A prisoner is kept for half a generation in conditions so terrible and degrading that the real wonder is how he has kept his sanity, and then he asks only for a chance to show where Society has made a mistake, begs only for an opportunity to be of service to his brethren.
Donald Lowrie and Ed Morrell, laying aside their own wrongs and making light of their own sufferings, as they arouse not only the state of California but the whole nation to a sense of responsibility for the shocking conditions in our prisons; Jack Murphy, turning his back upon the chance of a pardon, asking nothing for himself, seeking only how he can do the most good to his fellow-prisoners; these are the real miracles; when the spirit of God thus works in the hearts of men.
I have talked with no sensible person who proposes to sentimentalize over the law-breaker. Call the prison by any name you please, yet prisons of some sort we must have so long as men commit crime; and that from present indications will be for many generations to come. So far from setting men free from prison you and I, sensible people as I trust we are, would, if we could have our own way, put more men in prison than are there now; for we should send up all who now escape by the wiles of crooked lawyers, and we should include the crooked lawyers. But behind the prison walls we should relax the iron discipline—the hideous, degrading, unsuccessful system of silence and punishment—and substitute a system fair to all men, a limited freedom, and work in the open air.
A new penology is growing up to take the place of the old. The Honor System is being tried in many states and, to the surprise of the old expert, is found practicable. But at Auburn Prison an experiment is in progress that goes straight to the very heart of the Problem. In the minds of many the reform of the Prison System has been accomplished when a cold-hearted, brutal autocrat has been replaced by a kindly, benevolent autocrat. But so far as the ultimate success of the prisoner is concerned there is not much to choose. The former says, “Do this, or I will punish you.” The latter says, “Do this, and I will reward you.” Both leave altogether out of sight the fact that when the man leaves the shelter of the prison walls there will be no one either to threaten punishment or offer reward. Unless he has learned to do right on his own initiative there is no security against his return to prison.
“Do you know how men feel when they leave such a place as this?” said one of the Auburn third-termers to me, during the League discussions. “Well, I’ll tell you how I felt when I had finished my first term. I just hated everybody and everything; and I made up my mind that I’d get even.”
There spoke the spirit of the old System.
During the same discussion another member of the committee, an Italian, had been listening with the most careful attention to all that had been said and particularly to the assertions that when responsibility was assumed by the prisoners at their League meetings there must be no fights or disorder. Then when someone else had said, “The men must leave their grudges behind when they come to the meetings of the League,” Tony stood on his feet to give more effect to his words and spoke to this effect:
“Yes, Mr. Chairman, the men must leave their grudges behind. Let me tell you some thing.
“Two months ago at Sing Sing I did have a quarrel with my friend, and this is what he did to me”; and the speaker pointed to a large scar which disfigures his left cheek. His “friend,” when Tony was lying asleep in the hospital, had taken a razor and slit his mouth back to the cheekbone.
A hard glint of light came into Tony’s eyes as he said, “And I have been waiting for my revenge ever since. And he is here—here in this prison.”