Part 8

On the other hand, have done with maudlin makeshifts for just social reprisal. No State that balks at visiting condign discipline on habitual lawbreakers, can endure well-ordered. The moment a man holds himself above the general law, that moment he aligns against human progress. Therefore make him not the semblance of apology for meeting cardinal crime with cardinal punishment. Moreover, plainly term it punishment, advisedly devised to bring it home to the predatory brute that "comin' a shootin'" for another's belongings does not earn him "sleepin' time" in a prison wherein he can indulge sporting predilections for him accursed; and wherein there is "No (actually reformative) work, plenty of eats, and a bum argument every minute."

Save for our addition in parenthesis, the above-quoted phrase is that of a many-offense criminal who picked and chose while confined in what he enthusiastically called "some joint," and what the cult chamois-skin refer to as a model, "get along" reformatory for advanced felons.

The message was mailed to a "pal," who, with the penman, was convicted of knocking down a drunken sailor with a slung-shot, beating him into insensibility, and stripping him of his money and valuables "in front of No. 9 Bowery," New York City.

The words of the message mix to a perfect broth. They adumbrate institutional farce made of the mandatory predicates of penal law, through marking time to the mental meanderings of chamois-skin criminologists.

(4) So order prison régimes that they shall serve the commonwealth, and should serve the prisoner; serve the commonwealth by enforcing penal codes written primarily to prevent crime, but which such as the murderous recidivist make it necessary to make repressive for the protection of society; and serve the prisoner through affording him every sane chance to forge ahead and face life squarely.

In the process, heaping reprisal should be religiously refused as less defensible than the reverse. Petty penalties that issue against perfectly natural while harmless expressions, are essentially baneful.

To begin with, we have to unset anti-social jaws. We may be able to do that big thing if we go about it like manly men, realizing that everything in life is relative; and that a fellow may have tricked himself into crime, yet be far from a by-choice criminal. Positively, we shall not do so with a "billy" and billingsgate. Neither can we coddle and pad a man to reformation. That will ensue upon nothing less than his changed habit of thought and action; and that will usually initiate, if at all, out of acquired knowledge and skill, from which to build or rebuild self-respect.

(5) Man correctional institutions throughout with men whose characters are unassailable, who example and suggest only that which is above reproach, who are naturally fitted to discourage the offense without discouraging the offender, and who instinctively dive deeply for compassion; but, who cannot be "faked" readily by criminal cunning, nor brought to a compromise with it.

Between such men and flippant "good-mixers" who set sail for untroubled waters and the lump sum; also between such men and "soulless politicians who gamble with dice loaded with human hearts," drive wedges that triflers and stricksters cannot loosen.

(6) It will repay the States, handsomely, to establish criminological schools basically equipped for practical instruction, backed by elementary courses in anthropology and mental therapeutics. The chiefs of staffs of such schools should be men well advanced in years, and of proven worth which comprehends the practice and theory of a work great and grave as any to which man lends hand and brain. They should be "well advanced in years," because one must have dealt first hand in their midst for the better part of a life time with true criminals ere he shall have dug to their ulterior designs and visioned their more refined crooks and curves.

Choice of chiefs of staffs should bear but incidental relation to diplomas--medical or other. While ability to prescribe for a prisoner physically, or to probe him psychologically, is a valuable asset, it does not, by any manner of means, postulate the stature of an all-purpose criminologist.

For example: a graduated general practicioner and psychic expert holds two blocks of the reform pyramid; yet only two, neither of which is the key-block. That does not reside in ability to tell off the bones of the human frame, nor to trace to subconscious impulsion; but in capacity to fit all the blocks of a delicately-poised structure and make them function in harmony, close to the maximum of efficiency, for a common purpose. Thereof, weight of influence must be carefully weighed, confounding of magnitudes avoided, and contact of extremes religiously discouraged.

Beyond all of that, the right man in place must be a consummate organizer who is able to trace to motive, draw derailed men unto him, minimize friction whatsoever, and plan and promote sound training and government; yet stand, as did the Christ, as adamant to him who would exploit evil intent out of an evil heart.

He who can fill that bulking order must be bigger, broader and deeper than the physical and mental technicist--be he never so clever.

The paragraphs immediately preceding are stressed because the present pull and pressure is for psychiatrists as heads of correctional plants. On its face, that is short-sighted single-seeing, since such men cannot bring breadth of understanding of a great-big, complex, interlocking machine, the parts of which must be kept nicely balanced. Moreover, your master-criminologist is first of all master-man in the sense that he can and does get down into, and abide in, the hearts of unfortunates who make for hell's toboggan.

In any case, the work should not wait upon experimentation to necessary experience, the which is born only of extended contact with imprisoned felons.

