Will the warden have any higher duty to perform than to face his delinquent delinquents and to order in merciful severity, rational punishments for their short-comings?
But a warden's disciplinary powers are apt to be taxed more severely in another direction. The great problem ordinarily, is not so much the discipline of convicts as that of subordinate officers. If subordinate officers will obey the spirit and the letter of the rules, the convict has the potential influence of a powerful example to aid him. "Like master like man."
In institutions where officers are appointed solely with reference to their fitness, comparatively little trouble should be had in the matter of proper official discipline. But where places are given to heelers, ward-workers and political strikers, the matter of efficient discipline is a question of grave concern to the warden. In the absence of better material, however, he must address himself to organizing what he has to the highest efficiency possible, and insist and require a rigid regimen and adhere to his demands and requirements with Spartan firmness.
THE PRISON SCHOOL.
The educational work of a prison is of the highest, I may say, of the first importance. The education of the hands to work comes naturally, partly as an incident of the necessary work carried on in prison.
Nearly all convicts are densely ignorant. The polished, scholarly, shrewd criminal of whom we hear so much, and to whom the papers and books give so much prominence, is the exception, not the rule, in prison.
If the prison is to have a reformatory feature, it must come very largely through the school. Many prison schools are such only in name. The work accomplished is very meager. The results are very unsatisfactory.
To no part of prison work should a warden address himself with more ardor and determination than so to organize the prison school as to make it the great positive factor in dispelling ignorance and its attendant viciousness, and in quickening and enlivening the moral sense in those whose moral judgment is exceedingly obtuse.
The course of study in a prison school is necessarily a very elementary one, and unless followed by a supplementary course of reading and study, will be of little permanent and practical benefit. Many prison libraries, largely the result of indiscriminate and heterogeneous donations of all kinds of literature, good, bad and indifferent, chiefly the latter, are not in a position to be a positive force.
Let the warden see that his library is so arranged, classified and used as to be a source of information, profit, help and pleasure to the inmates, and that a course of reading along rational lines is laid out, encouraged, and, if possible, adhered to, in order that the preliminary school course may not have been in vain.