Recently a new Board of Delegates has been elected, and one of their first acts was to adopt a probation system instead of the definite sentence, in the cases of offenders against the League. A committee of parole has been established, which shall visit the suspended men at least once a week, and as soon as the committee thinks that the state of mind of the suspended men warrants the action the Parole Committee recommends to the Executive Committee the restoration of the men to the full privileges of the League.
“A big test is coming,” said one delegate, “when the members of the League go out. It will be up to them to justify by their conduct after prison the principles they accepted here and the privileges they received.” And the story was told us of one young man who was the first of the delegates to receive his release from prison. He is said to have made a hard fight to stay straight, mainly because he didn’t want to “put the League in bad” by having one of its officers go crooked.
And here opens up still another far-reaching possibility. Why should not the members of the League, once released from prison, form committees in the various cities and communities of the State for the purpose of helping the still later ones who come out of Auburn to make good? Heretofore the best that we of the Prison Association of New York have achieved has been to employ big-hearted and sympathetic parole officers—real friends of the released inmates. And we have scored good success. But it has been always a case of supervision and encouragement by the officer.
And so this was the proposition which we members of the Board of Managers of the Prison Association made to the Executive Committee of the League: “Will you co-operate with us in helping released prisoners from Auburn make their parole satisfactorily? Will you have small groups of ex-League members ready in various parts of the State to work with our county committees to the one end of tiding and helping the discharged and released prisoner over the hard months that immediately follow his release?”
With enthusiasm the suggestion has been accepted. One delegate spoke up: “I’m going out next month. I don’t know where I’ll get work, but I’m willing to go anywhere the League sends me. I’m willing and eager to give my life to this work, if I’m wanted!”
Such, briefly, is a picture of the Mutual Welfare League. That it is significant in its possibilities no one can doubt. What its outcome will be a year from now it would be hazardous to forecast. It may be but a burst ahead of the general humanitarian movement that characterizes prison reform throughout the country. It may be that when the altruistic enthusiasm that now holds the more thoughtful members of the League wanes, as wane it will to some extent, there will come a slump, and an arrogance of demand for more privileges that will give to the reactionary among prison administrators a chance to say, “I told you so!”
But I much doubt it. The greater danger will come from possible stupidity of prison administration, a change perhaps of authority at the prison, and a consequent lack of sympathy with the purpose of the League.
One thing seems sure. Prisons and reformatories will not go back to the old-line repressive and often brutal treatment. The transition to what will ultimately become the new treatment of delinquents is being attended by various experiments, often startling and sometimes amazing. We are not a Nation that thinks for a long time before acting in prison reform. Our successes have come so far largely from experimenting, retaining the successes and scrapping the failures. How much of the honor system, the back-to-the-land movement, the road-work movement, and the increasing classification of prisoners will be scrapped, it is much too early as yet to say.
The final test will probably be along two lines. We shall determine how the “new freedom” works within prison walls, applying the acid tests of health, increased efficiency in labor, reformative value, education, and general training for a decent life in society. We shall also have to show, if we are friends of the “new freedom,” that such treatment within the prison produces a larger number of permanent reformations after prison, a higher percentage of those who make good.
In short, the ultimate test is going to be not the increased possibility afforded the prisoner of enduring his prison term, nor yet the increased ease of administration of correctional institutions, but fairly and squarely as to whether society, from which all these prisoners come, and which has been the sufferer by them, is to be permanently better protected from their further depredations by giving them what today seems to be a square deal within the prisons, and a decent chance to make good after they come out.