"Insane" was the verdict. But it is perhaps reasonable to ascribe the insanity to the conditions which found their black fruition in the woman's act, rather than to the despairing creature herself. She had all that most women would ask for happiness—a good husband, a darling little son, an assured support. But there was ever before her eyes the ghastly, inhuman spectacle and burden of the jail; she knew it through and through, and she could endure it no longer. She pictured her innocent boy growing up and following his father's trade. The idea tortured her beyond the limits of her strength, and she accepted the only alternative—death. She was not a prisoner—she was only a looker on; but that is what prison did for her. And our press, echoing our own will, and our courts, voicing our own laws, keeps on shouting, "Put the crooks in stripes; show them no mercy!"
Shall we not pause a moment over the bodies of this mother and her son, over this frenzied murder and suicide? They constitute an arraignment of the prison principle not to be lightly passed over, or commented on with rasping irony by witty editorial writers. That tragedy means something. We cannot lease the community's real estate to hell, for building hell houses and carrying on hell business, supported by our taxes and advocated by our courts and praised (or "reformed") by our penologists—we cannot do that without meeting the consequences. We see how the consequences affected Mrs. Schleth in the Queens County, New York, jail, last summer. It will affect other persons in other ways. But it will affect us all before we are done with it. Hell on earth is a tenant which no community can suffer with impunity.
If prisons are a good thing, it is full time they made good. If they are a bad thing, it is full time they were abolished. The middle courses now being tried in some places cannot succeed; no compromise with hell ever succeeds, however kindly intentioned. But the devil rejoices in them, recognizing his subtlest work done to his hand.
What shall happen if prisons are done away with? That question will doubtless puzzle us for a long time to come. I have no infallible remedy; but I shall touch upon the subject in my next and last chapter.
XVI
IF NOT PRISONS—WHAT?
What would you advise to check law breaking? A good practical answer to that question would save civilized humanity a great many millions of dollars every year.
The old answer was "jail" for minor cases and death for the others. There was much to be urged in favor of the latter. Dead men not only tell no tales, but they commit no crimes. Kill all criminals and crime would cease. The device has been tried—it was tried in England for a while—but the result was disappointing. It threatened to decimate the population; and in spite of logic, it failed to discourage law breakers. Criminals seemed to get used to being hanged, and drawn and quartered—they no longer minded it. There is a psychological reason for that, no doubt; though it is not so sure that psychology as understood and practised to-day can find out what it is.
Moreover, the spy system, which always accompanies and thrives upon severe legislation, became so productive of informations that it was soon clear that the end would be the indictment not so much of a tenth part of the population as of all but a tenth—or even more. So a compromise was made; only murderers should be killed. That did not lessen the number of murders, and seems rather to have increased them; for the impulse to murder is commonly a very strong impulse, producing a brain condition in which consequences are not weighed. Also, when the community takes life for life, it appears to weaken the general respect for life, and men can be hired to do a killing job for small sums. Sentimental persons, too, insist on making heroes of convicted murderers, which in a degree, perhaps, counteracts the depressing conditions surrounding them. So we made another compromise.
This is not on the statute books, but it operates actively, nevertheless. It is the development of the appeal industry among lawyers for the defense.