Two great innovations in regard to prisons, as M. Tarde observes, have been made or developed within the past century, which are not yet adopted in every country: penal colonies, whereof transportation is only a factor, and the prison cell. The cell has assumed a leading position since it was brought over from America to Europe, where, however, the cellular prisons of St. Michael at Rome, and of Gand, had preceded it.
The cellular system, a product of the reaction against the enormous physical and moral putrefaction of the inmates of common prisons and labour establishments, may have had, and doubtless still has many advocates, amongst other reasons for the spirit of pietism and religious penitence which always goes with it; but it is open to strong criticism.
There has already been, amongst the same prison <p 257>experts, a certain retrogressive movement in regard to isolation. Absolute and continued isolation, indeed, both by day and by night (``solitary confinement'') was at first recommended, even to the introduction, grotesque in spite of good intentions, of hoods and masks for the prisoners, a medi<ae>val reminiscence almost parallel with the Brothers of Pity in some Italian towns, for help to the wounded. Presently it was seen that this sort of thing certainly could not assist in the amendment of the guilty, and then isolation was relaxed (still making it applicable both by day and by night) with visits to prisoners by the chaplain, governors, and representatives of vigilance and prisoners' aid societies. This is called ``separate confinement.'' After this it was recognised that the real need for isolation was at night, and then the Auburn system was arrived at: isolation in cells by night, with daily labour in common, with an obligation (which cannot be enforced) of silence. And finally, seeing that in spite of the threefold panacea of every prison system (isolation, work, and instruction, especially religious instruction) relapses still increased, it was understood that it might not be very useful to subject a man for months or years to the monastic life of Trappist brothers, in these monstrous human hives (which Bentham brought to the notice of the French Constituent Assembly under the name of ``panopticons''), and to discharge him from prison at the end of his term, and plunge him into all the temptations of an atmosphere to which his lungs had become disaccustomed.
Then the ``progressive system'' was introduced, <p 258>first in England, where it was devised by Maconochie, next in Ireland, which has given it a name, alternated with that of Sir W. Crofton. This is the most symmetrically perfect machinery, though reminding one somewhat of a company of marionettes. It confirms what was said by Haeckel, that the actual is a summary of the moods of aspiration, for it precisely sums up the systems which preceded it, each of which constitutes a phase of the progressive system. There is first of all a period of brotherly charity—absolute isolation for the prisoner to fall back upon his conscience, or to listen to the voice of remorse, or to receive an impression of devotion and fear. After this comes the Auburnian phase, of isolation by night and labour (when labour is accorded) by day, with the constraint of silence. Then an intermediary period in the agricultural colony or labour-gang outside the prison, like a period of convalescence, to accustom the lungs to the keen air of liberty. This is the phase added by Sir W. Crofton to the English system. Lastly comes the period of conditional release (on ticket of leave), whereby the last portion of the punishment is remitted, and will count as expiated if during the time of liberation, and for a succeeding period, the convict does not commit another crime.
The progressive or retrogressive passage from one phase to another is made by a sort of automatic regulator, depending on the number of marks gained or lost by the prisoner through his good or bad behaviour, to which we know the moral or psychological value to be attached—a value purely negative. <p 259>
This progressive, gradual, or Irish system has obtained a supremacy in Europe, so that even Belgium, the classic land of the cellular system, reconsidered the ideas which it had based on daily experience, and was the first continental country to introduce conditional sentences (in 1888), which are the fruit of short sentences and cellular punishments.
I do not deny that this progressive system is better than the others, though we must not forget that the almost miraculous effects of amendment and decrease of recidivism (which indeed are claimed for every new system, only to be disproved later on) were due in Ireland to the wholesale emigration of those conditionally released to North America—an emigration amounting to 46 per cent. of the prisoners released. Nor must we forget that this system, which requires a trained staff of officers, is less difficult to work in countries where, as in Ireland, there are only a few hundred prisoners; but it would be much more difficult in Italy or France, where the prisoners are numbered by tens of thousands. In these countries, accordingly, the system will not be practical unless the principle of classifying prisoners in biological and psychological categories is conjoined with it; for without this we shall not get rid of the impersonal system which is the vice of our present penal law, and under which, even in our prison administration, we treat the prisoner as a mere symbol, to which we can apply the three conventional rules of the cell, hard labour, and instruction.
But I am strongly opposed to, or accept simply as <p 260>accessory (even for the seclusion of prisoners before trial, after the preliminary examination), cellular isolation by itself, which has reached the height of absurdity and inhumanity in cases of imprisonment for life.
As Mancini said in 1876, discussing the draft of the Italian penal code, ``the punishment of hard labour for life, which is substituted in the draft for the capital sentence, differs substantially in its severity of privation and misery from all other modes of imprisonment. It must be undergone in one or two special prisons to be erected within the country. It would be the saddest and most terrible thing which the imagination of man could conceive. These tombs of the living, whom society has rejected for ever, unlike all other prisons, will condemn their inmates to continuous solitary immurement in cells, and to a life which may be worse than death itself. . . . This most wretched condition, which the free man cannot realise without horror, is to last ten years; and it is not to be in the power of man to bring it to an end sooner, if the prisoner, broken down by physical weakness, or threatened by loss of reason, cannot endure it any longer.''
After this description, I am not sorry that I denounced the cellular system as one of the madnesses of the nineteenth century.