It is proper that an evil-doer should suffer punishment and that society should be protected from his evil ways, but humanity and Christianity alike require that at the same time that he is subject to the restraints of the law, the wisest efforts should be made for his improvement and reformation, the correction of his evil propensities, and the formation of good habits, to the intent that when the prison gates are opened to him he may have a fair chance to become an upright and useful citizen.
This end cannot be attained by keeping the convict in idleness, the most fruitful source of immorality and mental and physical degeneracy. This law of enforced idleness is not only cruel and inhuman, as to the convict, it is improvident as to the State, for the convict, if employed, could not only earn a large part, if not the entire cost of his maintenance, and thus relieve the community of this burden, but he would be able to lift another and greater burden which must rest somewhere, the support of his family during his imprisonment.
Under the present system the guilty convict is not the chief sufferer. The severity of the punishment falls heaviest upon his family—the innocent wife and children.
UNWISE AND VICIOUS.
Is it not surprising that legislators who are responsible for this compulsory idleness do not see its unwisdom and viciousness?
Instead of permitting the convict to earn his maintenance by his own labor, a fellow-laborer outside the prison walls is taxed to support him in idleness, an idleness which only intensifies whatever criminal propensities he possesses, instead of curing them, and increases his capacity for depredations upon society when the prison doors are open to him.
In other words, for every man within prison walls who does not earn his maintenance, some man outside has to earn it for him. The Divine decree, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread,” is reversed in the case of the man who eats his bread in the sweat of some other man’s face.
Joshua L. Baily.