It has therefore become a perplexing question what is to be done with him, for during the four hundred years of white civilization on the American Continent his condition remains almost the same.
After many years of failure to improve him, would it not be well to adjust the penal treatment to his nature as a man and eliminate from his life the temptations that overcame him? For example, thousands of people are arrested yearly in New York for drunkenness, a temptation which they cannot resist. Why not close the saloons and thus take even this one temptation out of the way of such weaklings? At any rate, if our prison populations are to be reduced, society must pass a law to prevent crime, or invent something that shall defeat the conditions that make men criminals.
At the present time the main object of a criminal court is to find out if a defendant is guilty or innocent. If guilty, the sentence of the Court is measured by the character of the crime and not by the conditions that led to it. Before the wrongdoer can be reformed our criminal laws must be readjusted to the conditions of the times. Many of those who come into our courts for sentence, if not hardened criminals themselves, are the offspring of criminal parents or are mentally defective, weak-minded or insane, epileptics or otherwise diseased.
Crime gnaws at the life of the nation, destroys its vitality and wastes its wealth. We can stand changes of government or changes of policy, hard times, prosperity and adversity, but no nation can long survive the awful demoralization of crime.
But what an anomalous life the criminal lives! After having many chances and opportunities placed in his way to live right, he refuses the good and chooses the evil. He will not reform nor do better. He has become a misanthrope; he hates himself and everybody else.
The only sure remedy for the present day criminal is the indeterminate sentence; he should be detained in prison under the most rigorous discipline, till he is reformed or cured of his insane notions. It is nothing short of a crime to turn such people loose to scourge society after a few months or years’ detention in prison.
European criminologists are unanimous in advocating the most restrictive measures for incorrigibles, such as hard labor, longer imprisonment and more repressive humiliation, or if necessary, deportation and exile. Professor Prins of Brussels says, “The solution of the question of the incorrigible lies in a progressive aggravation of punishment and the absence of all prison luxury.” After reading a mass of opinions on what should be done with the criminal incorrigible and how he should be punished, all of which had not a ray of hope in it for his higher nature, we thought of the British soldier in India half a century ago, who was called up for sentence before a court martial; he had suffered all sorts of imprisonment, corporal punishment and all manner of deprivation and humiliations, but all to no purpose; the punishments only hardened him. But now a new commander came on the scene who, after hearing all that could be said against him, dismissed him with an admonition, saying that they forgave him, asking him from henceforth to go and sin no more. The effect of this was that he broke down and wept like a child. He had steeled his heart to every kind of punishment, but when they tried kindness it touched him.
CHAPTER VI
SOME FAMOUS TOMBS PRISONERS
During its long and eventful history the Tombs has had many notable prisoners. It would be impossible in this brief sketch to do justice to this subject by giving a full and detailed account of the deeds and escapades of these persons. But the men of money and influence who have had the misfortune to be sent to the City Prison have always fared well. Although it is not always the case, the rich and poor in such a place should be treated with becoming fairness and moderation, not simply because they are rich or poor, but the law presumes a man to be innocent till his guilt is proved beyond a reasonable doubt. It is well known that a great many people are sent to the Tombs every year on trumped up charges. As they are not criminals, it would be manifestly improper to deny them the deserved consideration to which every uncondemned man is entitled in this enlightened age.