Part 13

Why, for example, in response to the criminal's oblique instincts and intentions, feature such as bestial pugilism, and flatten out such as trades teaching until it stands but a loose-jointed skeleton of what it must be to be effective? Why place embargo on preparedness to earn an honest living, and at the same time make unblushing bid for the murderous parasite? Why put a premium on activities, pursuing which in free life first made a brutal drone-sport of a lad, then headed him for bolts and bars?

All-sufficient of wholesome play and amusement the imprisoned should have; but the moment either engages prisoners to the extent of crowding out of their minds the essential exaction upon them to concentrate for correction of that responsible for their plight as prisoners, that moment it becomes perniciously non-reformative. Furthermore, prison play should be confined to the periods set aside for play for all. Nothing of the kind could be more subversive of reformation, than by-play by groups, the howling by members of which is plainly heard by the general population, supposed to be fully engaged at work in the shops and departments of the place. Aside from bad feeling engendered through playing favorites at play, the inevitable effect of the by-play is to kill concentration through switching the minds to play of those who are at work.

At gymnastic exercise for special groups, noise should be held within bounds, exercises prescribed for the purpose in hand rather than to amuse, and the minds of the lads fashioned for their all-around improvement, instead of to the idea that the exercises are planned from no higher purpose than pleasurable relaxation.

There will be isolated instances whereof just pure play for a time will be best; but such cases can and should be handled judiciously during the periods set aside for play.

Essentially and without reserve, manifestations at play that make for the brute should be sharply checked. They are of the devil's own, imposed upon up-coming lads through the medium of sporting mongers.

Even in the Army and Navy of the United States, where lads must be trained to take care of themselves with the last device of individual power, justification rests with the military authorities for brutality inseparable with fistic encounters and wrestling matches. There are better ways by which to coördinate eye, brain and brawn for offense and defense, either in peace or for war; ways that fit the individual weapon; ways that confine the thoughts of the unit to use of that weapon for war; and ways that do not inoculate with the itch to knock someone's "block" off.

Such as fisticuffs has been employed by Uncle Sam to aid in recruiting, then purely for the amusement of the onlookers. No normal man does or could claim to be edified by seeing human blood spilled, or by agonizing with the lad rolling in agony. Again, Uncle Sam's soldiers and sailors are the pick of the nation. In bulk they can be trusted to avoid the deadline of intrinsically brutal manifestations.

With thousands of convicted felons, as with the ninety-and-nine of habitual criminals, it is essentially different. They are brutal by nature. Many are confined for committing the most ruthless of brutality. Therefore, such as prize fights, put on in a correctional plant, are utterly indefensible. Far from being fed up with bestial exhibitions (?) such lads need above all to be weaned from instinct that demands such form of amusement.

Amusement! Out of seeing a battered lad laced into submission! Could anything be farther from that for which the average taxpayer means his money shall be expended? And what is all the fuss about at the Washington Peace Conference, if not to put international handcuffs on that which is but an enlargement of the doubled fist?

Men who like to see the beast in man exploited, have been primarily chargeable for all of war. When they succeed in passing on the virus of bestiality to American mothers, it is high time to call the turn on them, and to interpose unbendingly where they attempt to prescribe.

Rational discipline is as the spine of any schooling. Juridic prison discipline differs from like free-life practice, in that it must presuppose the integrity of a charge brought against an inmate by a regularly appointed State agent. In such instance, the burden of proof is justly upon the alleged offender to establish his innocence, not upon the State to assume it. This, if for no other reason than that the strongest of motives decides offenders for denial of guilt. Not only does the individual lie naturally come easy when part of a prisoner's liberty is threatened; but cumulative untruth must be searched out of testimony motivated by a common criminal camaraderie.

Gulfs of criminal practice may separate different grades of prisoners; yet, when it comes down to incriminating evidence of a serious nature against their fellow prisoners, they usually fight shy, and that, on occasion, not ignobly.

As to different offenses that are met with indifferent impositions, an inmate agent will clasp hands in measure with the local authorities; but he usually steers clear of testimony that establishes him a "rat" informer, and very probably marks him for condign reprisal.

A prison population is bound by ties which the hardiest of "trusties" breaks at his grave peril; therefore when it is told that a junta of imprisoned felons is given over inequivocably to support of penal law, reach for the salt.

In the first place, no set of men have legal authority to build to corrective procedure that runs counter to the binding predicates of penal law.

Secondly, no man has call to conclude that he can devise safer checks upon the marauding criminal than are those written into penal codes, out of the cumulative judgment and experience of mankind.

