Society has to compass the task of making men good from the beginning; and in exceptional cases, where the task is impossible, the victims are simply society’s patients, to be impounded without hurt. We are as able to protect our social life from moral as from mental lunatics. The initial step, however (hardly yet taken), is to pass from the mental attitude of a barbarous race, whose habits of defence are those of arbitrary punishment, to that of a civilized nation bent on reforming its criminals, and treating its morally diseased members with uniform humanity and brotherly love. As yet the resources of man’s reason and scientific knowledge and aptitude have never been called into play to devise a system of consecutive restraints on the “brutal elements,” a system to make men good from the beginning by “working out the beast.”
The crux of the problem is how to imbue children painlessly with the truth that social life has responsibilities and limitations, obedience to which is indispensable. And I submit that this may be done in the homes and nurseries of the future, under a scientifically adapted system of training. Hard blows and even chiding tones of the human voice must have no place in childhood’s environment, but authority may be exercised through the use of a simple appliance for limiting infant freedom. When baby trespasses against some natural law of health or social life, of which he knows nothing, he is gently but promptly and firmly placed in a baby-prison standing within reach, viz. a goodly-sized basket, high at the sides, softly cushioned all round and weighted, so that it cannot be overturned by the infant culprit, who, if refractory, may kick or scream in safety there till the paroxysm passes, and he falls asleep. On waking he recalls vaguely, when older, more clearly the occurrence, and he becomes lightly possessed by a subtle sense of authority quite distinct from individual kindness or unkindness. His human relations are unhurt by the necessary training in infancy. He has been checked in wrong-doing without any wrong association of ideas, and without an awakening of anti-social feeling.
I have seen an ignorant nurse teach a child to seek solace for pain in an anti-social emotion! “Beat the naughty chair that has hurt poor baby’s head,” was the evil counsel, and the child held out to the chair struck his tiny revengeful blows, and was kissed and caressed in consequence. This happened in a rich man’s nursery. Could one blame the ignorant nurse? Her infancy was passed in a city slum, and in every such locality children swarm who freely strike out both in self-protection and brutal aggressiveness. From birth these little ones live more or less in an atmosphere of savage assault. Tyranny and force are the ruling conditions of their childhood, and the natural result—under the unalterable law of cause and effect—is this: vindictive, barbaric feeling is carried hither and thither throughout society at large, and degrades every social class.
When home-life in the middle classes has been reorganized, and nursery training is the outcome of scientific thought, children there at least will escape this taint. They will pass from nursery to schoolroom with nerves that have never been unnecessarily jarred. They will be physically stronger, and in temperament more serene. Reared without harshness, they will know no craven fear; and since the native attitude of childhood towards elders never seen angry or cross is that of confiding love, teachers will have no difficulty in bringing into play the tender emotions that are natural checks upon evil doing, and natural incentives to effort in action that is right. If playfulness intrudes, and the serious work of a class is hindered by some little urchin’s fun, the master or mistress needs neither to scold nor to cane the offender, for unspoken satisfaction and dissatisfaction are quickly perceived and responded to by children unused to punishment or an elder’s frown.
But even in the schoolroom an appeal to mechanism may sometimes prove useful. An instrument called “a characterograph” was described by its inventor to an Edinburgh audience half a century ago. This instrument for registering had been in use in Lady Byron’s Agricultural School at Ealing Grove, with moral effects markedly beneficial. There were many comments in the press of that period. It supersedes all necessity for prizes, place-taking, or any kind of reward or punishment, and renders unnecessary the master’s expressing anger or irritation—“the worst example a teacher can set to his pupils.” (Mr. E. T. Craig was inventor of the characterograph.)