What prison reform cries out for is correctional heads who can build and maintain a régime that will inspire their charges to _do_ things, and to _want_ to do them. Building, specializing should be left to staff specialists; general management to general efficiency that compasses the full, practical reformative field. Such heads had, of course, made it a part of their business to be able to box, at the least, the specific theoretical compass.

Heads of departments of the schools in question should have had not less than two years of experience somewhere on the firing line of reform; if more than that, all the better.

The course for students should be an intensive one--say six months--calculated to file off the rough edges of the tyro, and to classify him. As it is now, beginners who set in the game of penology must pass through the shuttle-cock period of apprenticeship, during which the criminal crew ply the battledoor, and disciplinary officers are besieged with banal offenses that are catching.

Having passed relatively simple final examinations, graduated students should bear with them written attests of that fact. The personal equation should count appreciably at such examinations. Either palpable or demonstrated unfitness should bar an applicant from reform work.

The State could well afford to balance tuition and maintenance against the time spent by its pupils at elementary preparation for fundamental endeavor in its service.

(6) Establish Houses of Reception for first-offending and circumstantial felons awaiting trial and transfer, and officer those houses, in so far as may be as to subordinate positions, with graduates of criminological schools. The houses should be orderly, systematic, sanitary houses, given over to practicable work, body-building exercises, the single room system, classification of inmates by room-blocks as well as at recreation by character, and to all around discipline sufficiently strict to impress budding lawbreakers at once with the fact that the cost of lawbreaking mounts to practical confiscation.

Thusly we should hold off the habitual from the occasional offender, and afford near neophytes the chance to brush elbows with, and study criminals in, the making.

Thereafter, prospective officers in the making should be advanced to such correctional institutions as the quality of them, and their attainment under preliminary instruction and experience, would warrant. And thusly we should have prisons of last resort manned, as they should be, with serious-minded officers equipped to serve the State by serving obliquely-thinking underdogs.

(7) Create the office of Inspector-General of State Correctional Institutions. Make the position appointive by the Governor, and the incumbent of it an ex-officio advisory member of boards and commissions that are classed under penal and correctional heads.

The appointment should be strictly non-partisan, and the appointee one who had forged his way up from the ground in the work, won deserved distinction doing it, and who therefore could not be tricked by high-sounding vagaries, surface practicability, or subterranean machinations.

Among other things, such a man would search out conflicting activities; comparative inactivities; unbalance of parts; overlapping positions; overemphasized and underemphasized discipline; too much of horse-play irrationally prescribed; not enough of recreation to a rational end; false classification of inmates in falsely-appointed apartments; defective hygiene and sanitation; waste of potential and of material whatsoever, inclusive of food and its values; and the criminological "faker" who shifts to line his purse and to partake of a cheap notoriety, while he blinds the public eye with impish platitudes.

The Inspector General would, of course, act as first criminological aid to the Governor, by whom he would be guided practically. He should be a help, not a hindrance to the said boards and commissions, and should sit with them, on request, in advisory capacity when reasonably possible. Also, specific copies of other than his confidential reports to the Governor should be submitted to the said commissions and boards. In fact, one of the cardinal reasons for his being and doing as a State agent would be his duty to promote harmonious, while synthetic effort to the best ends. His salary should include a competent secretary, and a stenographer, both of his own choosing. His time should be practically his own to use to the broadest purpose.

Then require of local correctional heads that they shall work loyally with their supreme, active chief, whether or no he rates values exactly as they rate them. He would be out to help make the best use of all reformative tools and to coördinate them. If he is big enough to do that, he is big enough to receive most respectful attention and support. As a matter of fact, an appreciable part of his worth to the State would be his ability to spot idiosyncrasies, and to evaluate single-track ideas, issuing out of narrow-gauge brains.

When many simple, obvious, highly serviceable things still undone, shall have been done for the crime-cheated, will be time enough to engage with half-blown theories.

In the meantime, psychoanalysis should be verified indubitably as squaring closely with the claims of its sponsors, then be applied sequentially in the work, or wait upon practical and more important exactions. Also, psychoanalysists shall have purged their phrasing of such as "unconscious _intent_," before it will carry to conviction in full.

In the final analysis, rational reform endeavor reduces to the common terms and tread of a work-a-day world.

But kernels of criminological thought can be contained in a thin volume. A bulking book could be written alone on when and why prison discipline takes on a cutting edge, and when and why it sheds virtue and veers to worse than useless restraint or restriction.

It will be well if this chapter serves to warn especially against the Wallingford of reform because: he is either a fetich-struck visionary, or an ego-centric cheat.