Nevertheless, the single-seeing and idiosyncratic practically have controlled discipline in most of America's prisons during recent decades. Besides, they have specified for overdrawn activities in essence banal and baldly opposed to actual reformative measures, maimed in the process to the point of practical disuse.

Time was when managerical members of institutional staffs demanded that "up for parole" prisoners shall have sustained saving trades and scholastic averages. Now, gentlemen mostly have their eyes glued to sporting schedules and conduct records, the one of which commonly cross reformation; and the other of which are at no time reliable guides on which to base the free-life intentions of intelligent prisoners.

The result is hodgepodge of cross-matched correction, little of which escapes knowing condemnation, and less of which is strung to the keynote of reformative harmony.

The keynote of reformative harmony is struck in a prison régime that ministers meticulously to marketable knowledge and skill. This, unmoved by the counter machinations of the minority of the mass, expressed either individually or collectively; indeed, collective manifestations against the like of insistence upon fairly-won averages throughout the system, should be met at their inception by the State with power so impressive as to make repetition of such opposition highly improbable. Failure thereof to take up disciplinary stitches in time, is what ultimately works mob mischief.

As a matter of fact, radical resistance to rational measures seldom issues in a correctional plant that is consistently dedicated to those measures under an all-around square deal. Contrariwise, that institution is always ripe for disciplinary loot, wherein disruptive privileges and perquisites are heaped upon inmates who do not earn them.

There is no satisfying such laggards with gratuitous largesse. The more yielded to them, the more they demand. Furthermore, once having yielded to them way beyond that which should have been yielded, it takes years to get back to the normal again--if at all.

Basic reformative cogs can be slipped in a second out of purblind vision not, so to put it, within the focus of comprehension: whereas readjustment resolves into a long, hard pull, up hill all of the way. In one of the writer's many talks with Mr. Z. R. Brockway, relative to the capital matter in question, Mr. Brockway let fall this cryptic conclusion: "I've tried it out every known way, and I say: _don't do the first darn-fool thing_."

In the light of eventualities, it seems a great pity that Mr. Brockway should have been held up just as he was about to perfect balance of parts in a work to which he had given the best in him for fifty years; it does, because up to the time when he was so ruthlessly broken--literally broken--his "best" was incomparably better than any other man had dared in application.

It will be recalled that Mr. Brockway's alleged capital sin consisted in the fact that he would not yield belief in corporal punishment as a means of "shocking"--as he had it--persistently refractory prisoners into at least respect for the major voice. Whether Mr. Brockway was right or wrong in the conviction to which he clung to his dying day, does not call for contention here. But it may be noted that certain forms of prison punishment that have supplanted corporal punishment, are infinitely less humane, and infinitely more destructive of the divinity in man, than is an honest spanking, inflicted in a fatherly way, out of a fatherly heart. Moreover, final reversal of public opinion in the matter further may be noted in editorials, such as are adumbrated in the following excerpt clipped from one of the papers that joined in the hue and cry for "investigation" of Mr. Brockway and his methods, to no other purpose than to break Mr. Brockway, and to abolish corporal punishment in the correctional plants of the State of New York: "How then is ruthlessness to be held securely in check? Not by making all nations humane, and scrupulous, and tender-hearted. It is the actual, not a millennial world with which we have to deal. _It is not conversion of evil men that must be aimed at, but their control._ A nation tempted to be brutal as Germany was, must be given to understand that the first display of barbarism in warfare would bring all other civilized countries on its back. In short, nothing but a solemn international agreement unitedly to oppose and to _punish_ the ruthless making of war can assuredly prevent it." The underscoring is the writer's.

Bear in mind that a State bears relatively the same relation to the combined States of the world, as does the unit of a nation to the mass of that nation; in very fact, it comes about in America that the State is an enlargement of the international unit--thanks to the melting pot fallacy; then change the wording of the preceding paragraph to agree with the case as put up to America by polyglot pistol-toters who show no mercy. And then say why it is good to visit the extreme of corporal punishment on a "barbarous" nation, and bad to "shock" physically an individual bandit who cares not a wisp of straw about anything in the way of "punishment" short of physical pain? Say it, refusing at least the premise worn threadbare and stripped of ballast, to the effect that the injured sensibilities of the crudest of parasities are paramount over the common safety and progress; and say it realizing that the paper quoted now blares solemn truth for which it bitterly scored Mr. Brockway, who never went so far for pure repression as that paper now goes.

The fundamental principle germane to the underscored words in the editorial excerpt given is precisely that which is so frequently involved in the issue between the individual and the State. In any case, correction is spurious which does not carry to high-grade skill, backed by the highest grade of recreation, amusement, and moral teaching.

