Recollections of home, and repentance for the hasty act which separated them from it, and many other reasons, both real and imaginary, make them feel that they must escape from contact with the source of so many woes, and without designing to commit any crime they become “deserters.” It must be admitted that the responsibility rests upon the individual as the cause is primarily in him, and his surrounding circumstances are only secondary, but there is no act called “crime” around which so many mitigating circumstances may be found. We must view the matter as a disease, the conditions for which are favorable in a service into which men are hurried without any instruction in its duties. The skeleton army, of which so much is required, demands the rapid replenishing of new flesh to take the place of the old that has yielded to the disease itself. The important question to follow is, what is the remedy and how is it applied? A preventive has been sought with care and diligence, but none has been found. A remedy then is the only recourse, and this must be applied in the shape of discipline or punishment for the offender. If he is of an inquiring turn of mind he may learn first of all that there is an exact measure of value attached to him as a deserter, and that for his capture and delivery to the military authorities the sum of thirty dollars will be paid in full liquidation of the service.
A few words concerning the instrumentalities through which the “military prisoner” receives his punishment will not be out of place. There are three—more correctly four—kinds of tribunals before which a soldier may be brought to answer for his misdeeds, and to receive judgment and sentence. The first to be mentioned is the “field officer’s court,” which can be appointed only in time of war. This court is one officer, either a colonel, lieutenant-colonel, or major of a regiment, who is detailed by order of a superior officer of the same regiment, or the commander of a brigade, division or corps. The officer so detailed is counsel, jury and judge, and may try the case of any soldier of his own regiment for an offense not capital, and impose sentence. The next in order are the “regimental” and the “garrison” court-martial, differing so little except in the source of appointment, that they need no separate description. They are composed of three officers, and may try and sentence any cases not capital. The authority of these courts with respect to the sentences they may impose is so limited that ordinarily only petty offenses are brought before them, but because of the form of punishment usually imposed the results are anything but beneficial, and it is a question whether it would not be better to wink at the offense than to sensibly degrade the offender and aid him in developing a disposition to repeat breaches of discipline until stronger hands are laid upon him. The last to be mentioned is the “general court-martial,” the appointment of which may be made by the general commanding the army, by the general commanding a military department, or in certain cases by the President of the United States.
The system of the military courts which have been mentioned is no doubt as carefully arranged as can be and contemplates as full recognition of the individual rights of the soldier as can be obtained before a civil court under civil law for a civilian. The selection of the officers to compose the courts is a matter of discretion in the authority appointing them, governed only by the exigencies of the service, but after their appointment they are under no restrictions with reference to the extent of the sentences which they shall impose in the cases of soldiers whom they find guilty of desertion, except that in time of peace the death penalty can not be inflicted, and in nearly all other cases the law declares that the punishment shall be such “as a court-martial may direct.” The result of this has been and still is a variation in the degrees of punishment for the same offense which defies any calculation outside the theory of chances. None can foresee or measure the considerations or influences which shall give to any case, the circumstances of which can not be just like those of an other case, its quality or quantity of punishment. Probably the disposition to administer severe discipline with the expectation that a pruning by the reviewing authority and a mitigation by the executive authority will most likely follow, is the most common cause of inequality in punishments. The remedy for the evil in the law which fixes no limit must be sought in other legislation, but the possibility of a remedy in a special prison system, and a separate prison for military prisoners drew attention to the duty of providing an institution where inequalities might be removed.
June 30, 1871, a board of officers was appointed of the Secretary of War to investigate the subject of army prisons. The report of this board was transmitted to Congress by the honorable Secretary of War January 16, 1872, with a draft of a bill for consideration. The closing sentence of the letter of transmittal reads as follows: “It is of the utmost importance to the efficiency of our army that a thorough and practical system of punishment and military discipline be established, and experience has proven that the one now in use is wholly inadequate to meet the end desired.” After due consideration the Committee on Military Affairs of the House of Representatives made a favorable report to the House May 7, 1872, in which, after mentioning certain facts concerning 384 military prisoners then distributed in the penitentiaries of eleven states, and the guard-houses of thirty-two military posts, these words occur: “Many of these prisoners have been guilty of crimes against military law, and not involving any moral turpitude. They are cast into prison with the basest characters and punished with ‘those stained by every crime known to the law.’ Your committee feel convinced that this can not be done without injury to the prisoner whose offense may have been affected with but slight moral obliquity. To prevent this unnecessary contamination we think a separate prison should be provided.” This was followed within a year by the passage of an act which was approved by the President and became a law March 3, 1873, “to provide for the establishment of a military prison, and for its government.”
