CRIME AND THE LAY CRITIC
“Boast not of happiness until you reach the last day of your life,” Croesus admonished Solon, the code builder of ancient Athens.
“For the condemned I entertain but little blame, and for the good but scant praise,” echoes a lady, who would direct us from the hill of vision how to reform, rather than punish criminals.
Casual comparison discloses little of kin between the admonition and declaration quoted; yet they shoot from the same trunk, if not from the same branch. Both flout well-being and doing. Put into practice, either would make of life a juiceless grind.
The lady further affirms that “One of our chiefest duties is to rehabilitate the criminal into respect for himself.” The platitude would carry more of weight, were it unqualified. Moreover, her declaration fights her assertion, since a man’s “respect for himself” presupposes just pride in a robust manhood.
Condone vice and discount virtue, and you lock arms with the habitual criminal. He does exactly that. Denying sufficient of moral motive for honest endeavor, he moves over lines of least resistance to that which he craves. Doing it, he will twist such as the lady’s startling epitome of the moral code to square with his oblique selections.
And the good lady would not “greet” prisoners with, “Ye who enter here, leave all hope behind,” but put them to “tending plants,” and thus solve a vexing problem.
As a first essential, reformatory prisoners are “greeted” with plenty of soap and water. Their free-life garments are sterilized or burned. The house physician then passes on their physical condition. In clean skin and garb, they are now ready for biographical examination by the Superintendent, by whom they are given a straightforward talk concerning the aims of the reformatory. In much the same manner, they pass through the hands of the heads of departments. They are then ready for trade, scholastic, military and gymnastic instruction.
Religious services for all denominations are held. Classes in ethics, nature studies and history are heard. Amusements and lectures are frequent and varied. The personal equation is strongly marked. One would needs employ reams of paper to specify the advantages afforded prisoners in a modern reformatory. It is sufficient to place that named against trite verbiage, such as “leave all hope behind,” and it is only fair to add that when reformative offices are rendered abortive, they usually are because of the purblind meddling of kindergarten criminologists.
For the submerged fraction who are held in prisons of last resort, every humane thing should be done, even though they had refused the good offices of society, both in and out of prison; yet must we face the portentous truth that an appreciable percentage of habitual criminals so confined, are those who had sounded the full gamut of institutional life. Reformatories always confine a positive number of graduates of juvenile schools of reform, and thousands of ex-reformatory lads go marching on to convict prisons.