Criminal Types

by V. M. Masten

Time was when managerical members of institutional staffs demanded that “up for parole” prisoners shall have sustained saving trades and scholastic averages. Now, gentlemen mostly have their eyes glued to sporting schedules and conduct records, the one of which commonly cross reformation; and the other of which are at no time reliable guides on which to base the free-life intentions of intelligent prisoners.

The result is hodgepodge of cross-matched correction, little of which escapes knowing condemnation, and less of which is strung to the keynote of reformative harmony.

The keynote of reformative harmony is struck in a prison régime that ministers meticulously to marketable knowledge and skill. This, unmoved by the counter machinations of the minority of the mass, expressed either individually or collectively; indeed, collective manifestations against the like of insistence upon fairly-won averages throughout the system, should be met at their inception by the State with power so impressive as to make repetition of such opposition highly improbable. Failure thereof to take up disciplinary stitches in time, is what ultimately works mob mischief.

As a matter of fact, radical resistance to rational measures seldom issues in a correctional plant that is consistently dedicated to those measures under an all-around square deal. Contrariwise, that institution is always ripe for disciplinary loot, wherein disruptive privileges and perquisites are heaped upon inmates who do not earn them.

There is no satisfying such laggards with gratuitous largesse. The more yielded to them, the more they demand. Furthermore, once having yielded to them way beyond that which should have been yielded, it takes years to get back to the normal again—if at all.

Basic reformative cogs can be slipped in a second out of purblind vision not, so to put it, within the focus of comprehension: whereas readjustment resolves into a long, hard pull, up hill all of the way. In one of the writer’s many talks with Mr. Z. R. Brockway, relative to the capital matter in question, Mr. Brockway let fall this cryptic conclusion: “I’ve tried it out every known way, and I say: don’t do the first darn-fool thing.”

In the light of eventualities, it seems a great pity that Mr. Brockway should have been held up just as he was about to perfect balance of parts in a work to which he had given the best in him for fifty years; it does, because up to the time when he was so ruthlessly broken—literally broken—his “best” was incomparably better than any other man had dared in application.

It will be recalled that Mr. Brockway’s alleged capital sin consisted in the fact that he would not yield belief in corporal punishment as a means of “shocking”—as he had it—persistently refractory prisoners into at least respect for the major voice. Whether Mr. Brockway was right or wrong in the conviction to which he clung to his dying day, does not call for contention here. But it may be noted that certain forms of prison punishment that have supplanted corporal punishment, are infinitely less humane, and infinitely more destructive of the divinity in man, than is an honest spanking, inflicted in a fatherly way, out of a fatherly heart. Moreover, final reversal of public opinion in the matter further may be noted in editorials, such as are adumbrated in the following excerpt clipped from one of the papers that joined in the hue and cry for “investigation” of Mr. Brockway and his methods, to no other purpose than to break Mr. Brockway, and to abolish corporal punishment in the correctional plants of the State of New York: “How then is ruthlessness to be held securely in check? Not by making all nations humane, and scrupulous, and tender-hearted. It is the actual, not a millennial world with which we have to deal. It is not conversion of evil men that must be aimed at, but their control. A nation tempted to be brutal as Germany was, must be given to understand that the first display of barbarism in warfare would bring all other civilized countries on its back. In short, nothing but a solemn international agreement unitedly to oppose and to punish the ruthless making of war can assuredly prevent it.” The underscoring is the writer’s.

Bear in mind that a State bears relatively the same relation to the combined States of the world, as does the unit of a nation to the mass of that nation; in very fact, it comes about in America that the State is an enlargement of the international unit—thanks to the melting pot fallacy; then change the wording of the preceding paragraph to agree with the case as put up to America by polyglot pistol-toters who show no mercy. And then say why it is good to visit the extreme of corporal punishment on a “barbarous” nation, and bad to “shock” physically an individual bandit who cares not a wisp of straw about anything in the way of “punishment” short of physical pain? Say it, refusing at least the premise worn threadbare and stripped of ballast, to the effect that the injured sensibilities of the crudest of parasities are paramount over the common safety and progress; and say it realizing that the paper quoted now blares solemn truth for which it bitterly scored Mr. Brockway, who never went so far for pure repression as that paper now goes.

The fundamental principle germane to the underscored words in the editorial excerpt given is precisely that which is so frequently involved in the issue between the individual and the State. In any case, correction is spurious which does not carry to high-grade skill, backed by the highest grade of recreation, amusement, and moral teaching.