Within Prison Walls / being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York

by Thomas Mott Osborne

But, although a sad audience to look upon, it is, as I have found on previous occasions, a most wonderfully sensitive and responsive audience to address. Each point of the discourse is caught with extraordinary quickness; every slight attempt at humor is seized upon with pathetic avidity. The speaker soon finds himself stimulated and carried along, as by a strange and powerful force he has never felt before. It is an exciting and exhilarating experience to talk to a prison audience; but one must take good care not to be a bore, nor to try any cheap oratorical tricks; for it is not only a keen and critical audience, it is a merciless one.

This morning I am not at all afraid of boring the hearers; but I do wonder whether they will fully take in my meaning; and how those who do understand will like the idea of my coming among them; and if some of them understand and sympathize, will it be a few only, or a majority; and if a majority, how large; and will the minority resent it sufficiently to be disagreeable?

These are some of the questions which go buzzing through my mind as I sit trying in vain to listen to the singing of the prison choir and the Scripture lesson which the Chaplain is reading. Finally I am called upon to speak; and as I advance to the front of the stage another round of applause comes from the audience. It has rather a startling effect upon one, for applause in the prison chapel has always somewhat the character of an explosion—an explosion of pent-up feelings denied any ordinary freedom of expression. Hand-clapping is the only form permitted, and it sounds like the snapping of firecrackers.

I advance to the front of the stage and stumble through the first words of explanation as to the reasons for having my speech carefully written out—in order to avoid any possible misunderstanding afterward as to what I really have said. Then I clear my throat and read the address which follows.

The Superintendent of Prisons and Warden Rattigan have kindly given me permission to carry out a plan which has been in my mind for some time; and to carry it out successfully I need your coöperation—both officials and prisoners.

As most of you doubtless know, I am chairman of the Commission on Prison Reform appointed by Governor Sulzer to examine into the Prison System of New York State, determine what changes would be desirable and formulate legislation necessary to bring about such changes. The members of the Commission since their appointment have been quietly at work informing themselves as to the manner in which the present System works out, its effect upon prisoners, the measure of its success as a means of reducing crime throughout the state.

It must be evident that any such examination, seriously undertaken, is an extremely complex and difficult matter. Not only are trustworthy statistics absolutely lacking by which to determine the more obvious facts, but statistics are manifestly impossible to secure regarding the deepest and most important parts of the problem—for instance, as to the psychological effect on the prisoners themselves of the Prison System, both as a whole and as to certain specific rules and regulations.

For much of the most important work of the Commission, therefore, we must fall back on such experience of life and knowledge of human nature as its members may possess. And it is with a desire to extend my own knowledge and experience in the service of the Commission that I ask your help in carrying out the plan to which I have referred.

When a man wishes to understand as fully as possible the temper and character of the people of a foreign country—England or France, Germany, India, China—he can consult a great deal of printed matter; but he will not be satisfied until he has made a personal visit to the country itself. For instance, I have but the merest smattering of the French language, and I have been privileged to know socially but very few Frenchmen, yet my visits to France have given me an infinitely better idea of the country and people than I could ever have received from books. The actual sights and sounds of a country seem to provide the foundation for a far better understanding of its history, a more thorough appreciation of all that can be read and heard of it thereafter.

If this sympathy and understanding, coming from a vivid personal experience, is desirable in the case of a foreign country, it is even more necessary in the case of a group of men set apart by society, such as this community of the prison; for in your case the conditions under which you live are more unnatural and less easy for most people to grasp than those of a foreign country. Moreover, most of the books that have been written about you by so-called penologists and other “experts” are written, so far as I can determine, from such an outside standpoint and with so little intelligent sympathy and vital understanding that I am inclined to the belief that very few of them are of any particular value. Indeed many are positively harmful; for they are based upon the false and cruel assumption that the prisoner is not a human being like the rest of us, but a strange sort of animal called a “criminal”—wholly different in his instincts, feelings and actions from the rest of mankind.