“Segregation and classification,” she says, “this is the next practical move in our prison reform. What classification has been done has been for the most part according to chronological age, which is absurd.
“An examination of 427 cases from the reformatory showed that, should all women under fifty be grouped in one institution, the long-sentence women—almost invariably first offenders, and of a much higher type of intelligence than short-sentence women—would be classed with a large number of alcoholics and some of the worst of the sex cases, together with a number of definitely feeble-minded. In fact, almost every type of criminal would come into the under-thirty class, and by no means are the young offenders the least hardened and the most reformable.
“Segregation, as we are fast coming to realize, must be according to degree of viciousness and according to intellectual and not chronological age. And the classification must be greater. The cottage plan is the only one by which successful reform work can be accomplished, such a plan as Dr. Davis has worked out at Bedford Hills, for example.
“Under such a system, which allows for very small groups, the women can be carefully graded, the downright vicious woman kept from the one whose weakness is nothing more than alcohol or vagrancy. Under such a system we can care for the extreme cases, which are always the most perplexing problem—those violent cases for which we now have to employ the punishment cell. For these women, who are often border-line cases, should be prescribed steady out-of-door work. My idea is to have a sort of movable shack and a cage where a violent case of this kind could have the opportunity for solitary confinement, which undoubtedly is the best treatment, and for working in the ground, making things grow.
“Of course the prison should not have its progress clogged by these border-line cases any more than it should be hampered by care of the distinctly feeble-minded. Out of 427 women 17 per cent. of those below 30 years of age were found to be definitely feeble-minded, 25 per cent. mentally subnormal, making nearly half of the number with some marked mental defect. These should, obviously, be separated from those who are mentally sound and given special instruction, which would be the case were we to classify according to intellectual age.”
Sherborn Prison is, because of lack of funds, a long way from the cottage system—it is still a prison, built on the dormitory plan. But its “cells” are fair sized rooms, clean, and with a large window to let in the sunshine. There are colored pictures and postcards tacked on the whitewashed walls of most of them. The room of one of the “lifers” was unusually attractive, potted plants at the window, a rocking chair, and a table covered with a spotless cloth, edged with a border of the finest kind of crochet made by the prisoner herself.
And just before lights-out time Saturday evening it was curious to go down the corridor and see outside of each barred door a neatly folded policemen’s suit and helmet, or a pirate’s gay colored cape, with dagger and cocked hat on top. And behind the barred doors could be heard, in a subdued undertone:
His capacity for innocent enjoyment,
’Cent enjoyment,
Is just as great as any honest man’s,