any one else. Surely, thought I, there must be something radically wrong or stupid with a world that permits so much damage and misery to go on unchecked.
I thought of the terrible destruction caused by floods in times past, and of the wonderful good that came from those same bodies of water when harnessed to machinery or when floating our great ships, laden with all the necessaries of life, to all quarters of the globe. The same is true with respect to the possibilities—good and bad—of all mankind. The population of our prisons is simply the misguided flood of Society’s stream, destroying everything that obstructs it, and polluting itself as it courses along its aimless path. The officials of penal institutions are doing their best to guide the wayward and polluted stream into cleaner channels of usefulness; but penal institutions are, at best, but weak dams, unable to cope with the situation unless something be done to check the cause, or source, of the flood. That crime is increasing, criminals becoming bolder, the prison population becoming larger each year, and new and larger prisons are being built, is ample proof of this contention. Pondering these matters, vital to society, to fond and ambitious parents and to growing children, my thoughts finally crystallized themselves into a plan that should at least prevent many future youths from swelling Society’s destructive and polluted stream of crime.
Experience has shown how the reputations of many good men and women have been blasted in moments of temporary weakness when temptation beset them. They may have gone through life up to that time with little or no temptation, knowledge of the wickednesses of the world being withheld from them by watchful parents. Many have gone on offending for a long time before they are exposed; while others, tempted on all sides from youth upwards to commit crime, resist the temptations repeatedly by sheer force of character and will power. The tendency of youths in general, however, is in the direction of mischief when curiosity and temptation beckon; and from the knowledge that our faculties grow strong in proportion to our exercise of them, we may conclude that it is far wiser that children be taught to cultivate the power of resistance to evil than that that knowledge of evil be withheld from them. We know not how or when temptation may overcome us or those dear to us; but we do know that in the lives of even the worst of those that have fallen from grace, there was a first fall! And the crucial time, therefore, to begin crime prevention is before that first fall, during the time of youth.
From what has been said it might be urged that crime prevention should begin in and be confined to the home. No one will deny that the home is the most potent factor in preserving the peace and purity of any community. We know if our youths will but follow the teachings of the religions of their parents, they will not fall into the error and follow lives of crime. But religion is not practiced in every home; and all parents do not know how to influence or control the minds of their children any more than did the poor Slav woman, when in desperation, she dragged her boy to school on a rope. Again, many youths turn out badly in spite of religious parents and good homes, because of vicious associations abroad. For these reasons, then, I believe that the problem of crime prevention must be solved in our schools and colleges, leaving to parents the matter of selecting neighborhood companions of their children and of selecting respectable neighborhoods in which to bring them up.
Because the children of our public schools represent so many religious denominations, it has been deemed politic to exclude religious teachings therefrom; and the child, in consequence, is seriously handicapped. There is a common ground, however, upon which all schools and colleges, private, parochial and public may unite to make up considerably for this handicap to the habit-forming youth. And that is by establishing a system wherein teacher and pupil may co-operate in mutual discussion of the various temptations that befall men and women from time to time; what one should do under given circumstances; the penalties of indulgence in evil; and the benefits of following resistance.
The teachers should not confine themselves to lectures on the abstract qualities of truth, honesty, purity, justice, etc., as these are usually wasted when delivered to children. Let them take concrete examples from the columns of our newspapers and impress upon the pupils the moral lesson in each selected article, and thereby cause the press to become a moral agency instead of a contaminator of weak youthful minds. Let them discuss such matters as quarrelling, slander, intoxication, fighting (as distinguished from manly defense), gambling, smuggling, bribery, thefts from parent’s purses, from pantries, from the family’s storekeepers, picking pockets on the streets, all sorts of abuses and impurities, and the terrible consequences these lead up to. There are innumerable examples to choose from in our daily life. The teacher might formulate a series of real or imaginary situations and catechise the pupils as to how they would act when confronted by them in real life. These situations should be made dramatic enough to engage the full attention of the children’s eyes, ears, minds and wills, so as to leave lasting impressions upon them.
Parties of children could be formed to visit local jails and prisons, where the teachers could hold up mirrors to them of young men, husbands and fathers being torn from their loved ones and thrown into prison; of the long hours of bitter anguish spent in solitary cells year after year. Make this penal sacrifice of suffering mortals count for something more than mere restraint and punishment of crime. Make it the price paid in advance for the saving of youths in the future. The pupils should be made to write essays on the subject of temptations met and resisted, to discuss the traits of one another frankly, to commend the good and discourage the vicious among their number; thus imbuing the whole class with a feeling in common of protective fellowship.
It is the right of every child to be safeguarded in a way that it may not, through ignorance or lack of proper guidance and warning, be doomed to spend its life behind prison bars. It will surely be an agreeable and noble task for our teachers to so safeguard the child. In this way, it may fall to the lot of one of them to prevent that poor Slav boy from ending his days with another rope about his neck. Who knows?