If we bear in mind that the supreme object of training is social solidarity, and that social solidarity rests fundamentally on tender relations between the old, the young, and the middle-aged, we shall recognize the wisdom of elders resigning at the earliest possible moment all manifestations of personal authority. The average boy and girl, if well trained, has at fifteen, or about that age, moral powers sufficiently developed to control innate propensities. At that epoch to the young themselves should be relegated the ruling of youthful conduct in the interests of society. Not to the young singly, however, but in their corporate capacity. The organizing of juvenile committees and conduct clubs will ensue. I need not, however, treat of these here. They belong to the subject of general education, and I am merely touching on training in its relations to specific crime.
The point in social science to emphasize is this: At every stage of the nation’s history its moral health or disease is the actual resultant of previous conditions of its child-life throughout the length and breadth of the land. At the present moment the public mind is astray on this subject. There is no understanding of the restraints necessary on infantile wrong-doing, the wholesome because painless checks to apply to juvenile delinquents. Science must guide us to the right path of action, society must enlist parental authority, or, if need be, coerce the child to take the indicated course. By the absence of wholesome checks and the presence of brutal conditions in childhood we suffer a vast amount of preventible crime. We evolve the criminal by sins of omission outside the prison; we brutalize him further inside the prison by undue, ill-adapted restraints.
Very significant was the experience of Mr. Obermair, of the State Prison in Munich. When appointed governor there, he found from six to seven hundred prisoners in the worst state of insubordination, and whose excesses he was told defied the harshest, most stringent discipline. The prisoners were chained together. The guard consisted of about 100 soldiers, who did duty not only at the gates and round the walls, but in the passages, and even in the workshops and dormitories; and, strangest of all, from twenty to thirty large dogs of the bloodhound breed were let loose at night in the passages and courts to keep watch and ward. The place was a perfect pandemonium, comprising the worst passions, the most slavish vices, and the most heartless tyranny within the limits of a few acres.
Mr. Obermair quickly dispensed with dogs, and nearly all the guards. He gradually relaxed the harsh system, and treated the prisoners with a consideration that gained their confidence. In the year 1852 Mr. Baillie Cochrane visited the prison, and his account is as follows: “The gates were wide open, without any sentinel at the door, and a guard of only twenty men idling away their time in a room off the entrance hall.... None of the doors were provided with bolts and bars; the only security was an ordinary lock, and as in most of the rooms the key was not turned, there was no obstacle to the men walking into the passage.... Over each workshop some of the prisoners with the best characters were appointed overseers, and Mr. Obermair assured me that when a prisoner transgressed a regulation, his companions told him ‘es ist verboten,’ and it rarely happened that he did not yield to the will of his fellow-prisoners. Within the prison walls every description of work is carried on ... each prisoner by occupation and industry maintains himself. The surplus of his earnings is given him on release, which avoids his being parted with in a state of destitution.” (This account is taken from Herbert Spencer’s Essay on Prison Ethics.) It is then clearly proved by actual experience that rough handling and brutal words—bolts and bars and bloodhounds—are alike unnecessary in the case of first offenders and in the case of the “desperate gang.”
But, turning once more from the criminal to the ultimate causes of crime, these are—destitution, or more or less grinding poverty, inherited disease, ignorance and all the degraded nurture that crushes the humanities and develops the brutalities of man. A scientific treatment of crime will eradicate these various causes of crime. No summary methods are applicable. There is no short cut to the end in view; but by patient perseverance in the scientific meliorism indicated in my chapters on Industrial Life, Sex Relations and Parentage, and to be further explained in those on Education and Home Life, the forces brought into play will prove effective in social redemption. They are essentially radical and all-embracing. Within reformatories and prisons there may be partially supplied the training for forming and reforming character that is nowhere present in the homes and schools of the lower classes to-day. Those criminals who are not structurally defective may recover moral health, and become virtuous or at least harmless social units. In all such cases liberty should be restored; but the State can never be justified in discharging its rescued criminals without resources and without protection. They must be supplied with work, i.e. some means of self-support, and guarded from dangers besetting the critical period of liberation. The educating of ignorant criminals, the reforming of corrigible criminals, the restraining from further crime of incurable criminals—these are duties of the State.