CHAPTER XV

The basic principle of reform in those who prey upon society is the changing of energies destructive into energies constructive. It is the opening of fresh channels for human forces. Change of environment, the breaking of every association connected with criminal pursuits, life in the open in contrast with the tainted atmosphere of crowded tenements and dance halls—all this has a healthful, liberating influence on the mind; abnormal obsessions are relaxed, different brain-cells become active, and the moral fibre of the man as well as his physical being absorbs vital elements. That the laborer is entitled to a share in the fruits of his labor is true the world over, and industry and efficiency are stimulated by recognition of the relation of achievement to reward.

Strict repressive discipline applied to organized enslavement of labor is in direct violation of all these principles. The penal colony seems a rational method of dealing with those whose [Pg 283]permanent removal from our midst is deemed necessary. Time and again have penal colonies given satisfactory solution to the criminal problem. Virginia and Maryland absorbed the human exports from English courts, and their descendants joined in the building of a great nation; while the penal colony in Australia resulted in a civilization of the first rank. While the deportation of our criminals to-day may be neither practicable nor desirable, the establishment of industrial penal communities in every State, on a profit-sharing basis, is both practicable and desirable, and would unquestionably result in the permanent reform of many who are now a menace to public safety.

Notwithstanding that progressive wardens are accomplishing all-important changes in their domains, permanent reform work for convicts demands a number of concessions in legislation. Until the contract system is wholly and finally abolished in favor of the state-use system the power of even the best warden will be limited. With the state-use system and the prison farm the prisoners have a variety in opportunity of industrial training almost as great as that offered on the outside.

[Pg 284]

That the earnings of prisoners, beyond the cost of their maintenance, should either be credited to the man himself or sent to the family dependent upon him is but fair to the prisoner, and would relieve the county from which he is sent from taxation toward the support of the man's family. This is so obvious that it is now widely advocated for both economic and humanitarian reasons, and in several States has already been adopted.

Another concession is of still greater importance, since its neglect has been in direct violation not only of every principle of justice but of common every-day honesty. This concession is the recognition of the duty of the state to make what reparation is possible to the man who has suffered imprisonment for a crime of which he was innocent.

Years ago, during one of my visits to our penitentiary, a lawyer of wide experience made the remark: "From what I know of court proceedings I suppose twenty per cent of these convicts are innocent of the charge for which they are here." I did not credit that statement, and afterward repeated it to another lawyer, who said: "I should estimate the percentage even higher."[Pg 285] I did not believe that estimate either; nor do I now believe it. But having worked up the cases and secured the pardons of two innocent men, and having personally known two other men imprisoned for crimes in which they took no part, I know that innocent men are sent to prison. Lawyers are prone to dispose of such instances with the offhand remark, "Well, they might not have been guilty of that particular act, but no doubt they had committed crimes for which they escaped punishment." I have positive knowledge of only those four cases, but in none of them was the convicted man from the criminal class. Another remark which I have met is this: "Doubtless there are innocent men in prison, but there are more guilty ones who escape," which reminds one of Charles Lamb's admission: "Yes, I am often late to business in the morning, but then I always go home early in the afternoon." Plausible as the excuse sounds, it but aggravates the admission.

It happened some years ago in my own State that a working man was convicted of killing another. Henry Briggs asserted his innocence, but a network of plausible evidence was drawn about him and he was sent to prison for life.[Pg 286] His widowed mother had faith in his innocence and paid two thousand dollars to lawyers, who promised to secure her son's pardon but accomplished nothing in that direction. Briggs had been in prison some ten years when he told his story to me and I believed that he told the truth. His home town was across the State from me, but I wrote the ex-sheriff, who was supposed to know all about the case, that the prisoner's mother would give another thousand dollars to him if he could secure evidence of Henry's innocence and obtain his pardon. A long and interesting correspondence followed, and at the end of two years evidence of the man's innocence was secured and Henry Briggs was a free man. In his last letter the sheriff wrote me: "To think that all these twelve years that convicted man had been telling the absolute truth and it never occurred to any one to believe him until you heard his story." But that ex-sheriff, who had collected his sheriff's fees and mileage for taking an innocent man to prison—he was really indebted to the prisoner for a neat little sum paid by the county—yet that sheriff had no scruples in taking the thousand dollars from Mrs. Briggs for righting a wrong which, he frankly admitted to me, he[Pg 287] had taken part in perpetrating. Now, in common honesty, in dollars and cents, the county from which Henry was sent owed the Briggs mother and son at least ten thousand dollars; instead of which the mother was left an impoverished widow, while the son, with youth and health gone, had to begin life over again.

