It contained a number of striking features. He strongly advocated the adoption of the indeterminate sentence plan, and that of productive labor. Among other things he said:—“The absolute indeterminate sentence for all prisoners except life convicts is, in my opinion, the only logical method of dealing with the delinquent classes. Upon criminals it should operate as a definite deterrent influence. To habitual offenders it would be a danger sign, and it would beget new risks in the commission of crime. Under it the sifting process, by which the reformable prisoners are sorted from the incorrigibles, could be intelligently applied; powerful motives for the abandonment of criminal practices would be created, and safeguards for the protection of society would be erected.”
The State might as reasonably send an insane person to an asylum for a definite time, as to convict a criminal to a prison for a specific period. If the management in the one case is competent to discharge, why not in the other?
“From every penal institution in the country convicts are being regularly discharged, who as the management only too well knows, will promptly resume the criminal program which was temporarily interrupted by a term of prison.
“Every consideration of social welfare demands that, on the one hand the criminal should be kept under restraint until he is fit to be released, and that, on the other hand once fit to be released, he should be conditionally discharged. This system should not only afford the largest measure of protection to life and property, but it would also supply the most practical method for the reformation of the offender.”
The galling fire which is kept up against productive labor in penal institutions, is born of a mistaken or partial view of the situation, and is not justified by the whole body of facts in the case. It is estimated that the value of the products of penal institutions does not exceed one tenth of one per cent of the total value of the products of the manufacturing industries of the whole United States. This fact renders it obvious that the economic and competitive effect of convict labor upon free labor is in the aggregate insignificant, and that it wholly fails to justify the persistent warfare which some people take pleasure in waging against prison industry.
It would be superfluous to state in a gathering of this kind, that regular and intelligent employment is absolutely essential to the moral and physical welfare of convicts, and the enforced idleness begets sullenness, immorality, sickness, insanity, and retards, if indeed it does not entirely prevent, the improvement of which the prisoners might otherwise be susceptible. In all intelligent efforts to reform convicted criminals, work is an indispensable factor—and only productive labor is reformative labor. Both the practical and the ethical requirements of the situation make for productive labor.
ADDRESS BY H. F. HATCH, IONA, MICH.
“A contractor’s view of prison discipline.”
JOSEPH F. SCOTT, WARDEN MASSACHUSETTS STATE REFORMATORY,
Spoke of “Civil service in Prison.”