The law required that the prison should be established on Rock Island, Illinois, an island in the Mississippi of about 1,000 acres, and about 180 miles west of Chicago. It is now entirely devoted to the purposes of an extensive government arsenal. It also required the appointment of a board of commissioners, to consist of three officers of the army and two persons from civil life,[B] who were to adopt a plan for a prison building and to frame regulations for the prison. Its provisions required frequent inspections—twice each year by the Secretary of War and the board of commissioners, and four times a year by one of the inspectors of the army (monthly inspections are also made by the principal medical officer in the Department of the Missouri), all of which were intended to be, and are, so many safeguards against any neglect or failure in the proper and humane treatment of the prisoners. The law also provided for mitigations of sentence for good conduct and industry, for the care of the health and physical wants of prisoners. It gave the privilege of using newspapers and books, and of writing letters to friends, and directed that they be furnished decent clothing on discharge from the prison. The location was afterward changed from Rock Island, Illinois, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. This change was authorized by an act of Congress approved May 21, 1874, which placed the prison where it is now situated, on the west bank of the Missouri river, about thirty miles north of Kansas City, Mo., and three miles from the city of Leavenworth, Kansas.
To trace the history of the prison through the first decade of its existence would be more tedious than interesting. Its progress has been similar to that of all other new institutions of this country which are destined to become permanent. The obstacles in the way of its establishment have not been trifling, and amongst those whose duties brought them to take part in its affairs, not all have been favorable to the system undertaken, particularly with reference to the idea of utilizing the labor of the prisoners for the benefit of the army. Prudence and zeal on the part of the commissioners of the prison and the commandant have overcome all difficulties, and if there are to-day any remaining objections of the kind indicated, they are not proclaimed.
The officers of the prison are a commandant, an executive, an adjutant, a commissary, a chaplain, and a surgeon. The guard comprises two officers and one hundred men. Within an enclosure of about five acres, surrounded by a stone wall averaging in height about 18 feet, surmounted at intervals of from two hundred to three hundred feet with brick watch towers, are located the offices, the hospital, the chapel, the library, the dormitories, the workshops and the store-houses of the prison. The buildings, except the hospital, are of stone or brick, and upon all of the new buildings, as well as the wall, the work has been done by prisoners.
The great features of the institution are quiet and decorum under a kind but absolutely firm administration. Its chief object is the reformation of its inmates, to which end the efforts of the authorities are constantly directed.
The labor of the prisoners is devoted to the manufacture of wagons, harness, shoes, boots, clothing, chairs, brooms and brushes, solely for army supplies and prison uses; to the manufacture of doors and windows and their frames, and to the cultivation of a large farm to obtain produce for the prison; also to the incidental work connected with the prison in its buildings and repairs and sanitary condition. During the eight working hours of each day except Sundays and holidays the hum of machinery and the arrival of material and departure of manufactured articles give the place the appearance of a large manufactory, and a tour through the busy workshops may be made with scarcely a sight of anything in dress or appearance to tell of the character of the place as a penal institution. The greater number of prisoners being under sentence for terms of two years (the sentences are equalized as far as possible by executive orders, after the arrival of the men at the prison), the system under which they are brought gives them knowledge in some mechanical pursuit, trains them in habits of cleanliness, regularity, and sobriety, and subjects them to wholesome discipline which, in that length of time, must work a “correction of life and manners” as far as any human rule can govern the matter. A Christian minister fills the office of chaplain and devotes his entire time to the secular and religious instruction of the prisoners. A library of 1,300 volumes is open to the use of the prisoners, from which they obtain books for reading in leisure hours. As an indication of their tastes the kind of books read may be divided by the hundred into—light literature 56, magazines 25, biography 6, history 4, miscellany 4, travels and science each 3, religious 2.
Since the establishment of the prison more than thirty-two hundred men have been received, and the average number constantly present is five hundred. An abatement of five days for each month of good conduct is allowed, and only thirty-seven have failed to obtain their liberty prior to the expiration of their full terms. Only twenty-two deaths have occurred, showing that even under the disadvantages always present in prisons, and with the class of men found there, it is possible to reduce the ill effects of prison life upon the physical system to almost nothing. Punishment for bad conduct in the prison is in harmony with the purposes of the prison, and in most cases the abatement above mentioned forms a credit account against which the prisoners are careful not to permit debits to be entered. On discharge from prison each prisoner receives a suit of clothing and five dollars, and, if his conduct has been good, a certificate which may enable him again to enter the service as a soldier, if he so desires.