“‘Sure they could,’ responds Jack.... ‘And there could be a band concert.... And it would be a good sight better for us than being locked in our cells all day. You’d have fewer fights on Monday, I know that.’
“‘But how about the discipline! Would you let everybody out in the yard! What about those bad actors who don’t know how to behave! Won’t they quarrel and fight and try to escape?’
“‘But don’t you see, Tom, that they couldn’t do that without putting the whole thing on the bum, and depriving the rest of us of our privileges? You needn’t be afraid we couldn’t handle those fellows all right! Or why not let out only those men who have a good conduct bar! That’s it!’ He continues, enthusiastically warming up to the subject, ‘That’s it, Tom, a good conduct league, and give the privilege of Sunday afternoons to the members of the league.’”
This suggestion of Jack Murphy bore practical fruit. Soon after his “discharge,” Mr. Osborne, with the co-operation of the Superintendent of Prisons and the Warden of Auburn Prison, succeeded in establishing a Good Conduct League composed of prisoners, with officers elected by their fellow prisoners. The prisoners are given the liberty of the yard on Sunday afternoons, with a greatly reduced force of guards. They march to and from their cells and their work under the direction of prisoners. They prepare entertainments with the permission and approval of their officers. This plan has now been in operation for several months without the slightest disorder or accident and with marked improvement in the spirit and behaviour of the men.
This inspiring demonstration represents no new discovery by Jack Murphy or by Mr. Osborne. It is only a re-discovery of what was practiced by Captain Alexander Machonochie at Norfolk Island with transported British convicts seventy years ago. The writer saw Colonel Gardner Tufts doing similar things with convicts at Concord, Massachusetts, nearly thirty years ago, where prisoners were carrying on evening literary societies in perfect order without the presence of an officer. He saw similar things done by Captain Hickox at the Michigan State Prison more than twenty years ago, where the old chaplain gathered 200 men in a single room for an evening assembly with no officer present but himself. This same principal is being worked out in the State prisons of Oregon and Colorado, in the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield and in Doctor Gilmour’s splendid work at Guelph, Ontario. In all of these places it has been found that when you build a wall around a man he immediately wants to climb over it and that when you turn him loose and say, “I trust you and I know that you will not betray me,” there is almost always an instant response.
Mr. Osborne believes that this is the first instance of the application of the democratic principle to the management of convicts in a large convict prison, and that the Auburn experiment differs from others in that the prisoners there themselves originated the movement. He says that “the good conduct of the prisoners is in reality an outward expression of an outward spiritual impulse.” “Hence the name, ‘Mutual Welfare League,’; hence the motto, ‘Do good, make good.’ By doing good to others the man makes good for himself.”
Mr. Osborne’s demonstrations make it clear that those who believe that severity is an essential part of prison methods need not worry. Every convict is punished. When you pillory a man before the world as a criminal, transport him by public conveyance and march him through the streets in irons, put him behind prison walls, deprive him of his liberty, subject him absolutely to the will of another man who holds practically the powers of life and death, lock him in an ill-ventilated prison cell, 4½ by 7 feet (perhaps with an uncongenial cell mate), dress him in prison garb, exhibit him to curious visitors at 25 cents per head, subject him to strict compliance with thirty to fifty exacting rules on pain of loss of privileges and increase of term, restrict his correspondence to two censored letters per month, permit him to see his wife and children only in the presence of an officer and clad in prison garb—under these circumstances no one need question that the prisoner is punished, even though he may have the privilege of listening to a band concert and watching a baseball game once a week, conversing with his fellow convicts in subdued tones at meals and witnessing a moving picture show once or twice a month. Let it never be forgotten that the convict is punished!
Those who ridicule or condemn Mr. Osborne’s adventure make a mistake. It may have been sensational, but there was need of a sensation. His experiment was valuable because it was sincere and because it has brought out the truth. But it has brought out only part of the truth.
We wish that Mr. Osborne would secure an opportunity to be installed as prison guard in some one of the great prisons of the United States like the Illinois State Penitentiary, the Indiana State Prison of Michigan City, or the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa. Let him go incog., unknown to anyone except the prison warden, and let him come into the same intimate familiarity with the life and thinking of the prison guard as that which he has acquired in the case of the prison convict. He has already discovered the demoralizing tendency of life of the prison guard, and has discovered its chief flaw, namely, the ruling principle of fear, to which must be added the lack of psychological understanding of the prisoner and the entire lack of any adequate preliminary training. There must be taken into account also the fact that there exists among prison guards, in an exaggerated degree, the sentiment that it is dishonorable to “snitch” upon a fellow officer and, while a superior officer is likely to report a subordinate for cruelty or misconduct, the exposure of such actions by a guard of equal rank is very unusual. The difficulty can only be overcome by improving the personnel and raising the moral standards of prison guards. The day is not far distant when training schools for prison guards will hold the same relation to prison work which training schools for nurses hold to well-conducted hospitals.
We wish that Mr. Osborne, or someone equally discerning, might put himself in the place of the convict all the way through and tell an equally convincing story. Let him go forth with a five-dollar discharge suit on his back so marked as to betray to every passing policeman the shop where it was made. Let him go out with five dollars or possibly ten dollars in his pocket to satisfy a sharpened appetite and find a job in these hard times. Let him meet the watchful policeman, or the plain clothes man, who advises him that “We’re on to you.” Let him meet the discharged convict who solicits the loan of a dollar with implied threat of exposure. Let him take a job in good faith and render faithful service, only to be discharged at the end of the second week because somebody has given him away.