If mercy multiplied can be made to effect for the main object, that were well, since "A man convinced against his will is (usually) of the same opinion still"; yet, shall the subject persist in making use of the soft pedal as a "soft thing" through which to draw out devious, determined, long-drawn-out devilment, the sooner the State stops his bullish rush for the abyss, the sooner he will take a flashlight photo of himself.

Such, in substance, has been the contention of practical penologists. In line with that contention the pendulum of public opinion must swing back; it must, for the very good reason that self-preservation leaves no other choice to the American people or to any other people. That country limps to the dogs which essays to hold murderous rounders in check by aesthesia. The Almighty fits the punishment to the offense. Man can do no less and endure in the image of his Maker.

The first necessary step in the regeneration of a license-mad world is to put teeth into the restraint of those who seek to make permanent the present chaotic social conditions. Moreover, the movement against the international social marauder will necessarily take on international scope and solidarity. Pecking at him here and there, driving him from this to that base of operations, won't get the world anywhere in coming up with him who does not balk over indiscriminate use of the crudest of death-dealing tools in determination to stand society on its head.

International control over and isolation of the red-handed, are the only weapons that will make a dent in them. Therefore employ those weapons before misled maulers of law and order engage the standing armies of the civilized nations of the globe. Will they not? Maybe not, but they do, right now, in appreciable measure, in several European States; also, they go right on "boring in" to the heart of things in America, for which they do not, as a rule, get so much as a slap on their murderous wrists.

Cardinal bungling in relation to present cosmic lawlessness, resided in allowing Russia to be taken by the throat by a few addle-brained social hyenas; they who use an intrinsically fine-hearted people as a foil for destructiveness the most heinous ever garnished by inhuman ghouls.

That Russia remained deaf to the pleas of statesmen of the stature of Baron Rosen, then rushed to loot and wholesale killings, alone concerned Russian autonomy. If Russia chose to wear sackcloth while ordering her bed for terrorism and bad dreams, that was distinctively Russia's affair; but the moment she sought to underwrite propaganda aimed at the world's social structures, that moment the international screw should have been turned on her. For her own salvation she should have been brought to an even keel, say naught of the broil to which Russian mongrels were bringing the international pot.

But why the apparent diversion from the text? Why roam for similes that seem so far removed from consideration of the psychology of American criminals? First off, nothing is distant by suggestion from America farther than the time required to cable it to America and there spread it in the public press. As the bird flies between the nearest points of opposite shores, Siberian Russia is but about thirty hours by boat from Alaska. Uncle Sam is cogitating the best means by which to quicken the life flow in Alaska's veins. When that flow is quickened, Alaska will be a convenient, engaging, and comparatively safe base from which such as Russian radicals may strike at and sieve into America.

Secondly, the psychology of such as those directly responsible for measures that leave Russia stripped of about all but the saving grace of a long-suffering God, is substantially the psychology of habitual criminals, place them where you will. As a distinct class of humans, each is out to get something for nothing. With specious and polished phrases, the one class of educated plunderers play up to the dumb avarice of ignorant underdogs. The other class, equals of their blood-brothers in hatred of biblical government, usually manifest their crooked curves in the most direct way with the individual weapon. Anarchistic agitators seek to strike through the masses from center to periphery of the social circle; criminals usually make their forays in pairs or packs from the fringes of society; yet both are impelled to anti-social action by the ever same capital motive, which is to get something for nothing.

And so, no matter what un-American or anti-American stripe he bears; and no matter in what language he may shriek for social disintegration because he is of that stripe, America must meet him with a fist that knows no relaxation. He should not be allowed to land on American soil until he had taken unqualified oath to support American institutions. Thereafter, upon the first evidence on his part of backsliding as regards that oath, he should be given his ticket of leave and published to the police authorities of the world for what he is, viz.: a man without a country who doesn't mean to merge with any but those of his class.

Adam and Eve were turned out of Eden for committing mere carnal sin in disobedience of divine command. America, then, has the highest authority on which to purge herself of lawless blood-spillers; indeed, so much of obligation is upon America, judged either from the spiritual or material standpoint.

America cannot, if she would, do other than pulse to the international pulse, so long as she out-breeds to all of the Caucasian races of mankind. Having bred to the cold-blooded from here, the hot-headed from there, and incorrigible enemies of public law from everywhere, she may make the best of it; but if she really has in reserve common sense sufficient to do it, she can break the strangle hold with which social wreckers seek to place her in chancery. Contrariwise, if she persists in attempt to wash the world of its human barnacles, she will pass of a leprous poisoning for which there is no known antidote.

