Need of Further Prison Reform
Many opinions have been written regarding prisons, but with few exceptions they are the observations of outsiders, which means, they must of necessity be to a certain extent superficial.
I have touched only a few spots of the great diseased system of prison management, but what public opinion did to ameliorate past abuses, public opinion can still do to improve the treatment of to-day’s criminal. A little over a hundred years ago there were thirty-four offenses in England punishable by capital punishment. To-day there is only one. Charles Dickens did more than any agency toward doing away with imprisonment for debt, yet last year there were no less than eleven thousand prisoners in confinement for debt in English prisons. How many of these have since joined the ranks of the criminals through loss of self-respect? What has been the effect upon their wives and families? Why is a man imprisoned for debt? Certainly not to enable him to pay it. He can earn nothing while in prison, where he is supported at the expense of the state; and if he has a wife or family, they either become dependent on the rates, or incur debts which he will have to pay on his release. Again, he may not improbably lose his employment, and have to look out for another when liberated, and his imprisonment does not make it more easy, either to procure work or to perform it efficiently. The ground of imprisonment is dishonesty. But is not actual dishonesty sufficiently met by the criminal law? In what sense is the debtor dishonest? Is it meant that he has money in his pocket and refuses to pay his debts? Is it not rather that he ought to have had money? It is proved perhaps that he is earning so much per week, possibly, but how long had he been earning and how long was he out of employment before that? Has he had sickness? There have been many instances where a man was in the hospital when the committal order was made, and was seized and carried off to prison immediately on discharge. If non-payment of a debt is not a crime, why is he in prison for it? If it is a crime, why has he not the benefit of a trial by jury on the ability or inability of paying his debts? And why should not the Home Office or other appellate tribunal have the power of revising his sentence? If the debtor has goods that can be seized, let them be seized; if there is money coming to him, let the creditor attach it; if it comes within the scope of the bankruptcy law, let him be adjudicated and examined on oath to every shilling that he has received or spent. But why, in the name of justice and humanity, treat him as a criminal, prevent him from earning his bread, and make him an incumbrance on the State, exposing his wife and daughter to ruin, degrading him, lowering his self-respect, and subjecting him to the taint of the prison atmosphere, without satisfactory evidence of his ability to pay at the time of committal? Several prisoners that I came in contact with were made criminals because their husbands had left their families destitute because imprisoned for debt.
CHAPTER TEN
My Release
I Learn the Time When My Sentence Will Terminate
After I had been incarcerated for a few years I found out that it was usual in the case of a life convict who has earned good marks to have her sentence brought up for consideration after she has served fifteen years. A life sentence usually means twenty years, and three months is taken off each year as a reward for good conduct. In February, 1903, I was definitely informed that my case would follow the ordinary course. I have been accused of obtaining my release by “trickery,” but these facts speak for themselves.
The impression has also been given by the press that great leniency was shown in my case, and that through the intervention of friends the Home Office released me before the expiration of my sentence. No exceptional leniency whatever was shown in my case. It depends upon the prisoner herself whether she is released at an earlier period or serves the full term of her sentence. By an unbroken record of good conduct I reduced my life sentence, which is twenty years, to fifteen years; this expired on the 25th of July, 1904.