After Prison--What?

by Maud Ballington Booth

Another gross misconception is the belief that all men in prison are dishonest. People forget how many and devious are the causes for which men can be imprisoned. Sometimes when I have asked a business man to employ one of our "boys" the answer has been, "I am in sympathy with your work and pity these poor fellows, but in my business I dare not do it as there would be opportunities to steal and it would not be right to those whose interests I must protect." This has shown me how constantly the thought of theft and robbery is associated with all who come from prison. There are many within the walls who have never misappropriated a cent. This does not mean they are guiltless, for their crime may have very justly brought them to conviction but there is no reason to imagine that because of that punishment they must be ranked as dishonest.

Then there are those within prison walls who, though evil well nigh all their lives, claim our sincerest pity. They may have done desperate deeds, may perhaps be ranked as habitual criminals and may represent to-day the most hardened and determined offenders and yet in strict justice they should not be spoken of with harsh condemnation, before the sad pages of their lives have been read. The judge and jury take cognizance only of the offense; the police and prison record note the list of charges and the number of returns to prison but those of us who seek to know the man beneath the criminal have a right to go back and ask ourselves, "What chance did this man have to do right, to act and to be as we are?" The answer sometimes is a pathetic revelation of a loveless babyhood and childhood where blows and curses took the place of kiss and caress; a youth where revolt against society in an embittered heart made it easy to develop every evil tendency and to follow the lead of those in the under-world who proved the only possible friends and associates.

Many, many letters have I received from just this class of prisoner. I remember especially one that spoke of such a history. It was written just after my first visit to Joliet State Prison and was in the natural unrestrained language of one who had never learned the art of deftly turning sentences. He began with an apology for bad spelling and poor writing in which he explained that it was the first letter he had attempted to write in seven years, for he had no one in the world who cared whether he lived or died. Then he thanked me for what I had said to them Sunday, adding, "You said you loved us. Nobody ever said that to me before in my whole life and I hardly know what the word means. You spoke of home. The nearest approach to it I ever had was my time in the kitchen of one of the state prisons where the officer was very kind to me." Briefly this was his story. He was born in a poorhouse in Ireland and never knew father or mother and received in childhood no touch of love or sympathy. When still very young he was sent out to work and soon found evil companionship and was led into trouble. He came out to this country only to continue on the same path which was in fact the only path he had ever known. It naturally led him to state prison and his whole life here has been spent within the walls except for the few short holidays in the slums between the day of his discharge and the next arrest. All through the letter I could see that he had never dreamed there was another life for him. He confessed he had never tried to be good, had had no inducement or chance to be so. Very pathetic to me was the closing sentence in which he said, "Now that I know somebody cares, I will try." Let me diverge from my point enough to add that he made a success of the effort and became an earnest member of our League. On his discharge from prison he had a happy experience at our Home and from there launched out into a new life. He soon proved himself a good workman and in time became the possessor of a happy little home of his own and has for several years been a useful member of society.

I have mentioned but one but I could fill a volume with such stories. I do not think that the happy and fortunate in this life need look upon it as foolish sentimentality to pity the prisoners. Surely our pity is no more misspent upon them than upon the heathen for they too have never seen the light that they might follow it.

A young man came not long since to our Home. He was a poorly developed, broken-spirited, frightened looking boy. His parents died when he and his brothers and sisters were very young. He was brought up in a juvenile asylum, bound out to people who were hard on him, ran away and herded with criminals. He never knew home, love, sympathy or friendship. Our Home was the first true home he had ever known. It took weeks to work a change in the physical, mental and moral attitude of the man but when the change commenced it was wonderful to notice how he developed. Naturally he became devotedly attached to the one bright happy spot in a very sad and gloomy life. When we sent him out to his first position which was some way from the Home, he broke down and sobbed like a child whose vacation is over and he was so utterly homesick that those who had offered him employment had to return him to us so that we could place him somewhere nearer the Home, for, as they wrote, they feared that his homesickness was incurable.

Again wholesale condemnation should be withheld by the thought that there are some innocent men within prison walls. It is natural that justice should sometimes miscarry and yet alas, the stigma and brand remain with the man even after his innocence has been proved. A man was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder and served sixteen and a half years. Most of the evidence had been purely circumstantial and he was convicted mainly on the testimony of one witness. He was only saved from the gallows by the earnest efforts of those who had known of his previous good character. Last winter the woman who had borne witness against him came to what she believed to be her deathbed and sending for the priest she confessed that she had committed perjury. The matter being brought to the Governor, the man was at once liberated. To the world into which he passed nervous, unmanned and broken, he will always be an "ex-convict."

At the present time I know a man who has served nine years and is still in prison where he has been visited by the boy whom he was supposed to have murdered. His "victim," a mere child, disappeared and this man, a tramp who was overtaken in the forest by a search party was held responsible. Some years after his conviction to state prison, the boy returned from what proved to have been a runaway adventure, alive and well. It is sometimes very hard work to make the wheels of justice turn backward for those once confined within prison walls so the man who was poor and friendless is in prison still.

A young German who was a member of the League told me one day his story, not with a plea that I should help him for my "boys" know that my mission is not to get them out of prison, and I found he was serving an eight years' sentence for an offense of which at the time of his conviction he was utterly ignorant. When arrested he could speak no English and understood absolutely nothing of his trial. He had no friends and could make no appeal and when he found himself within the prison walls, he asked to be enlightened as to what he was supposed to have done. He was a very bright fellow, a skilled workman and when he had mastered the language, he very much impressed all who knew him with his honest straightforwardness. I brought the matter to the notice of the Governor who on investigation was perfectly satisfied with the truth of the story and sent the innocent man home to me after he had served some six years in prison. We found for him a good position and he became a trusted and well-paid employee. In the first years of his freedom he was able to lay by money with which he later bought a farm. He was married to an estimable young woman and is now living a thoroughly honorable life.

These instances are cited, not with the idea of proving that injustice has been done, but merely to show that to look with horror and wholesale condemnation at this great prison family is unfair and that one may find much good metal worthy of redemption, even from the standpoint of those who despair of the man who has sinned and fallen.

In contrast to some quoted comes the story of a young man who was welcomed to the same Home in Illinois after a term in Joliet. He sat rather silent at the dinner table where the newcomers had gathered around the white cloth covered with its pretty table ware and substantial fare. His companions thought he was dispirited and afterwards finding him alone in a corner of one of the parlors, one of the older inmates of the Home asked him what was the matter. "Had he had bad news?" "Oh no," he answered, "it is not that. It is this Home. Just think of the contrast! When I fell and was sent to prison I thought I had forever made myself an outcast. For years I have sat in a cell, dressed in the stripes; I have drunk my coffee and water from a tin cup and eaten my food from a tin plate. When I sat down at that table to-night, I was reminded of home and of the past and I seemed to see the possibility of some day regaining what I had lost." He was not a poor stray of the city streets but the son of a Christian home. His father was an Episcopal clergyman and his environment had been one of comfort and refinement until he had yielded to evil and started on a downward course.