Among the German States, Saxony has held a rather exceptional position. A system of classification of prisoners was introduced by a minister named Lindeman as far back as 1840, and ten years later the penitentiary of Zwickau was opened, in which reformation was pursued by individual treatment on humane and careful lines, with education and industrial employment. The dietaries were ample and must be said to have erred on the side of over-indulgence, in that Saxon prisoners had at one time a choice among ninety different dishes for dinner and twenty-eight for breakfast and supper. The discipline enforced was generally mild. Corporal punishment was allowed by the rules and also the bed of lathes, but neither of them has been applied for many years past. Industry was encouraged by the hope of reward, pleasanter labour, and remission of a part of the sentence in the form of leave of absence or conditional release. Many excellent prisons exist similar to Zwickau above mentioned, such as Waldheim, Hubertusburg and others. All of them are kept up to a high standard and improvements are constantly in progress. Separation by night is the general rule while dangerous or incorrigible convicts are completely isolated.
In the Kingdom of Württemberg the cellular plan of prison construction was adopted in 1865 and the first building, that of Heilbronn, was occupied in 1872. Other places of durance are mostly on the collective system as at Stuttgart, Ludwigsburg and Gotteszell, but means of isolation and separation by night is practised generally. Discipline is firm but not harsh, and corporal punishment is excluded from the penalties for misconduct. Deterrence is held to be the primary object of imprisonment, but moral reformation is not overlooked.
A few words may be inserted here as to penal institutions in other German states. Thus in the grand-duchy of Hesse the principle of herding the prisoners together prevails, although efforts have been made to introduce the isolated cell system. The chief prisons are the “Marienschloss” and those in Darmstadt and Mainz. The national penal institution of Dreibergen serves both of the grand-duchies of Mecklenburg as their chief prison. Peculiar interest attaches to it in view of the almost forgotten fact that here a sort of transition stage was instituted for convicts with long sentences who were during the latter part of their term removed from the isolation cells and sent out to such work as was calculated to develop their physical powers.
In the history of prison management, Oldenburg earned an excellent reputation through the remarkable individuality of Hoyer, for years the director of the house of correction at Vechta. He advocated cell isolation until the latter years of his life, when he declared himself in favour of the Irish system. His plan of forming settlements for convict labour on waste lands was discontinued, as the results were unfavourable, and a modified form of solitary confinement was reinstated. A portion of the Thuringian states was under Prussian and Saxon jurisdiction with regard to their prison system. The rest formed a combination among themselves for the building of prisons to be used by them in common. The principal one was in Ichtershausen.
The improvement of penal institutions was undertaken by Austria in the early forties and a special commission was appointed to examine into the merits of various systems recommended, with the result that solitary confinement was recognised as the most suitable form of punishment for all prisoners awaiting trial and for those sentenced for a year or less. But before this could be put into practice in the new prisons, the political situation changed and the projected reforms were delayed. The old system was not changed, but efforts were made to provide further accommodation to meet the great increase in the number of sentences. Much energy was devoted to the work and considerable outlay, which produced prisons large enough to contain thirteen thousand inmates. The entire prison administration was entrusted to religious orders and even prisons for male offenders were placed under the superintendence of nuns, a cardinal error resulting in much mischief. Under the minister of justice, in 1865, reforms were again instituted; he assumed the supreme control, and prison management was made to conform to the spirit of the then prevailing liberal views. The system of imprisonment hitherto in force throughout Austria remained untouched for the time being. Among other reforms, corporal punishment and chains were abolished.
In 1868 the penal institutions of Garsten and Karthaus came under government inspection, the contracts with the religious orders ceased, and in 1870 all male prisons were put under direct state control. A new male prison for three hundred inmates was opened at Laibach in Carniola and another at Wisnicz to accommodate four hundred. In April, 1872, the system of solitary confinement was partially introduced, but the progressive principle of prison treatment was kept steadily in view. After a period of cellular confinement, prisoners lived and laboured in association, care being taken to separate the worst from the less hardened offenders. Juveniles were segregated and, of course, the women, the whole number falling into three principal divisions,—the first offenders, the possibly curable and the hopeless, habitual criminals.
