The Wild North-Land, Conclusion [pp. 334-339]

334
Tff~ WILP WORTli~iAWP. [MARCH 14,
income from his labor, would be kept advised
of the affairs in the world without, and would
be prepared, in many ways, to enter again into
the society he had once wronged.
At no time during his incarceration would
a convict bear upon him any mark, insignia,
or dress, that would serve to distinguish him
from another convict in the first subdivision
or in the last. His place of living would be
the only indication of how much he had advanced.
There would be perpetually exerted upon
the prisoners a powerful pressure for them
to reform their sinister habits of thought and
their views of the purposes and uses of life.
Moving among them, day by day, without cessation, would be a number of clergymen, one
perhaps to every hundred convicts, whose
duty it would be to bear cheerful encouragenient, and to give discreet advice upon all
matters which lay within their province. They
~ould be present on all occasions. Their
teachings and gentle exhortations would fol~ow every advance or every vicissitude in the
prisoner's life, and they would never rest
"rhile a man's heart failed him, or his spirit
sank under the weight of his penalty.
Perhaps even this rough hint of what a
prison should be may be sufficient to make it
clear what one thing lies within the system
that would alone make it efficacious.
An opportunity to compete with one another upon even grounds will always keep
men up to a high standard of industry and
sobriety.
A prison system which keeps the convicts
either moving, or constantly fitting themselves to move, to a higher plane, cannot fail
if it be fairly conducted. One can hardly
conceive of a more disheartening thing than
to be suddenly caught out of the world and
dropped amid a horde of fellow-beings who,
aimless and listless, toil without advancing,
and live only to watch the shrinking of their
own souls.
A convict is but a man, plus a deformity
in mind, or, less, what other people find to be
a requisite to uprightness; and it is indeed a hopeless task to attempt to bully him
into righteousness. The simple "shutting
up" of men has contented us far too long;
we must soon begin to teach them. We now
seize a villain and throw him into a corral
of other villains, and grind down his body to
the severest tasks, and give him a sermon on
Sabbath mornings, and, at the same time, deinand that he be "reformed;" or, in other
words, having made his life many times more
liard to bear than it ever was, we ask that
his spirit become more beautiful and serene.
The common idea of our present interest
in imprisoning culprits is, that we mean to
punish; and there is litfJe doubt that the
idea is correct. We fancy that, so long as
imprisonment goes on, punishment goes on
that, while the locks are turned, and the eyes
of the guard are scrutinizing a prisoner, that
prisoner is grieving, and is hardening his heart
against temptations.
It is far from being true. Sorrow for his
position lasts but a little while with the convict, be he ever so sensitive or delicate-minded. Old prisoners invariably declare that
"punishment" (that is, that bitter exercise
of the mind that arises from regret, shame,
and sense of deprivation of freedom) lasts but
a very few months, and rarely more than a
year. After that, they say, the mind becomes
vacant. The presence of a thousand other
convicts helps them to forget the character
of a virtuous community, and they begin to
imbibe a dangerous and melancholy carelessness of their surroundings and fate.
It is after these brief flushes of real punishment expire that the terrible faults of our
prison-idea begin to tell. Instead of being
placed where he may rise, where he may
learn, where his conscience may be refreshed
and his spirit sustained, the unfortunate
criminal is driven in the same harness, in the
same track, and with the same associates, until the end of his "time," when he is turned
forth, broken, aimless, and disheartened, upon
a suspicious and reprehending world.
A sentence should condemn a criminal
to "separation" from his kind, and not to
the vengeance of his kind.
