Woman in Prison

by Caroline H. Woods

"We are used to seeing them, and they don't look to us as they do to you."

"Does that make them any more comfortable for the prisoners? Do they get used to them so as to be comfortable?"

"I presume so. I know they are more comfortable places than some had before they came here."

"Then it should be the work of the vaunting Christianity of this religious land to raise such degradation to cleanliness, comfort, and respectability."

"There might be a great deal done in that direction if people were only disposed to do it."

"Our prisons are rather private affairs, I believe. They can only be visited on certain days and occasions."

"It would be very inconvenient for our work to have people running in, and over the place at all times. We could not have it. And it wouldn't be liked by the prisoners to be gazed at constantly."

I made no reply; but I thought it might have a salutary effect upon the discipline of the prison, which he had just said I might think cruel, to be exposed to the observation of the public. The prisoners must have lost the sensibility which would shrink from being made a spectacle before they came in there. If visiting were allowed only on certain days and occasions, the place and the convicts would be put in order for company, and a very incorrect idea of the every-day life of the prisoners would be obtained.

If there were liberty to visit the place, every day, many might go from curiosity, and it might become annoying. That very curiosity might discover and discuss faults in the management, which ought to be remedied, and thus produce a counterbalancing benefit.

The officers might dislike such scrutiny, especially, if they were not doing their duty. They are officers of the government. Is it not proper that their conduct should be looked after by the people as much as that of any other government official?