The Man Behind the Bars

by Winifred Louise Taylor

"Five thousand dollars was embezzled from a Los Angeles theatre and dissipated in high living by a man twenty-one years old. He confessed and received this sentence from the judge:

"'You shall stay at home nights. You shall remain within the limits of this county. You shall not play billiards or pool, frequent cafés or drink intoxicating liquors, and you shall go immediately to work and keep at it till you pay back every dollar that you stole. Violate these terms and you go to prison.'"[14]

This practice of making restitution one of the conditions of probation is spreading rapidly. Here we have a method hitherto unapproached of securing all-round, common-sense justice, directly in line also with sound social economics. Mr. Morrison Swift has well said of a term in prison that "it breaks the current between the man and life, so that when he emerges it is hard to form connections again. He has lost his job, and too often health, nerve, and self-respect are impaired. These obstacles to reformation are swept away when a man retains his connection with the community by working in it like anybody else."

Another factor in the scheme of probation is that it brings the delinquent directly in touch with a friendly, guiding, and helping hand, placing him at once under good influences; for it is the duty of the probation officer to secure for his charge environment calculated to foster reformation: he becomes indeed his brother's keeper.

While modern ideas have thus been applied in the rescue of the individual before he has become identified with criminal life, even more marked has been the invasion of recent movements into the very stronghold of the penitentiary itself.

The twentieth century marks the beginning of the crusade against tuberculosis. Physicians, philanthropists, and legislators combined against the fearful ravages of this enemy to the very life of the people. Generous appropriations were given by the state for the cure of the disease and every effort was made to trace the sources of the evil. And then it transpired that, while the state with her left hand was establishing out-of-door colonies for the treatment of tuberculosis, with her right hand she was maintaining laboratories for the culture of the fatal germs, and industriously scattering the seeds in localities where they would be most fruitful. In other words, the very walls of our prisons had become beds of infection. Doctor J. B. Ransome, of New York State, finds that from forty to sixty per cent of the deaths in all prisons are from tuberculosis; at times the mortality has run as high as eighty per cent. He tells us also that in the United States to-day there are twenty thousand tubercular prisoners, most of whom will return to the congested districts and stuffy tenements where the disease is most rapidly and virulently spread.[15]

He urges as of the utmost importance that infected prisons be destroyed, and that convicts be given work in the open air when possible; and that light, air, exercise, more nourishing food, and more healthful conditions generally be substituted for the disease-breeding conditions under which prisons have always existed. Thus, apart from all humanitarian considerations, public health demands radical changes in prisons and in the lives of the prisoners.

The automobile, the autocrat of the present day, has little of the missionary spirit; but it has made its imperious demand for good roads all over the country, and legislation now authorizing convict labor on State roads is not only responding to this demand but is partly solving the vexed problem of the employment of convicts.

How far the men responsible for the revolution in the management of prisoners have studied these trends of the times I do not know. Most of these men have doubtless builded better than they knew. All the winds of progress, moving from every direction, seem to be concentrating in one blast destined to crumble the walls of our prisons as the walls of Jericho are said to have crumbled under the blast of the trumpets of the hosts of the Lord. It may even be that the hosts of the Lord are back of these winds of progress.

The introduction of this reform movement required men of exceptional force and ability, and in answer to this demand just such men are coming to the front. The United States has already developed a remarkable line of captains of industry, but not less remarkable men are taking this humanitarian field to-day.