The Criminal & the Community

by James Devon

Each prison has its punishment cells—places for the incarceration of unruly prisoners. Under rational management there is no use for them except temporarily, and then only to prevent the prisoner from injuring himself or others, or from annoying other prisoners by noise, in a fit of temper suggestive of insanity.

It is one of the Chaplain’s duties to visit the prisoners, and although it is intended that he should minister to them spiritual consolation, that term may mean anything in practice. A man, whether a clergyman or not, who puts himself in a position of censor of morals to his fellows, is not regarded by them with any degree of affection or respect, unless he does not stop there. Few people like to be talked down to, whether they are in prison or out of it. A superior attitude adopted towards some is more likely to draw out their evil qualities, and to excite them to bad temper and wrath, than to help them. I do not think Prison Chaplains in Scotland, whether belonging to one denomination or another, are given to the practice of assuming that with those whom they address necessarily lies all the blame for their position. There is more a disposition to pity than to blame, although an attitude of pity is sometimes a greater insult than one of censure and may irritate as deeply.

There has been a growing disposition to say kind things to and of prisoners. We may believe that more can be done by the kind look than by the harsh word, and lose sight of the fact that pity and sympathy are two quite different things. The fact of the matter is that nobody is able to assess justly the amount of blame to be attached to a man for his misdeeds, and the amount to be placed to the discredit of society; but in few cases is anyone helped by being encouraged to believe that he is free from blame, that he could not do any better than he has done.

Prisoners are not different from others in their tendency to put the best construction on their own behaviour. An astonishing number are in jail because they had bad neighbours. According to their statements, they could get along all right if it were not for the people next door. It may be quite true to some extent, but they are not to be helped in mending their own conduct by attention to the faults of their neighbours. I do not suggest that this attitude on their part, this disposition to prove how comparatively stainless they are and how objectionable are those with whom they have been brought in contact, is due to the ministrations of the clergy, but merely that it affects their estimate of the ministers of religion.

The attitude of the prisoner towards the minister is one thing; his attitude towards the doctor, for instance, is quite another. The Chaplain desires to be regarded as a friend of the prisoner, and that by many he is so regarded there can be no doubt; but unfortunately, with some of them, they seem to measure friendship by their ability to humbug the friend, and the value of the clergyman by what they can put into him which may tell in their favour when he estimates their character, and by what they can get out of him in the way of material help. The Chaplain is sometimes swindled, but so are we all; his office and his message make him a mark for the shafts of the wicked. He sees one side of the prisoner better than any other official, and if he has counterfeit penitents he has also real ones. His visits may be a source of encouragement and strength to the prisoner; but whatever spiritual effect his teaching may have—whether it be great or little—if he has a human interest in those he visits, in so far as his character commands respect his ministrations tend to prevent the prisoner from sinking under the monotony of the discipline to which he is subjected.

Representatives of various religious agencies visit prisoners. They are remarkable for their earnestness and zeal, but there is often a fatal difference of standpoint between visitor and visited. A girl brought up in a slum, seeing and hearing sights and sounds which are an outrage on decency; working for long hours to earn a scanty living; housed rather worse than many horses and dogs; ill-taught and ill-cared for; has transgressed the law and been sent to prison. She knows she is to blame for doing the thing she has done in the way she has done it, but she and those like her regard her imprisonment as in some degree an accident. It is difficult to describe the standpoint. In a busy street where there is a constant stream of horses and mechanical traffic going in different directions and at different rates of speed, there is always danger to the passenger who seeks to cross; and occasionally someone is run down and hurt. The injured party is always to blame to some extent, and is hurt because he has failed to estimate the danger accurately and to avoid it successfully; but others may be to blame also. The fault is never wholly on one side. To the girl the law resembles the traffic in the street; and when she is knocked down she and her friends regard her as the victim of misfortune.

That is not the standpoint of the visitor. She may have known nothing of the trials and temptations of the poor, save what she has seen from the outside. Hunger has never been her attendant; poverty has been unknown to her. She has received attention and care in her early days; has not been tasked beyond her strength; has been able to choose her own work and do it in her own time; has been well housed and well fed; and has found it easy to obey the law. Between the two a great gulf is fixed. Their outlook is as different as their experience.

It is a great mistake to assume that the rich know more of the poor than the poor know of the rich. The street-corner spouter may denounce the luxury of the wealthy and expose himself to their ridicule. They know that they are not as he paints them, and they laugh or sneer at his ignorance; but they are as little qualified to judge him as he is to judge them. Each sees the other’s vices; and every visitor is as much a subject of criticism by the prisoner as a critic.

It is as unreasonable to expect that a woman in prison will give her confidence to a stranger who visits her, as it would be for the prisoner to expect that the visitor would submit to her questions. One thing is absolutely certain, and that is that visitors do not do the good they imagine they are doing when they pass from one cell to another exhorting the prisoners to better behaviour. They stir up the emotions of those to whom they minister, and some of the women find great consolation and relief in a good cry. There are those, however, who have learned to distrust the possibility of wholesale reform of prisoners, and who single out some one whom it seems possible to help and hang on to her, visit and encourage her on her liberation, and have their reward in the consciousness that they have really rendered effective assistance where it was needed.

The ideal held up by the visitors in their advice to prisoners too often seems impossible of attainment by those to whom it is presented. There are some who have no ambition to live within the law, but there are many who would rather do so if they could. Most of us have not in us the capacity to become great saints; and to ask the ordinary person to conform to a standard which would present difficulties to us, does not seem reasonable. Something is gained if, though you fail to persuade a person to be good, you can induce him to be better than he has been. Just as many have drifted into evil courses step by step, they may be led into a better way of living by degrees. Sudden conversions are not uncommon, but they are not the rule. The visits to prisoners on the part of people from outside are of great benefit; anything is that breaks the monotony of the day; and if the visitors are receptive they may learn a good deal from the prisoners, and may be made the better for their visit even though they fail to make the impression they desire on those to whom they have spoken.