A prominent feature in the modern administration of these institutions has been the employment of prisoners approaching the time of their release in a state of semi-liberty, at a distance from any permanently established prison. The first experiment was made in 1886, when a party was sent to improve the bed of a river in Upper Carinthia. They went from the Laibach prison and were followed by reinforcements in the following year. Similar public works were undertaken in 1888-9 in Upper Carniola, Carinthia, Upper Styria and Galicia, for the construction of canals and roads and the opening up of rivers. In some cases the prisoners took with them a portable shed-barrack, in others they built huts in the neighbourhood of their works. The labour performed was cheap and effective, the discipline maintained excellent, and the prisoners are said to have much benefited, morally and physically, by the trust reposed in them and by the healthfulness of their daily occupations. The building of the reformatory at Aszod was undertaken by convicts, a number of whom, to the great alarm of the villagers, arrived on the newly bought lands, where they lodged in huts without bolts or bars. Their conduct, however, was exemplary. It has been claimed, not without reason, that this method of employing prisoners has been most successful.
A large operation was undertaken in the district of Pest-Pilis-Solt, where the torrential river Galga does considerable damage at flood time. Owing to the demands of harvest and agricultural works, free labour was not to be had in the summer, when alone the river was low enough to admit of interference, and the local authorities having two large prisons within easy access sought for a concession of prison labour. It was granted, and two sets of prisoners commenced at either end of the river valley. These were specially selected men; they encamped at the places where they were busy, being supplied with canvas tents by the military authorities; they ministered to their own needs and cooked their own food, which was brought in the raw state from the neighbouring prison. Excellent results followed their employment for three consecutive years. Not only was a work of great public utility completed, but the prisoners conducted themselves in the most exemplary manner. Although they were held under no restraint in the midst of a free population, there was not a single attempt at escape during the entire three years; there was no misconduct, and discipline was easily maintained by the mere threat of relegation to the prison. The prison administration has in consequence decided that it is now unnecessary to construct special intermediate prisons; places where men, as in the old Irish farm of Lusk, might be suffered to go half free while proving their fitness for complete liberty.
Three new prisons were built in Austria-Hungary during the latter years of the nineteenth century, all of them imposing edifices. One of these is at Marburg on the Drave and holds eight hundred prisoners, partly in cells, partly in association; another is at Stanislau in Galicia for the same number, which has but few cells, as separate confinement is not suited to the agricultural classes constituting the inmates of the prison. The farm land and gardens surrounding are extensive and the work done is mainly agricultural. A third prison is at Pankraz Nusle near Prague and stands on a height behind the celebrated Wyschehrad. The prison can accommodate one thousand inmates and has replaced the old building at St. Wenzel. A portion of the building at Marburg was carried out by convicts. Till these new prisons were built, that at Pilsen was considered the best in Austria. Another at Stein on the Danube, between Linz and Vienna, holds about one thousand prisoners sentenced to a year and upwards, and is organised on a very sound and intelligent basis. The discipline at Stein, according to the reports of competent visitors, is very creditable. It is claimed for it that the daily average on the punishment list is only nine and that there has not been a sign of a mutiny in sixteen years. Corporal punishment does not exist, but the methods by which order is maintained seem harsh and afford another proof that the abolition of the lash calls for other penalties which are physically more injurious and morally quite as debasing. A writer in the Times in 1886 gives a description of a prisoner whom he saw who had been sentenced to a month in a punishment cell for destroying materials entrusted to him for manufacture. He was to spend twelve days in darkness on bread and water; twelve days absolutely fasting, with only water to drink; to have no work, to sleep on a plank bed, and for four whole days was to wear a chain and shot on his ankles. Finally, for the last eighteen hours of his punishment he was to be “short-chained”—a torture which consists in “strapping up one foot at right angles to the knee of the other leg, so that the prisoner cannot stand but can only sit in a posture which after a few minutes becomes intolerably fatiguing, and then acutely painful.”
Strait-waistcoats are also used for the refractory, and a very effective but cruel gag,—an iron hoop with a brass knob like a door handle. The knob is forced into the mouth and the hoop passed over and locked behind the head.