Who shall have the immortal credit of abolishing prisons—ourselves, or our posterity? It will surely be done by our posterity if not by ourselves.
APPENDIX
Bubonic plague cannot be reformed; it is bad intrinsically and must be extirpated. Born in Asiatic filth, ignorance and barbarism, it now menaces modern civilization. While it killed millions in India or China only, we endured it, but when we hear it at our own door we turn and listen. The instinct of self-preservation, older and often more urgent than Christianity, says, "Destroy it or it will destroy you!"
We send our scientific martyrs to the front, who perish in the effort to solve the deadly riddle. We would pour out billions of money in the fight if need come. Rich men will spend all they possess rather than die, and see those they love die of it. Nations will do the same. Compromises are not considered; no one talks of reforming the Black Death. Unless it be jettisoned from the Ship of Civilization, progress and enlightenment go by the board.
And yet the disease is but physical—attacks the body only. It does not touch the immortal spirit. It has not rooted itself in the entrails of our social economy and order. It does not undermine our common humanity, or bankrupt human charity and infect it with indifference, suspicion or mutual hostility. It does not prompt law and justice to play the roles of persecution and oppression. It does not arrogate to itself the right to judge between man and his brother man, protecting the one and damning the other. It does not authorize us to say of the victim of sickness or circumstance, "Throw him to the lions!" and to affirm of his torture and death, "Serves him right!" Compared with such a plague as that, the Black Death would appear benign.
Penal imprisonment is an institution of old date, born of barbarism and ignorance, nurtured in filth and darkness, and cruelly administered. It began with the dominion of the strong over the weak, and when the former was recognized as the community, it was called the authority of good over evil. Man took the reins of government from the hands of the Almighty, and amended the Ten Commandments with statute law.
Evil is—to prefer the good of self before good of the neighbor; crime is to act in accordance with that preference. Every son of Adam is born to evil, and society is but his multiplication; but society could exist only by the compromise that the hostility of man against neighbor should mask itself as mutual forbearance. Impossible that every one should possess every thing; therefore dissimulate your greed and divide. But certain persons, missing their share either through non-conformity with the doctrine, or by force of circumstances, stuck to the old principle of each man for himself, and became "criminals." Their hand was against society, and society's against them.
In eras before society became integrated, some of these non-conformists prevailed over such strength as could be mustered against them, and by hearty and forthright robberies and murders came to be leaders and rulers of men—earls, barons, kings. The aristocracy of modern Europe is descended from such stout rebels. They became reconciled with, and organized, society, and aided it in war against the weaker of their own sort; and it was they who devised prisons for such captives as it might be inexpedient to kill outright.
All this did not alter the truth that all men are alike evil, and that such as are not also criminals, forbear—at the outset at least—from motives of enlightened selfishness. But in course of time, even enforced good behavior breeds good intent, and "good" people. For God rules us through our very sins, and will lead us, (with our passive cooperation) to religion and regeneration in the end.
But the segregation of a criminal class is manifestly human, not Divine; economic, not moral; illusory, not real. Consequently, pains and penalties inflicted by men upon other men, by society upon individuals, by the community upon "criminals," have no warrant of Divine authority, but only of superior numbers or physical strength. The only proper punishment for crime is the criminal's conscience, and if he have none available, he is liable to the natural contingency that violence breeds violence, and may get him in the long run—though it often happens that, measured by mortal standards, the run is not long enough for us to see the finish. We may console ourselves with the reflection that a finish, somewhere, there will be.