It is greatly to be regretted that the juvenile courts, now so efficient in rescuing the young offender from the criminal ranks, had not begun their work before the second or third offence had blotted hope from the future of so many of the younger men in our penitentiaries; for the indeterminate sentence under the board of pardons has done little to mitigate the fate of those whose criminal records show previous convictions.
Hitherto we have been dealing with crimes. But the time is at hand when we shall deal with men.[5]
FOOTNOTES:
[3] We instinctively visualize "confirmed criminals" with faces corresponding to their crimes. But our prejudices are often misleading. I once handed to a group of prison commissioners the newspaper picture of a crew of a leading Eastern university. The crew were in striped suits and were assumed to be convicts, with the aid of a little suggestion. It was interesting to see the confidence of the commissioners as they pronounced one face after another "the regular criminal type." The fact is that with one or two exceptions my "habituals," properly clothed, might have passed as church members, some of them even as theological students.
[4] I seldom heard the terms "habitual" or "incorrigible" used by men of his class, but the "professionals" seemed to have a certain standing with each other.
[5] For full discussion of this matter the reader is referred to "Individualism in Punishment," by M. Salielles, one of the most valuable contributions yet made to the study of penology. Also Sir James Barr's "The Aim and Scope of Eugenics" demands the recognition of the individual in the criminal.
CHAPTER IV
Alfred Allen was one of my early acquaintances among prisoners, having had the good fortune to receive his sentence on a second conviction before the habitual-criminal act was in force in Illinois. Our introduction happened in this way: in one of my interviews with a young confidence man, who did not hesitate to state that he had always been studying how to sell the imitation for the genuine, to get something for nothing, my attention was diverted by his suddenly branching off into a description of his cell-mate.