When men are maimed for life in a railroad accident the owners of the road are obliged to pay a good round sum in compensation. The employer is liable for damages when an employee is injured by defective machinery; but to the victims of our penal machinery no compensation is made by the state, at whose hands the outrage was committed. It is true that the injured party is at liberty to bring suit against the individual who charged him with the crime, but as the burned child dreads the fire so the innocent man convicted of a crime dreads the courts.

But we are waking up to a sense of this most cruel robbery; the robbery of a man's liberty, his earnings, his reputation, and too often his health; and we are coming to see that compensation from the state, on receiving convincing evidence of the man's innocence, is only the man's just due—is even far less than fair play.

[Pg 288]

To Wisconsin belongs the honor of taking the lead in this most important reform, since in 1913 Wisconsin passed a law insuring compensation in money from the State in every case where proof could be furnished that one was not guilty of the crime for which he had suffered imprisonment. A more just and righteous law was never passed. Money alone can never compensate for unjust imprisonment, but the only atonement possible is financial compensation and public vindication.

The measures so far considered are all remedial; but while we have recently made rapid progress in measures applied after men have been sent to prison we have thought little of preventive measures. And just here we face again the spirit of the times.

All along the latter half of the nineteenth century men of science—chemists, biologists, physicians—were studying preventive measures to stem the tide of evil in the form of disease. Previously medical science had been directed chiefly to battling with diseased conditions already developed; but under the leadership of Pasteur and Lord Lister the medical world was aroused to the fact that it was possible to avert the terrible ravages[Pg 289] of many of the diseases which fifty years earlier had been accepted as visitations from Providence. Henceforth "preventive measures" became watchwords among men devoting themselves to the physical welfare of the race; and "preventive measures" have also a most important relation to the moral welfare of the community, and the way is opening for their application.

For instance, the imprisonment of innocent men would be largely prevented by the abolition of all fees in connection with arrests and convictions. The system of rewards for arrests and convictions is absolutely demoralizing to justice; for as long as the whole battalion of men employed to protect the public have a direct financial interest in the increase of crime it is unreasonable to expect decrease in the number of men confined in our jails and prisons. An official inspector of jails and police stations in my own State reports that she has frequently had police officers admit to her that it was a great temptation to arrest some poor devil, since the city paid fees for such arrests; and she further states that in Chicago the entire basis of the city penal administration is fees, and she adds: "What better inducement could be offered to officials to penalize some unoffending[Pg 290] stranger looking for work?" All the evils arising from this abominable and indefensible arrangement would be in a measure decreased by the simple process of abolishing fees and increasing salaries. This has already been done in some localities; and doubtless the coming generation will wonder how the feeing system could ever have been adopted or tolerated.

The most impregnable stronghold of inhumanity in dealing with persons suspected of connection with crime is our police stations; especially is this so in our larger cities. The police station and the feeing system are the parent of one most barbarous custom; an evil most elusive, its roots, like the roots of the vicious bindweed, so far underground, with such complicated entanglement of relationships, as to be almost ineradicable, involving in some instances State attorneys of good standing, detectives, policemen, sheriffs—in fact, more or less involving the whole force of agents supposed to be protectors of the public. This abuse is called the third degree, or the sweat-box.

A man is arrested, accused of a crime or of knowledge of a crime. Before he is given any trial in any court unscrupulous means are resorted[Pg 291] to in order to extort an admission of crime or complicity in crime—or even of knowledge connected with a crime.

A physician who knew all the circumstances recently called my attention to the case of a woman supposed to have some knowledge that might implicate her husband in a burglary. The woman was an invalid. After being kept for forty-eight hours without food or water, forced to walk when she seemed likely to fall asleep from exhaustion, she was told that her husband had deserted her, taken her child, and gone off with another woman. She was by this time in a frantic condition, and when told that her torture would cease with her admission of her husband's guilt, too distracted to question his desertion of her, she gave false evidence against her husband and was set free.

The husband was in no way implicated in the crime, but the consequences of the affair were disastrous to his business. He had never thought of deserting his wife, but it was part of the scheme of the third degree to keep the husband and the lawyer whom he had engaged from seeing the woman until the end sought was accomplished.

A young lawyer told me of a most revolting[Pg 292] third degree scene witnessed by him, and he told me the story as an instance of the cleverness which devised a terrible nervous shock in order to throw a supposedly guilty woman off her guard; the shock was enough to have driven the woman raving insane.

Whenever I have spoken of this subject to those familiar with sweat-box methods, the evil has been frankly admitted and unhesitatingly condemned, but I hear always the same thing: "Yes, we know that it is a terrible abuse, but we have not been able to prevent it." It is simply a public crime that such a system should be tolerated for one day. Mr. W. D. Howells has well said: "The law and order which defy justice and humanity are merely organized anarchy."

