Cures for habitual criminals seldom cure; correctional quackery, never. Also, when a lad shall have passed the “seventh year” by seven years, and from his first conscious thought had been given habitually to unlawful selection; and further, shall have come congenitally by predisposition for such selection, the merry-go-round correctional plant is the last place on earth wherein amelioration of his plight will be effected. Young as he is, he will elect and maneuver for a criminal career, unless he is consistently subjected to schooling stripped of suggestion of crooks and crookedness.
Plenty of play in the wide open an imprisoned lad must have. Attempt to fit a man’s head to a lad’s shoulders is indefensible error; but the play should be wholesome play purged of the “pug”; it should be fixed in his mind as relatively incidental to basic measures of reform, and it should not be allowed to cross those measures.
As for the rest, “For forms of government, let fools contest; that which is best administered is best,” provided: the “form of government” runs true to the form demanded by the intrinsic social exactions upon a lad.
Contrariwise, attempt such as to make farmers out of young men whose urban life has been decided by every natural circumstance, is at once waste of time, material and human potential, and to fly in the face of geographic destiny. City-bred felons will take on just so much of farming as compulsion compels, or the ulterior motive dictates, and not a stroke at it more. If you question the above assertion, ask any farmer who has tried out the ex-prisoner farmer who was city-bred.
Coming down to detail for correctional discipline, one must carefully guide one’s pen. General statements thereof are unassailable only when they predicate the unchangeable; yet certain factors cannot be shaken from their shoes. Truth camouflaged is no less a lie. Dull the edge of honesty and it does not cut to the bone of equity. Make the manual processes pay tribute to by-play, and bald bid is made for the drone-sport. Compromise with chronic perpetrators of evil deeds done out of evil intent, through loading them with largesse, and they are furnished with the last formula for piling deviltry on deviltry. Construe a lad’s conduct as of primal importance, while holding his reaction to educative activities to be of secondary import, and build beyond doubt to the faker and malingerer. Essay to form or reform character either with the “billy” and billingsgate, or with padding and coddling, and the result will reflect the asinine tools employed. Imbue lads with the belief that their reformation is an overnight joke, and they will make night hideous, as well as most of days—for good measure.
Beyond all, lead erring youths to believe themselves immune to religiously prosecuted discipline fitted to the individual case, just because they are youths, and their huzzahs as one for you will not shrive you of your share of responsibility for their continued criminousness.
It is easy to scold, hard alike to salve and save; but the salving and saving must be done. The scolding has been coming to some for a long, long time; particularly to self-nominated lay reformers, and “uplifters,” who mostly reform and uplift after the fashion the frog jumped out of the slime-coated well, which is to say: farther down to slime at every attempted leap to light.
While that is a pity, out of the efforts of many who keenly engage to help, it is also seriously reprehensible; for, he who affects the role of protagonist concerning the most complex problem given man to solve, owes it to society to know intimately the order of the criminal’s going; else he will find himself hopelessly enmeshed in a labyrinth of motive and counter motive.
It is also easy to write disciplinary “don’ts,” and betimes most difficult to execute them. Just the same, don’t curse; don’t threaten, bluff or be bluffed; don’t lose your temper; don’t make promises unless you can fulfill them to the letter; don’t construe as directed against you personally, acts that are aimed at bigger game; don’t fraternize with prisoners to the gutter level; don’t heap discipline of any kind on a lad, until he needs must conclude that you are “down on him,” and are “giving him the worst of it”; don’t wabble; don’t shriek; don’t resort unduly to petty impositions for petty offenses; don’t utter false coin of suggestion and example; don’t commonize discipline of character whatsoever, else it will lose its carrying power; don’t reach lightly for tags of stigma: they depress and discourage; don’t despise hints dropped to you by lads who are hoping for better things, and who may lead you to the correct psychology of the individual case, and of the mass; and don’t assume that you know it all about crime and criminals: no man does, nor can, give him a life time to do it.
Do seek to know yourself, your man, and so much of a great-big work as it is possible for you to know. Doing it, realize yours will be just one opinion about it all. Scores of others have written that which you must absorb in saving degree, if you are to get a grip on what makes and keeps men criminal.