“The visits of friends are not the cruel mockeries of a steel screen and a keeper’s open eye and ear. The prisoner can sit side by side with his visitor and talk free of jealous watch, for a full hour. He is permitted to buy luxuries—fruit, pies, candies, tobacco—and the prison will take care of them for him so that they sha’n’t spoil. He has his private bank account and can earn money by work for himself after the regular hours. They can even trade among themselves, by a special transfer system. When their private supplies arrive—two and three tons some days—the prison office looks like a grocery store.
“If a system has ever been devised which has succeeded in transforming a convicted criminal into an honest man, this is the one. There are very, very few men who go out of Charlestown prison who, at the time, are not honest, law-abiding citizens.”
Once, when a visiting warden saw General Bridges’ convicts pass him and his host, he remarked:
“Why, say, general, these men don’t look like prisoners. They walk upright and look you straight in the face. I haven’t a man in my penitentiary who doesn’t look hangdog.”
“They look at us like men,” rejoined Bridges, “because they feel like men. And they feel like men because they are treated like men.”
“Oh, that may all be, general. I have men that stare at me sometimes, too. But these prisoners actually smile and laugh at you. Maybe they’re just feeling good. But what gets me most is that you speak to them just as they do to you.”
That criticism took all the wind out of the general’s intellectual sails. All he could do was to answer lamely:
“Why, my dear sir, if I didn’t speak to them they’d be offended. They’d imagine I was angry over something.”