them. If he has earned the requisite number of marks by good conduct and industry, at the end of this nine months of isolation he is allowed to work with others, but always under strict guard, to prevent, as far as possible, any unnecessary talking. Compare this with our "congregate" system, as it is called. In our prisons all the criminals are herded together promiscuously. At the same bench or in the same shop, side by side, you can see the young beginner in crime and the hardened professional.
Talking, though nominally forbidden, is freely indulged in. Crimes are planned, experiences interchanged, and useful hints for future use outside are eagerly adopted; rebellions against the officials are arranged and made possible; the law-abiding convicts have their ears saluted with vile and contaminating language such as many of them have never heard before, and the whole system of the prison is tainted.
This is not overdrawn! I can produce prisoners to corroborate my statements. Is it any wonder that our prisons are thus made institutions for educating and graduating criminals who are worse after they leave than they were when they entered? By what right does the State send men to prison and compel them to breathe this air of contamination? The paramount idea in prison discipline should be the reformation of the prisoners. The State ought not to stoop to revenge by flogging or maltreating its convicts. But what can be further from successful reformation, or more dangerous to discipline, or more baneful in its effects, than this wholesale mixing of criminals,--for there are grades among criminals as much as among outsiders. This fact, which ought to be recognized and treated practically, is at present ignored.
In Pennsylvania, in the Eastern Penitentiary, they have adopted a plan of complete isolation (in theory at least) during the entire sentence of every prisoner. This, it seems to me, is going too far in the other direction, though I would not go to the same length that Dickens did in arraigning it. The nine months' preliminary isolation in the English system is the result of years of experimenting. Formerly the period was eighteen months, but that was thought to be excessive, and was abandoned.
Penology is a vast and perplexing study. In view of the frequency and increase of crimes in America, we shall do well, I think, to adopt such reasonable ideas from the Old World, not England alone, as have survived a practical test, and the temporary isolation and judicious grading of convicts are two such ideas which have been almost neglected by us, though their value and importance are recognized in England I know, and in France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany I am informed and believe.
We waste money enormously on our prisons. The buildings are too costly and the fare is too luxurious, so that large numbers of vagrants and other misdemeanants turn up, as a regular thing, over and over again, to live at the expense of the State in a style which they cannot themselves afford, and which, except for the accompanying stigma, is far superior to that of thousands of poor but honest men.