Every decree of a judge should direct
the prisoner to be incarcerated in such a
manner as will permit the stings of his conscience to have their full effect upon him, and
to afterward cause him to be released into
that system of graduated prisons that has
been described. A judge's mandate should,
for instance, read: "I sentence you to three
years in the State-prison at hard labor. The
first three or six months, as the warden may
deem advisable, shall be passed in seclusion,
and the remainder of your term in the reformatory. It is recommended that you enter the
reformatory at sub-prison No. 3.,,
With such opportunities for discretion as
these, a justice would be enabled to fit fairer
penalties to the cases he passes upon than
are now possible, for the combinations of penalties that he might make would be innumerable; and, as no criminal case exactly resembles another, a wide range of methods is imperatively demanded.
]But yet, out of the latitude that the law
now permits to a judge's discretion, faults of
the very gravest kind arise. The L~w allows
for example, infliction of a penalty of from
ten to twenty years for a commission of a
certain grade of crime. This range is something terrible. It is three times too large.
Ajudge should never be permitted to send a
man to prison in consequence of private judgment and bias for even thirteen years, when
the law decl~res that his crime may be sufficiently punished by an incarceration of ten.
The trouble that arises out of the present
mode springs from the widely-different interpretations of criminality by different judges
in different parts of the State. Criminals, on
exchanging notes in their workshops, too frequently find that their several sentences are
grossly at variance (in view of the crimes for
which they were imposed), and it is a matter
too well known to require any of the hundred
illustrations that may be had for the asking,
that nothing could be more ununiform and disproportionate, and at the same more cruel, than
the very great number of sentences that are
now being lived out in our penal institutions.
The defense against future encroachment
of error of this kind must exist in entirely
reorganized definition and classification of
crime. The present grades must be separated
into sub-grades, each having its exact description (as near as may be), and to them must
be well-proportioned penalties, leaving a latitude of not over three years for the discretion of the judge to act in. Thus a criminal
convicted of a crime whose minimum penalty
was ten years, might, in case his misdemeanor could not be interpreted as comin
within the next superior catagory, be punished with imprisonment for thirteen years,
in consequence of any peculiar atrocity in his
act that might render such severity advisable.
Still, when he encountered in prison another
man who had committed a greater crime, but
under mitigating circumstances, and who was
working out the minimum penalty of twelve
years, the difference between them would not
be an evidence of the slightest injustice. It
could never then occur, as it is now occurring, that a boy of sixteen is workin" out a
sentence in Sing-Sing Prison of fiftee'n years
for snatching a lady's pocket-book with six
dollars from her hand, while a full-grown
man, who shot another in cold blood, is living
out a term, in a very easy mode, of only four
years!
The actual condition of our prisons, aside
from all questions in regard to the theories
they represent, is deplorable. They are much
overcrowded, and their capacities are strained
to the very uttermost.
When you reflect for a moment upon this
fact, you will see how pregnant it is with
causes for real alarm.
The tide of criminals that flows through
our court-rooms is rapidly becoming too great
to be received with safety into the prisons we
have.
This indicates that there is abroad in the
community of wretches a fierce and rampant
wickedness. The later efficiency of the police and severity of the justices have, no doubt,
something to do with the swelling of the
groups that daily enter the prison-doors, but
the true causes are far deeper than that.
One of them, and it is the one to which reference here may be fittingly made, is the flowing back of the current of old convicts upon
the places in which their original wickedness
was ingrained in their spirits, and inextricably sealed into their hearts.
Our old errors are now bearing bitter
fruit for us. Our old neglect to treat our
prisoners with thoughts for their future conduct, and our persistencc in condemning them
to the life of slaves, are now operating to our
danger and to their everlasting misery.
It is indeed time to ask that reform do
something for us. Here is a plain, definite,
and tangible evil, gathering over it, as a
marsh gathers a fog, a cloud of wrongs that
cannot but yield us a dreadful rain.
Aaa~av Wzas~zn, Ja.
THE WILD NORTH-LAND.
C'OiYC~L USWN.
~ASfTING off from camp, on the morning
0 the 12th, the travelers pushed into tl~e
mouth of the cafion. At once their troubles
began. The steep walls of smooth rock rose
directly out of the water-sometimes washed