VIII

"EXCESS PROPHETS"

_We are beridden by excess prophets. Washington Star._

Nature builds some men bigger than any office or title. Theodore Roosevelt was such a man, whose wont it was to coin cutting saws such as, "The shots that hit are the shots that count."

Taken for what it was meant to convey, that epigram needs no champion; yet the implied negative of it may or may not hold water. That will depend upon the ratio of hits to misses.

Missed shots prolong conflict, multiply fatalties, and pile up huge waste of the materials of war. Hence, largely, the staggering toll taken by the World War in priceless young manhood, and of the going resources of the nations engaged.

It goes without saying that a fighting force must be an expert force in the care and use of the tools it employs; but that is of the primary exactions. The master key to victory, alike in business and battle, is moulded of leadership; leadership that envisages the tactical machine made up of units of balanced efficiency.

The American military system essentially does and must presuppose the squad leader to be as efficient in his domain, as is the commanding general in his. Indeed, an American army made up of prime privates, and the more petty leaders, might pound through, in a pinch, even though faultily disposed betimes by the bestarred and besilvered; whereas, under the reverse circumstance, it would almost certainly suffer defeat at the hands of an evenly-schooled foe.

But a properly trained, led, and served army would not necessarily close a given case. Assume such an army at points on the field with an inferior enemy, and the hazard might still be settled by swivel-chair soldiers, as it very nearly was in the War of the Rebellion; also very nearly was by round-table strategists who insisted that Foch should keep his general reserves massed where he knew he could not use them to advantage, as he had planned, to pummel the German divisions, piled up in a close pocket, where they were glaringly open to raking flank fire.

Fortunately, that issue was settled by the purblind German General Staff, which was so obsessed by the idea of the spectacular capture of Paris, that it could not see Amiens; Amiens, seen at the time by all of the Allied leaders as plainly the objective of the German grand plan of attack. Whether or no Hindenburg now lashes himself thereof in order to spare his former imperial masters, false leadership defeated Germany; and it came right close to spoiling the battle broth for the Allies.

So much of seeming diversion is employed to set off the fact that social and prison progress has been held up in America, particularly during the last three decades, by "false leadership."

For example, consider this master stroke, framed by a much-quoted minister of the gospel: "_Possibly something_ is to be granted to _punishment_ as a _deterrent_. No doubt _some_ people are to _some_ extent restrained from wrong doing by _fear of punishment_."

The person who penned those lines--underscoring of which is ours--knew that had religious creeds relied solely for their carrying power on strictly voluntary service for God from the heart of man, they had limped to an early demise.

Had the writer marked it that not even "fear of punishment" condign by the Almighty "restrains" by-choice criminals from "wrong doing," he would have made the best case possible against punishment as a "deterrent"; yet only the best case possible, since the efficiency of deterrence is to be judged by its effect upon the normal mass, and not upon the abnormal few.

In such instance, the qualifying word points the difference as between the mere "tough" brawler, "restrained" from going the limit, and the ruthless blood-spiller whom fear of punishment eternal does not feaze. Monstrosities occur in all forms of animal life. When the monstrous human strikes, he must be struck accordingly.

Moreover, before we reach final conclusions, we must know the order and ordering of our deterrence; must know it up through the gamut of the apprehension, the conviction, and the sentence of lawbreakers, and then through the gamut of their prison activities.

False procedure as to any one of the four processes named will invalidate any general statement of negation concerning the efficience of punishment for crime. Procedure in America has been false in every named particular. Therefore, the actual effect of just and necessary legal punishment for crime cannot have been declared.

Much of crude guesswork has been exploited by single-seeing fetichists of one or another kidney; but cardinal facts have remained hidden from such, for the very good reason that to uncover those facts requires hard digging strangest to their striving.

When we shall have caught our thieves as surely as Canada catches hers; then fitted the punishment to the offense; then fitted the institution to the offender, and the offender to the institution, will be time enough to place stricture on punishment values.

At a time when, and in a country where, the murderous footpad knows the chances are three to one against his being brought to trial; ten to one against his sentence to life imprisonment; eighty to one that he will not suffer the death penalty; and that the all-around odds are nearly prohibitive as against the practical application, both in and out of prison, of the least elastic predicates of penal codes: it is sheer gratuitous dilettantism to allege that punishment of crime in America doesn't punish.

How can legal punishment punish, if only about five shots in the hundred of it hit so as to hurt?

Here, again, "The shots that (miss) are the shots that count"; and that would still be true if criminals were favored only by so much as the gambler's throw; in fact, they would continue to jump at an even chance to outmaneuver agents of the law. Why not?

Exhibit No. 2, offered by a highly-paid correspondent of a Chicago newspaper, is fully as informing as are our "minister's" conclusions: "There never was a time when theft was considered proper."

