The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

by John Josiah Munro

Capital punishment as it is practised at the present time is in our opinion simply a relic of barbarous times. No one on this planet is authorized to take away life. God gave it, and He is the only One that can take it away. And no matter what kind of punishment may be meted out to the homicide, the worst and most foolish thing that can be done to him is to put him to death. It matters little what a man’s crime is, if he is to be reformed, he should have a future hope held out to him, and he should realize it, provided he can show by his life that he is worthy of it.

While it is true civilization has been in the forward march the past three hundred years, crime has been slowly and perceptibly on the increase; that is to say, crime has been growing faster than the population. The fact that so many jails and reformatories are being erected in all the States and Territories is evidence enough to substantiate that statement. Statistics show that the growth of population in this country has maintained a steady increase since 1850, with an average perhaps of about thirty per cent. each decade, while the criminal increase during these same periods will average eighty per cent., or nearly three times as large as the increase in population.

In former years the methods in vogue for reforming men and women behind the bars were the stocks, the dark cell or dungeon, the whipping-post and the tread-mill, nearly all of which have been abolished during the past century, and more humane methods have been used, we are glad to say, which is a cause for rejoicing among Christian people everywhere.

Perhaps one of the greatest needs of the prisons of this country is their complete divorce from politics and their reorganization on business principles of merit and capability. While it is true that the civil service law, which operates in nearly every State, has raised the standard of merit among the prison officiary, notwithstanding inferior men, entirely unfitted for such work, creep into these institutions as a reward for political services.

But it is also true that the prisons of the twentieth century are as far advanced from those of the middle ages as those of the middle ages are ahead of the prisons that existed at the beginning of the Christian era. In those days jails were little better than hog pens, perhaps much like the old cistern into which they thrust Jeremiah the prophet, when they let him down with cords, and where his feet sank in the mire. Such prisons were places of pestilential horror, cold and damp, from which the sunlight was entirely excluded, and where the chains often rusted on the hands and feet of the prisoners.

The evolution of the prison has been a long, dark, cruel process, as it did not excite the interest and sympathy of the church till within recent times. It is admitted now that prison reform began with Jesus Christ, who, when He had conquered death and hell on the Cross, went up to glory with the blood-washed soul of a repentant prisoner in His arms, leading captivity captive. From this time on, the era of seeking to save and help the prisoner began. But it did not make the advances it should have made till the days of John Howard, who is called the morning star of prison reform.

It is greatly to be regretted that no efforts are put forth to raise the moral tone of our prison management. In Great Britain and the Continent of Europe, there are schools for the proper training of prison officials. In these schools are taught the military spirit, alertness, courteous behavior, and quick movements in case of emergency. But it is doubtful if in any of the schools they teach the officers to appeal to the better nature of the prisoners for any permanent reform. The work of a modern prison is largely one of punishment and repression. There are no lectures on hygiene and sanitation, nor on manliness or how to resist temptations, nor is anything done to incite them to live a new life, except what comes through the Chaplain, and that only once a week.

In studying the early stages of lawlessness from the rudest times to the present day, I am satisfied that crime grows on the mind by insensible degrees, and shows itself only at the propitious time when the overt act brings the individual into prominence.

I also believe that a certain class of delinquents are made more vicious by prison life, simply, because their moral instincts are already perverted, and by the lives they have led in the past. Such hopeless people should be sent to lunatic asylums, rather than to prisons, as we believe they are more in need of medical treatment than punishment.

One of the most needed reforms of the present century is the necessity of putting forth more efforts to save beginners in crime. In many of our prisons, criminals are huddled together like sheep, and as a result the young offender learns more evil in one week from old crooks than ever he knew before. There is nobody to blame for this but the old methods that are still in vogue. Often criminals are driven to crime by motives generated in a vicious nature, and as they are too weak to resist the high pressure of modern temptations, they soon become law-breakers. It is foolish to talk of the criminal classes, but criminal individuals. Criminality is simply the darkened side of a human life, showing itself in deeds of wickedness and rebellion. Anybody under the dominion and power of the Evil One will dare to commit the most atrocious crime on record, and will not think of the consequences at the time.