6. The State should watch over a man after his discharge from prison, aid him in finding employment, and in the meantime, render him assistance if necessary.
7. It has been wisely suggested that even life prisoners should be under some system of parole. Probably by special enactment. There are 177 life convicts, many are not habitual criminals, but convicted of murder in the second degree, while in heat of passion or under the influence of liquor. Some have already served 20 to 40 years.
STATE PRISON DILEMMA.
Some “prison reformers” so-called, seem to be laboring under the impression that it is possible to keep convicts profitably employed without subjecting free labor of some sort to competition. A moment’s reflection, however, shows that this impression is erroneous. The best that can be done is to distribute industries in the prisons so as to reduce competition to the minimum, and that it is the policy which the State is now pursuing. A sash and door factory has just been established at Sing Sing, the output of which is to be used in public buildings. This leaves the market for sashes and doors practically to the free labor employed in that industry, and yet the fact remains, that but for this prison factory the State would have to patronize the other ones. The Amended Constitution and recent legislation in conformity with it have rendered the task of keeping convicts at work a problem. Of course they might be employed piling and unpiling stones in the prison grounds for no other purpose than to prevent them from being idle. But experience has proved that fruitless work of this sort is bad for convicts, tending to demoralize them. Unless they are given something to do worth doing they grow morbid and ripe for further mischief. Road-making as an experiment may be worth trying. The Superintendent of prisons says he finds it exceedingly difficult to keep convicts employed without antagonizing the Constitution, until the Legislature makes the present law mandatory.
HOW TO DEAL WITH WICKED MEN.
The prevention and cure of crime, the best methods for this, says Frank B. Sanborn, the political economist of Massachusetts—why “Prison science is in its infancy, so far as the world at large is concerned.” Pathetic and humiliating is the tardy advance made in this direction. Very provoking to the enlightened are the dull indifferences and frequent hallucination of the community in regard to the treatment of criminals.
Gradually, however, there has grown up in regard to a large class of criminals, the so-called “first offenders,” most rapidly in these United States, and chiefly in the past thirty years, something that may justly be turned “prison science.”
Its best examples are in the men’s prison at Elmira, which is the outgrowth of Mr. Brockway’s half century of experience in controlling and instructing convicts, and in the woman’s prison at Sherborn, Mass., lately under the inspiring government of Mr. Johnson.
As yet the criminals of longer habituation in guilt have come but little under this new development of prison science, except that in some States they now receive an added sentence when proved to be an old offender. But the tendency is where crime is best understood, to establish a small class of “incorrigibles,” for whom perpetual imprisonment shall be the sentence.
This is on the theory that such can never be safely returned to the community, upon which they are found perpetually preying, with a reasonable hope that they can be cured of evil habits. From these, should be distinguished a much greater class of criminals, who are temporarily incorrigible, but will yield to the methods, somewhat prolonged.