The prison system is cruel and vile. The prisoners are starved, tortured, and degraded. The system should be altered at once. It is inhumanly severe upon the guilty, and, in my opinion, a good third of those in our gaols are not guilty.
Dr. James Devon, medical officer at Glasgow Prison, told the Royal Philosophical Society in that city, in 1904, that "with milder methods of repression we have not more, but less, crime: and certainly much less brutality."
Dr. Hamilton D. Wey, of Elmira Reformatory, 'Elmira, N. Y., says:
"The time will come when every punitive institution in the world will be destroyed, and be replaced by hospitals, schools, workshops, and reformatories."
Dr. Lydston, professor of criminal anthropology, writes as follows:
"Try to reform your man, try to purify and elevate his soul, and if he does not come to time, lock him up or hang him." This has been the war-cry of the average reformer through all the ages. "Make a healthy man of your criminal, or prospective criminal, give him a sound, well-developed brain to think with, and rich, clean blood to feed it upon, and an opportunity to earn an honest living—then preach to him if you like." This is the fundamental principle of the scientific criminologist. Which is the more rational?
Havelock Ellis says in his work on "the criminal," "Flogging is objectionable, because it is ineffectual, and because it brutalises and degrades those on whom it is inflicted, those who inflict it, and those who come within the radius of its influence."
The Recorder of Liverpool told me that millions were wasted upon prisons which ought to be spent upon detection. "Make detection swift and certain," said he, "and crime will cease. No one will steal if he is sure he will be caught every time."
This is proved by the Revenue service. Penalties did not stop smuggling; but it has now become almost impossible to run a cargo: the coast is so closely guarded.
Dr. Lydston, in The Diseases of Society, says: