Act II, Scene 16.
Object: Gordon pleads for a better system of justice.
Jim Poor (to Travesty): What shall I do now, sir?
Travesty (to Jim Poor): Gordon has asked me to postpone this case.
Jim Poor: Postpone it! What reason has he got?
Travesty: I’d like to know (holding up the evidence). Don’t you see, Gordon, that these men are a couple of habitual criminals? Why, they’ve been in prison time and time again! And even that didn’t do them any good!
Gordon: Of course, it didn’t! Do you suppose that to take these men and shut them away in prison—to make them walk in a degrading manner—to garb them in a humiliating fashion—to force them to the performance of tasks without compensation—or worse, to submit them to the horrors of enforced solitude and idleness of mind and body! Is there in such a system anything influencing them for good?—sending them out useful, honest and ambitious members of society?
Travesty: Why, Gordon, these men are shameless! Nothing will reform them—not even the severest measures. They go right back to crime at the first opportunity.
Gordon: Because imprisonment as a means of reformation is known to be useless! No one will trust the released convict! What chance has Red Mike got? Who would give Big Frank employment? The State releases them and tells them to go their way and sin no more, after the State has made it impossible for them to do anything else but sin! They have no chance to rehabilitate themselves.
Travesty: They wouldn’t take it if it were given them. You can’t reform them. “Once a crook always a crook.” They must be taught that if they break the law they shall suffer for it, swiftly and surely. Am I not right, your Honor?