From 323 to 354 B.C., Spartan youth were most carefully schooled by State agents in promiscuous sneak-thievery. Petty thieving by the lads of Greece was then considered a necessary accomplishment. More than that, the boy who came back empty-handed from a foraging expedition, was brutally punished, even unto death.

With germane facts of comparatively recent history in mind, the "correspondent" probably wouldn't have been guilty of assertion so grossly incorrect; yet the fact remains that loosest of declaration has for long years been employed by a certain class of writers, in furtherance of impish itch for cheap, if ephemeral prominence.

Furthermore, for a State directly to put limited stamps of approval on its young thieves, as did the agents of Lycurgus, would be but one of many ways by which to establish them; in very truth, the indirect method of doing so is hands over the most pernicious and far-reaching method.

The most expeditious anti-social job of the latter kind is done as it is being done the country over in the United States; which is to say: maim the criminal law until it goes on crutches, and at the same time order prison régimes to square with the instinctive reactions of lawbreakers. That is to play both ends against the public security; and that is precisely the condition with which the American people are confronted.

To tale off a summary of associated influences would crowd a bulking volume. Also, it would yield what mostly wasted effort yields, since Americans have been fully cognizant of the constantly widening cracks in the national structure, as well as of the manner in which those openings have been effected.

He knows that neither added nor rescinded statutes can eliminate bad lines of blood, established mainly by an immigration policy framed and executed as if to establish those lines of blood. Hundreds of thousands of those of the "lines" are daily plying disruptive wares; wares which they will continue to ply, more or less, unto at least the fifth generation ahead. A country cannot sit up of a sudden and determine to serve overnight antidote for the slow poison of its people.

He knows class legislation is deadly to democracy; yet he sits supinely tight while organized labor successfully clubs with votes for special privileges, successively the more indefensible.

He knows the avaricious brute is at the bottom of all of war, and he knows blood-letting within such as the sixteen-foot prize ring is the cruelest of war in miniature. Nevertheless, he piles his own dollars on the pyramid of dollars pulled down annually by the pug-ugly fraternity, the while winking the nether eye as his own kiddies are imbued, through suggestion and example, with the spirit of the fistic parasite.

Nor must women be denied her meed of praise. She, too, is getting the punching habit of mind. Hundreds of the bejeweled of her wait breathlessly at the ringside for the benignant "K. O." Her voice, raised for the making a national pet of the parasitic pug, is recorded: "I am not _especially_ fond of seeing the blood flow; but I just _dote_ on 'draws.'"

When the _femme de ring_ shall have wormed herself a bit further into the mysteries of the roped arena, she will be bally-well fed up with "draws," the majority of which are "crooked" in order to coin "easy money." Also, she will likely transmit to her brood the instinct to shunt productive work and tear things.

He knows fattened money-hogs shoulder to bar the way to the money-trough, where they pile fat on fat.

He knows of the cheap flings of the charlatan; of the ruthlessly lawless reach of the radical labor leader; of the rotten bases from which the bebadged are frequently forced to work; of the political chicanery by which the sting is drawn on the one hand from the edicts of upright judges: and on the other hand--if much less frequently yet frequently enough--written into the edicts of legal agents whom the ermine but drapes.

He knows all, and more, and sundry; yet he will not so much as step to the primary and register his vote against the nefarious combination.

Shall the load be fastened to his back, he will have none but himself to blame. Hundreds of voices have for long years dinged into his ears the danger ahead.

For threatened retrogression none are more responsible than those who have known better, but who, willy-nilly for a price, have shunted public thought from facing actual conditions, to an abiding faith in the reverse of all of human experience. Hence the drifting with the flood tide of those conditions; and hence the miserable mix of the moment.

Take just one more gem, illustrative of the kind of self-contradictory stuff which the public has purblindly swallowed. It is out of the scrambled brain of one who assumes to see reformatively from "the hill of vision."

(1) Pro: "If other men, living under the same conditions, succeed in maintaining their integrity, what excuse can the criminal claim for his failure to do the same?"

(2) Con: "In conclusion, the criminal is a man whose faculties are not well balanced. 'Just as the twig is bent, the tree's inclined.'"

Broadly speaking, the "conclusion" is correct; but observe that it fights the companion question, tooth and nail. First off, the average man does not carry the handicap of congenital predisposition to thieve, as do most of instinctive thieves. As a "twig," he was not "bent" and "inclined" that way. Secondly, "other men" had not "lived under the same conditions"; so the positive case is at once cleared of the cardinal hypothesis. And thirdly, since the criminal of the class indicated "is a man whose faculties are not well balanced"; and since "Just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined," he has at least two-fold limited excuse for his oblique thoughts and deeds, likewise claim upon our commiseration.