Attempts are made to influence and direct such women as have no friends, by placing them in homes. No doubt the inmates are much better there than they would be if turned on the streets or living in common lodging-houses; but they do not commend themselves to those whom it is sought to rescue; for the majority of them will say quite frankly that it is “not good enough.” They prefer to struggle along as best they may rather than submit to the life offered them. It always appears ungracious to criticise the work of those who are earnestly engaged in trying to help others, but it is fair that the view of those they seek to help should be presented. Their view may be a wrong one, but until it is altered it will affect their conduct; and it cannot be too emphatically insisted on that the opinions of those whom we seek to help should be considered, and when possible acted upon, if it is hoped to render effective aid. The first objection a girl makes to entering a rescue home is that she must bind herself to remain there for a prolonged period. She does not regard the home as a desirable place of residence, but as a step towards restoration to a decent position in the community. She objects to give her work for twelve months, say, getting no other pay than her board, clothing, and lodging, unless she remains in the institution for that time. She claims that she might as well be in prison. The girl is not concerned with the question whether the home pays others or not; she is concerned with the fact that it does not pay her.
Loss of reputation hinders a girl from getting a situation, even when she is willing to drop her way of living and revert to steady work. People who pay well quite naturally prefer not to make an experiment and seek to have their money’s worth, which implies not only an efficient, but a steady and reliable worker. The situations open to the penitent, therefore, are those which are worst paid. When she gains a character she may obtain more remunerative occupation elsewhere. She recognises that on account of her bad reputation she has to do more work for less money, but she does not so readily admit that it is just that it should be so. She thinks that it is one thing for an ordinary person to take advantage of her needs and to underpay her, while it is quite another thing for a Christian institution to keep her working for insufficient wages. In the home she has as hard work and almost as little liberty as she would have were she in prison. Her associates are girls like herself, with whom she can converse on a basis of equality and discourse on life from a similar standpoint. On the other hand, she is preached to, patronised by visitors, entertained in a very proper manner, and taught in a thousand indirect ways that she is different from them. If her associates do not help her to forget her past, neither do her teachers. They want to be kind, and try to be considerate; the effort is obvious. In a gentle way they may tell the girls what they think of them and how much need there is for their reformation, and they do not seem to see that they would come more closely in contact with those they seek to help if they would assume the things they express by word and attitude, and try to draw the girls out. The defect in the teacher is too often a habit of talking at his pupils. The girls are there to learn; the visitors to teach. Are they? What do the girls learn, and what do the visitors teach? That we are all sinners and our position a perilous one; that some of us have been found out and that the penalty should be accepted humbly as being for our good, and so on. If the formula is somewhat stereotyped that is not my fault. The girls who appear to submit most patiently are naturally regarded as most hopeful. What they think about it all does not appear to be considered of much importance. They are wrong or they would not be there; and yet a girl may make a mess of her life in one direction, and be none the less qualified to give a shrewd and useful opinion on the causes of her failure. If those who seek to teach them had less faith in their own doctrine and more desire to learn, they would become less ignorant and would teach to better purpose. Here and there some know this, and acting on the knowledge, are more successful than others who are equally pious, equally well-intentioned, but less well-informed.
One quite recognises that it cannot be charged against the majority of these institutions that they make money by the girls. They are often carried on at a financial loss, for the cost is considerable; but reformatory work cannot be conducted on a commercial basis. It is in the nature of things that it should not pay its way in the narrow sense. The cost of adequate supervision prevents this. But to charge the cost of attempts at their reformation to the girls is to inflict at least an apparent injustice on them that is apt to rankle in their minds, and to drive away a number who would otherwise be helped—helped at a pecuniary loss to the home, but at a great benefit to the community. After all, they are earning their own living by their work. What they fail to do is to earn a living for those who govern them. In exchange for their work they are not permitted to spend their earnings as they please, but as it pleases those who have undertaken to look after them. There may be something to be said for the opinion that if one set of persons seek to direct the lives of another they should be prepared to pay for the privilege; but this subject of charity is one that needs examination. Some people have very quaint ideas regarding it. I remember a decent woman who rather prided herself on her goodness. Her husband had a small business, and she occasionally requisitioned the services of his younger apprentices for assistance at cleaning time. On such an afternoon a newsboy coming to the door, she got a Citizen from him, gave him a penny, and received back the halfpenny of change. When he had gone she remarked to one of the apprentices—a boy with a genius for saying the right thing in the wrong place—“Puir boy, I just take the paper from him for charity.” To which he replied, “Aye, but ye took the halfpenny back!” There was something to be said for both views, but the boy had the last word, and he soon found that his criticism had borne fruit; he was dismissed.
In the home there is more of a religious atmosphere and less mechanical routine than in prison; but the religious atmosphere is as much objected to by many of the girls as the mechanical routine. Both may be good for them from the standpoint of the theorist, but neither seems to result in the effect desired. In the prison there are fewer lectures and fewer visits to the inmates than in the home, and the life is more monotonous, but in the prison there is less opportunity for contamination. In both places the old and degraded, the young and the ignorant, may be confined, but in the prison they are separated.
It is quite a mistake to imagine that the vice and degradation—that the state of morals—of a person can be estimated by her age and the number of her convictions. The old hand need not be so morally corrupt as the younger, though her experiences may have been more numerous and varied. A common statement of those who have been inmates of homes is that what they did not know when they went in they learned before they came out, and certainly they have opportunities of communicating their experiences and relating their adventures while they are in a home that they do not have while they are in prison. This is a thing that cannot be prevented so long as people live together. That many have been restored after passing through the homes is undoubtedly the case, but it does not follow that their restoration was due to their experience there. That many have not been improved, but have been the worse for their residence there, is not at all to be wondered at. Where a religious atmosphere has affected them favourably the disadvantages inherent to the establishment have been overcome. Where it has failed to effect a change in them for good the other associations tend to confirm them in evil.
What effect, then, has imprisonment on those who undergo it? It usually improves their health physically, but impairs their mental capacity. The simple life favours the former; separation and destruction of the sense of initiative favour the latter. Many do not return after a first experience, and it is assumed that they have been deterred from wrongdoing by it; but there is absolutely no ground for this assumption. It may be justified in some cases, but in others there is no reason to suppose that the offender would have repeated his offence, even though he had never been sent to prison for it. Imperfectly as probation of offenders is worked, it has shown this. Indeed, the very imperfection of the method has shown it the more strongly, for so far from the offender having been taken away from the conditions which incited him to commit his transgression, he has been sent back to them, and in many cases has not again offended.
It is not right to make assumptions when there is opportunity of examining the facts; and no enquiry has been made as to the effect of imprisonment in deterring those who have been in prison and have not returned for repeating their offence. A great many do return, and that is positive evidence that their imprisonment has not had a deterrent effect on them. Why do they return? In some cases they have found that prison is not such a horrible place after all, and that though the confinement is irksome the time passes; and at the expiry of their sentence they may do what they like. Many of them have to work hard and long to earn a living when outside, and they learn that they can pick up a living at less cost and have a better time, if they take the risk of being shut up now and again. They have been cut off from their habits, which may not have been a bad thing, and have acquired other habits which do not help them when they are liberated. They have been officially marked with disgrace, and to that extent rendered less able to secure employment and good company. They have been taught to be respectful and obedient, but they have lost, in a corresponding degree to their improvement in manners, their power to act for themselves. In some respects they are better, in others worse, than they were when they were taken in hand; and on the balance there is a distinct loss. Recent attempts at reformation have not taken into account the root causes of failure, and they fail to recognise that the longer a person is cut off from the main current of life in the community the less he is fitted to return to it.