RÉSUMÉ

While a common mode of operating and the wastrel's way of satisfying abnormal demands of the senses usually tag criminals of different types, the ultimate psychology of a given criminal will be his very own. Surface signs may or may not differentiate him appreciably from thousands of those of his particular grade. In very essence of soul he will seem to match another as closely as his facial lines and moulding duplicate the lines and moulding of scores of others; still, as to the prime impulses that impel him, he will be more or less the individual slave and law unto himself.

In the sense that he himself will not be cognizant of the subconscious quicksand that sucks him down, the case of a given criminal will parallel that of most all of criminals; but while the undertow may initiate in substantially the same subjective causes for all, he will run to objective emphasis for his criminousness in accordance with the cardinal instincts that drive him. Hence, since he is just like no other criminal in every way, there will be a deep shading of difference in the manner in which he acts and reacts, as compared with the action and reaction of any other criminal.

Like the time-locked safe, each criminal has his particular "combination," the key to which it is up to the State to forge--if it can.

Whatever his "combination," be surprised if the convicted criminal does not assert stoutly that he was not guilty as convicted, but "framed." Then, if you pin him into position where he cannot "stall," be surprised again if he fails to rebut with parallels involving moral thieves, whose defense of wholesale pocket-picking is substantially that made by Falstaff to accusing Prince Henry in King Henry IV: "Why Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal; 'tis no sin for a man to labor in his vocation."

The natural criminal is nearly always a self-faking, hard-bitted social rebel, who cuts to fit the garment of his mind. He is usually pitiable much of the way, he should be succored all of the way, but he must be controlled in any humane way. He must, else human society will wax worthy of him while ridden by him.

Even so, the writer utterly disowns rating of "Slippy McGees" as thick-skulled savages predestined for incurable criminousness. Such rating is disproved in the reclamation to social service of thousands of lads who pulled out of the very slough of crime. Moreover, the right kind of free-life and correctional treatment of and for the crime-driven, will stamp wholesale damning of them as duty-shifting myth.

Shall America continue to make all kinds of bald bids for habitual criminals; and shall America at the same time so order her reformative régimes that they shall establish rather than arrest criminals of habitual potentiality, America will perforce multiply her flippant brood of bad actors. Still, that consummation shall have been chargeable in such instance to purblind, drifting, license-breeding America, and not to the withholding hand of God.

XII

SUMMARY

Suspended sentences; probation; discharges; quashing of indictments; bail under bond, pending trial for ominous crimes; and early paroles from prison houses are now stretched far beyond the practice of previous years.

Schemes for lifting social blight from backsliders have been broadened and quickened notably during recent decades.

Children's courts of probation constantly have risen in numbers, and the gratuitous offices of ever-increasing thousands of laymen and women nobly second service for children haled to those courts.

From the mode of operating most of America's prisons has been deleted all but the semblance of repression and compulsion: and in their stead, powers-that-be boast of having capitalized activities which fit for the sporting limelight, rather than for saving averages at bread-winning work.

After-parole efforts for, and supervision over, ex-prisoners, are vastly more inclusive than like endeavor of any foretime. Moreover, the public at large has been minded to do its duty: fact adumbrated in the vital circumstance that a prisoner is seldom held long in duress for want of a free-life job, albeit millions of crime-free hands remain idle.

In every conceivable way--inclusive of political pull, chicanery, graft, and criminal participation that remind of rottening fruit--the legal paddle has been padded for application to the predal felon; the same, until he construes criminal law in execution to be written agreeably with such interpretation as his nefarious necessities dictate.

Self-adjudged reformers of both sexes and of all stripes baldly palliate the chosen occupation of the thief, while him commiserating beyond the period placed by the Saviour.

The patrolman who wields his nightstick so as to shock the aesthetic sensibilities of an attacking marauder, is liable to be "broken" if the bandit is one of the many who make irresistible appeal to the super-emotional.

A peace officer probably will be condignly "disciplined," shall he have dared, in self-defense, to man-handle an underworld vote-herder for them to whom the officer must either kowtow or cash in.

The chances that a lawbreaker will be apprehended, are about three to one in his favor; that he will be convicted under the wording of a charge or charges brought against him by legal agents, they are about ten to one; and that he will pay with his life if he kills, they are so nebulous as to be nearly negligible.

An escaping prisoner may count on the sympathy of at least eight of ten of the human mass, many of whom actually shield him.

Most any old alibi, offered by aids-de-camp of crooks, will serve the accused on trial.

Wrest what he will, from whom he will, by what method he will, the predal felon is not held to monetary restitution in so much as a red cent. The looted can sweat for the loot the thief "plants," then employs in another swing around the criminal circle.

The least elastic of the predicates of penal law are held at bay in all but a temerous few of America's secondary prisons.