I have not hesitated to brand my own State with this third-degree evil, but I understand it is practised also in other States on the pretext that the end justifies the means—but what if the end is the life imprisonment of an innocent man? I have in mind a young man who was subjected to four days of sweat-box torture. At the end of that time, when even death by hanging offered at least a respite from his tormentors, he signed[Pg 293] a statement, drawn up by those tormentors, to the effect that he was guilty of murder. The boy was only eighteen, but was sent to prison for life, though it now seems likely that he had nothing to do with the crime. However, it is difficult to secure pardon for a man sent to prison on his own confession; and there is just where the injustice is blackest: it cuts from under a man's feet all substance in a subsequent declaration of innocence, for it stands on the records of the case that he confessed his guilt.

There are of course many cases where the third degree is not resorted to; indeed, its use seems to be mainly confined to the cities where police stations are a ring within a ring. In smaller towns after the arrest is made the case usually comes to trial with no previous unauthorized attempt to induce the prisoner to convict himself, and, if the accused is a man of means who can employ an able lawyer, the trial becomes a game between the opposing lawyers, and both sides have at least a fair chance. Not so when the court appoints a lawyer for the poor man. The prosecution then plays the game with loaded dice; for it is the custom for the court to appoint the least experienced fledgling in the profession.[Pg 294] Los Angeles, Cal., has recently introduced an admirable measure to secure a nearer approach to justice in the courts for the poor man, by the appointment of a regular district attorney for the defence of accused persons who are unable to pay for a competent lawyer. This appointment of a public defender has been made solely with the aim of securing justice for the poor and for the ignorant foreigner; it is a most encouraging step in the right direction, and seems a hopeful means of exterminating the sweat-box system.

We cannot hope to accomplish much with preventive measures until we frankly face the causes of the evils we would reduce. That the saloon is a prolific source of crime the records of all the courts unquestionably prove; it is also one of the causes of the poverty which in its turn becomes a cause of crime. The saloon is wholly in the hands of the public, to be modified, controlled, or abolished according to the dictates of the majority. This is not so easy as it sounds, but when we realize that while the saloon-keeper reaps all the profits of his business it is the taxpayer who is obliged to pay the expense of the crimes resulting from that business, the question becomes one of public economy as well as of public[Pg 295] morals. The force which makes for social evolution is bound to win in the long run, and the gradual elimination of the saloon as it stands to-day is inevitable; and certain it is that with the control of the saloon evil there will be a marked reduction in the number of crimes committed.

The criminal ranks receive annual reinforcement from a number of sources now tolerated by a long-suffering public. We still have our army of tramps, caused in part by defective management of county jails where men are supported in enforced idleness at the expense of the working community; the result also of unstable industrial conditions and far greater competition, since women, by cutting wages, have so largely taken possession of industrial fields. Constitutional restlessness and aversion to steady work also cause men and boys to try the easy if precarious tramp life; and in hard-luck times the slip into crime comes almost as a matter of course.

The trail of the banishment of the tramp evil has already been blazed through Belgium, Holland, and Switzerland by the development of the farm colony to which every tramp is rigidly sent. There he is subjected to an industrial training[Pg 296] involving recognition of individual ability, and development along the lines to which he is best adapted. These farm colonies are schools of industry where every man is obliged to work for his living while there, and is fitted to earn a living when he leaves. The results of these measures have been altogether satisfactory, and we have but to adapt their methods to conditions in this country to accomplish similar results. The elimination of the tramp is a necessary safeguard to the community; and to the tramp himself it is rescue from cumulative degradation.

Mr. Fielding-Hall, an Englishman, at one time magistrate, later warden of the largest prison in the world, and the most radical of humanitarians, after years of exhaustive study of the causes of crime, declares that society alone is responsible. He adds: "It is no use saying that criminals are born, not made; they are made and they are made by society." And it is true that in every community where human beings are herded in foul tenements, herded in crowded, unsanitary factories, or live their days underground in mines, we shall continue to breed a class mentally, morally, and physically defective, some of whom will inevitably be subject to criminal outbreaks.[Pg 297] Poverty causes ill health, and malnutrition saps the power of self-control.

Medical science is even now telling us that there is probably no form of criminal tendency unrelated to physiological defects: brain-cells poisoned by disease; brain-cells defective either through heredity—as in the offspring of the feeble-minded—or enfeebled through malnutrition in childhood, the offspring of want; brains slightly out of balance; and, more rarely, the criminal impulse developed as the result of direct injury to the brain caused by a blow. Crimes are also committed under temporary abnormal conditions such as "dual personality" or double consciousness. In this diagnosis of crime we find ourselves next door to a hospital; and this class of criminals does closely parallel what alienists call "borderland cases," while the unscientific penologist has carelessly classified them as "degenerates." Physicians tell us that when Lombroso was studying "types," if he had invaded the charity hospitals of large cities he would have found the same stunted, undernourished, physically defective specimens of humanity that he stigmatized as the "criminal type."

