With these great means of moral improvement, and, doubtless, with an eye to the temporal as well as the eternal consequences, the Society has always had in view the means of making prisoners better as well as more comfortable, of ameliorating the miseries of prisoners as well as prisons; and hence it has required action on the part of its visitors, and a regular report of what they have done, and generally how they have labored.
In dealing with the question of reformation among those who occupy the cells of the County Prison, it will be readily conceived that there are not only a variety of minds to deal with, but a great difference in the elements of character. Something must be attempted for those whose degradation is so great, that they hardly discover in their condition more cause for shame than does the unfortunate speculator who has failed in his plan of wealth. These miserable wretches seem to have no taste beyond the lowest dens of infamy, and no ambition but to gratify that taste in its utmost depravity. And there is a demand, too, for services among a few who seem to have few tastes for what are called low vices, and to have based their calculations of success on efforts that involve the higher degree of felony. The higher offences are in many instances rather the result of vicious habits than the resort of those who aim at the property of the industrious and the wealthy. Every one of these offenders against the law is within the scope of this Society, and his moral condition is in some degree provided for.
It has already been mentioned that the Society sends to both the Penitentiary and the County Prison, a Committee, whose business it is not only to note whatever in the administration of the institutions may have a bearing on the moral and physical condition of the prisoner, but also to be themselves missionaries to the inmates of the cell, moral and religious teachers of those who have failed in both. In addition to the labor of these committeemen, there is at the Penitentiary a regular moral teacher, (occupying what in some other institutions is called the chaplaincy,) but fulfilling other requirements, and making acceptable his more formal and general teaching by his frequent special and personal communication with individuals.
At the County Prison, the Agent of the Society, who is also the Agent of the Board of Inspectors, procures the services of a clergyman for religious general instruction, by preaching and prayer on the first day of the week. It may be added, also, that not unfrequently ladies and gentlemen, who belong to the choirs of some of the city churches, lend their musical aid, and give additional attraction to the religious services.
But it will be readily comprehended that as the prisoners remain in their cells during the whole of the religious exercises, they are not so likely to be influenced by the teaching and exhortation, as if they were assembled in chapel for social worship, and sat within sight, as well as within sound, of the preacher. The difficulty in this matter with a large portion of the occupants of the cells, especially when low vices rather than considerable crime have placed them there, is to get them to give attention to the speaker, whom they cannot see.
They, too generally, use the occasion of religious exercise for sleep or conversation; and the administering of discipline is, perhaps, more frequently called for, in consequence of mal-conduct during “Divine service,” than at any other time. As bringing the preachers face to face with his audience is impossible under the arrangement of the prison, and would be a departure from the plan of separate confinement, it follows, of course, that it cannot be resorted to as a remedy for the indifference to, and neglect of, the public teachings of the officiating clergyman.
In the Parliamentary Reports, partial abstracts of which are given under the head of “Correspondence,” in this report it is mentioned that the prisoners are brought into chapel without being able to recognize each other in their ingress or egress, and placed in separate stalls, so arranged, that while they can see and be seen by the clergymen, they cannot see each other. The prisoners while conducted to and from their respective cells, have their faces covered with a species of mask, which, being perforated, enables each to see and breathe, but not to recognize any other masked person. Whether this is a better system than is practised in our County Prison and Penitentiary, we are unable to say, but it supposes a chapel or chapels for several denominations, with a large number of stalls. The plan could be practised only with much inconvenience to the officers of the prison, and the object of the non-recognition among the prisoners must at least be endangered. Separate confinement and separate instruction, seem the safest.
The Society has received the aid of members of a female association, whose wish to be useful have taken them to the cells of prisons, and whose devotion have placed them in immediate conference with the erring and miserable of their own sex; and great good has resulted from their labors. It is a beautiful testimony to the devotion of these females, that while generally connected with some religious denomination, and, of course, attached to their own creed and practices, they have limited their labors to the inculcation of great moral precepts that rest on revelation, and secured much success from a gentle and affectionate enforcement of their teaching, leaving the object of their efforts more in love with the theory of virtue, if not fully resolved to enter upon its practice.
This is undoubtedly the true course for those who resolve to be useful to all who will listen to them. But those who know the well-springs of affection in the human heart, know how often they are called into exercise by some incident that seems aside from the general or the ordinary mode of procedure; nor should those who look for improvement in the prison cells, overlook a great element of success found in the early attachment to the creed in which the prisoner was reared, and for which he possesses that kind of affection which is offended by the least impeachment of its efficacy, though his own life and present condition show how utterly inoperative for good it has been on him. Those persons are not Atheists or Deists in theory, only in practice. They recognize their obligation to their creed and their early instruction, and they mean at some future time to do better; but now they sin against their own knowledge.
They know the right, and they approve it, too;