The Philadelphia County Prison is composed of four different departments, one of which is called the “Debtor’s Department,” so denominated because it was destined to receive and retain those who were to be incarcerated for not paying their debts. The merciful laws of Pennsylvania have abolished imprisonment for debts by contract, and now the building is used for the detention of some United States prisoners, for some who are adjudged to be in contempt of court, some who are detained on mesne process, &c., or who are sentenced to pay fines or costs. With these and others under the charge of the sheriff, the committee have had little intercourse; their circumstances, or the temporary character of their almost nominal confinement, not rendering it probable that visits would be acceptable or profitable.
The south wing of the prison is devoted entirely to male vagrants, drunkards, breakers of the peace, those who await a trial, and some who are sentenced to short imprisonment and fines. The middle building contains male convicts, sentenced to separate confinement and labor, and also those who have been sentenced to capital punishment. Among the inmates of these two buildings the visitors of the Society are constant and assiduous in their labors, and we have already referred to some of the results of their visitations.
The north building is entirely separate from the other, having two lots of ground and a high wall between that and the male convict department. The northern building is exclusively devoted to females. The vagrant, the drunkard, the accused, and the female criminal of every class, are here kept, under the care of a male keeper, and a matron and assistant matron. And as this department presents a peculiar field for the action of our Society, we shall make special reference to the character of the inmates, the nature of their offences, the circumstances of their committal, and the character and results of labors for their moral and physical improvement; not because these labors are greater or more effective, but because the pursuits, the misfortunes, the errors, and the crimes of the prisoners differ from those of the males, according to the circumstances of their condition and sex, and require some additional means to secure an amelioration of the state of their lives.
In dealing with female offenders, we have to encounter the same incentives, the same passions that influence the males; and most of the same crimes that are punished in the male convict department are here expiated by the females. But the mode of dealing must vary with the varying circumstances of the prisoner; and those circumstances must greatly depend upon the character of the individual, resulting from her sex and the condition of her earlier life.
It is calculated that more than one thousand females divide their time between the cells of the county prison and the practice of those vices or the committal of those crimes which send them there. For a large number of these, no more than thirty days imprisonment can be given at one time; and many of those thus committed are discharged much sooner: so that there is little time for any moral dealings with them, and even were it practicable to deal with them in exhortation and advice,—were the time of their imprisonment sufficiently long to warrant a hope that they could be persuaded to form good resolves, still the fact that more than one, and often four or five, are found in the same cell, renders almost hopeless any attempt to induce the drunkard to forsake her resort to the bottle, or the impure to avoid the haunts of vice which she has frequented. The evidence of contrition which kindness and faithful dealing on the part of the visitor may call forth from the prisoner, are inducements to her companions in the cell to ridicule the moral teacher, and to laugh the repenting one out of her half-formed resolves. The experienced visitor learns to fix a just estimate upon the tears and promises of those expectants of favors; but the good female visitors who occasionally seek to bring “glad tidings” to the miserable offenders of their own sex, usually suffer deep mortification at the disappointment of pleasant hopes, and are compelled to seek their consolation in the consciousness of good intention and perfect fidelity to the object which they profess to serve. The great, almost the only mode of serving the inmates of this part of the prison, is to induce them to enter some of the asylums in the city, and yield themselves to the gentle discipline of institutions founded for the good of those who have lost their self-respect and forfeited the good will of society. And the records of the “House of the Good Shepherd,” of “The Magdalen Asylum,” “The Rosine” institution, and some other associations for the meliorating the condition of the frail, the vicious, and the guilty, will show what valuable auxiliaries these institutions have been to the Society for Meliorating the Condition of Prisons.
While on this branch, we may as well say that, by an Act of Assembly, the Inspectors of the County Prison may, at their discretion, discharge at once any person committed for vagrancy, drunkenness, and disorderly conduct, or a breach of the peace. Of course, a sound discretion is to be used; and it is within the knowledge of all who are conversant with the administration of the County Prison, that great good has resulted from the exercise of this power by the Inspectors, and incalculable evils have been prevented. Without any effort on the part of this Society, it has happened that more than one of its appointed visitors to the County Prison have been Inspectors; and in the exercise of the power conferred on the latter, the duties of the former have been most valuably discharged. The condition of many prisoners has been meliorated by a timely inquiry into the cause of their incarceration and the duties that awaited them at home. If it should appear that accidental association had brought a poor innocent girl to the cells, it is a beautiful and profitable exercise of power to send her home before she should make acquaintance with the habituées of the prison, or before a knowledge of her misfortune should become general among her acquaintances, by a notice of her absence from the scene of her ordinary duties. Take one example as illustration of the idea.
A girl about seventeen years of age, well dressed, was seen emerging from the van, that at the prison
“Each morning vomits forth its sneaking crowd”
of police committals. Her neat appearance and unusual sadness arrested the attention of one of the visitors of this Society, who was there on duty as an Inspector. He learned that the girl, going home on a summer evening from work, by which she maintained herself and mother, was annoyed by the appearance and bad language of a drunken woman. The disturbance drew to the place a police officer, who did not see the real offender escape, and finding only the poor girl there, he arrested her, and she was sent down for “disorderly conduct.” Close examination into the case might have shown the mistake, but there were many more cases, and so the poor girl took her place among a crowd of miserable wretches of her own sex. Her story was found to be true, and she was at once dismissed.
It is not worth while to dwell on the importance to that girl, and her mother dependent upon her labor, of the prompt release. Since that time, the arrival of the van has been watched, and the appearance of its inmates carefully noticed, and other cases have presented themselves for the prompt and valuable exercise of the power entrusted to the Inspectors.