Of two prisoners whom I knew well one was[Pg 298] subject to slight attacks of catalepsy, the other to epilepsy; each of these men had committed a murder, and each said to me the same thing: "I had no reason to kill that person and I don't know why I did it." Both these men were religious and extremely conscientious; but when the "spells" came on them they were irresponsible as a leaf blown by the wind; and while passionately regretting their deeds of horror they seemed always to regard the act as something outside themselves.

None of us yet understand the interaction between the mental and physical in the nature of man, but the fact of this interdependence is clear; and while progressive prison wardens are sifting the human material thrown into their hands, giving comparative freedom to "honor men," and industrial training and elementary education to those within the walls, they do not ignore the fact that there is a residue—they are in all our prisons—a residue of men who cannot stand alone morally; handicapped by causes for which they may not be responsible they cannot hope to be "honor men" for they are moral invalids—often mental invalids as well. That they should be kept under restraint goes without [Pg 299]saying. They need the control of a firm yet flexible hand, and they should be under direct medical supervision; for back of their crimes may be causes other than bad blood.[16]

Improved factory laws, better housing of the poor, the enforcement of regulations for public hygiene, the application of some of the saner theories of eugenics, the work of district nurses, all these are on the way to reduce the number of diseased or abnormal individuals who fall so readily into crime. Already we have several recorded instances when a blow on the head had caused uncontrollable criminal impulses, where skilful brain surgery removed the pressure, and with the restoration of the normal brain the nature of the individual recovered its moral balance. Every large city should have its psychopathic detention hospital in connection with its courts, to be resorted to in all cases where there[Pg 300] is doubt of the responsibility of any person accused of crime, and every large penitentiary should have its psychopathic department for men sent to prison from smaller towns.

But when all is said and done, when the main sources of crime are recognized and controlled, when sound sociology unites with Christianity as the basis of management in every prison, when the "criminal type" of Lombroso has been finally consigned to the limbo of exploded theories, crime will still be with us, simply because human nature is human nature; and whatever else human nature may be it is a violent explosive, whether we agree with Saint Paul as to "the old Adam" or believe with the evolutionist that we are slowly emerging from the brute and that the beast of prey still sleeps within us—not sleeping but rampant in men and women allied in white-slave traffic and in those responsible for the wholesale slaughter of mankind and the destruction of property caused by war. Nothing short of the complete regeneration of human nature can banish crime; and after we who call ourselves "society" have done our best human nature will continue to break out in lawless acts. As long as we have poverty in our midst desperate want will revolt in desperate deeds, and poverty we shall have until the race[Pg 301] has reached a higher average of thrift and efficiency, and industrial conditions are developed on a basis of fairness to all; and where there is a weak link in the moral nature of a man undue pressure of temptation, brought to bear on that link, will cause it to break, even while in his heart the man may be hungering and thirsting for righteousness. When the science of eugenics has given its helping hand it will still be baffled by the appearance of the proverbial black sheep in folds where heredity and environment logically should have produced snowy fleece; and who among us dare assert that no infusion of bad blood discolors his own tangled ancestry?

All the evils of poverty, vice, and crime are but expressions of imperfection of the human nature common to us all. The warp of the fabric is the same, various as are the colors and tones, and the strength of the threads of which the individual lives are woven. Whether or not we realize it, all our efforts toward social reform indicate a growing consciousness of the oneness of humanity.

With all our imperfections, is not human nature sound at heart? Do we not love that which seems to us good and hate the apparent evil? We do not realize the insidious working of evil in [Pg 302]ourselves; but when it is revealed to us objectively, when it is thrown into relief by an outbreak of evil deeds in others, our healthy instinctive impulse is to crush it. Surely back of the religious and the legal persecutions has been the desire to exterminate apparent evil; that desire is still with us but we are learning better methods of handling it than to unleash the bloodhounds of cruelty. We are beginning to understand that evil can be conquered only by good.

As the words of the Founder of Christianity first led me into my prison experience, after all these years of study of the subject I find myself coming out at the same door wherein I went, and believing that every theory of social reform, including all the 'ologies, resolves itself in the last analysis to a wise conformity to the Golden Rule. On the fly-leaf of a little note-book which I carried when visiting the penitentiary were pencilled these words: "The Christian religion is the ministry of love and common sense," and I have lived to see the teaching of Christianity forming the basis of prison reform, and science clasping the hand of religion in this relation of man to man. Henceforth I shall believe that nothing is too good to be true, not even the coming of universal peace.

The End