Part 3

“In this recognition of the criminal’s sin there must be enforced the discipline of penalty, and of penalty as punishment, but it must be carefully dealt with, so as in no sense to convey the thought of retribution or of vindictive retaliation. The strides of progress which have been made in the last century and a half under the methods of such real reformers as Howard and Wines (whom, as a boy, I remember very well), and Elizabeth Fry and Dorothy Dix, have, among other things, set the stamp of this idea in the fact that capital punishment, which used to be inflicted for many crimes, is reserved to the one for which it was divinely ordered, and from which, I trust, it will never be taken away, namely, the sin of shedding another’s blood. Meanwhile, more and more, in the selection of wardens, in the appointment of chaplains, in the abolition of the fearful cruelties of physical torture, in the decent sanitation of prisons, we have grown more and more to realize that the condemned criminal is to be treated as a man who needs protection, systematic discipline, the training of the prison, to protect him from himself, to put into him the purpose and set before him the possibility of a better life, rather than to humiliate and crush him into desperation and despair. It is quite true that no amount of legislation and no method of enforcing laws can make a man moral, but it is also true that the law which defines and punishes sin deters men from the commission of crime, and when the criminal is condemned and sentenced and his punishment begins, only the power of religion can reach him to convince him of his sin, to convert him from his habits, to reach the motives of his life, to change the tendency of his will, to form in him new habits, to give him the spiritual help by which his conscience may be enlightened and his character changed.

“And there are certain human, natural, physical reasons for the right attitude to the convicted criminal which more than warrant us in assuming it as the groundwork and motive of our dealings with him. It is told, I think of an English bishop, seeing a criminal drawn in a tumbril to execution on Ludgate Hill, in London, that he said, ‘There go I but for grace.’ Somehow I know it is true that now and then men whose lives have been surrounded from childhood up to the very moment of their fall with the best influences, suddenly lapse into great sin. We have instances in the last year which have startled and staggered communities, men in places of trust who have betrayed it, and have either been flung down from the position of confidence and honor or fallen themselves, and found in flight or in suicide the fatal termination of what has seemed to be a career of honorable service. I am bound to say a word even for these. I believe the vindictive personalities which have assailed some of these men are in some cases absolutely unjust.

“There ought to be, thank God, there is, more and more in the great movements in our cities, a strong, set effort of prevention, which is far better than cure. The prisons will be emptier when we have reached the root and reason of crime. If we can control the use of liquor and stop at least its excess; if we can stamp out the curse of drunkenness; if we can more and more arrest the degradation of our slums; if we can train up a race of children in surroundings of physical healthfulness, of moral decency and dignity; and still better, if we can instil into them from earliest childhood the principles and pattern of Jesus Christ, we shall have begun, at the right end, the restoration and the reformation of humanity. Meanwhile, until all these movements have ripened into some result, it becomes us to remember from what sources and in what surroundings the grown-up criminal has come; to realize how far we, by our neglect and indifference, have been responsible for them; and to reach out the helping hand of deep sympathy and pity in the effort to reclaim, to restore and to reform.

“The great revealed truth of universal redemption is full of grace and help. Still more, the truth of individual indwelling of the Christ in us, the hope of glory. It is true that in a way this is a doctrine, a dogma, as people say who think of a dogma as a tyrannical imposition upon their intellectual liberty; but it is truer still that, like many another thing which we call dogma, it is a fact on which depends not merely our holding right faith in Jesus Christ as the God-man, but on which also depend the method and the hope and the value of our dealing with humanity at large or with the individual man. It has in it besides the very highest human hope possible for you and me, that in the great day of eternal decision there shall be for us who have recognized Jesus in those to whom we ministered here the full revelation and manifestation of His glorious God-head, with the word of ‘well done’ and welcome into ‘the kingdom prepared for us from the foundation of the world.’”

EVENING

At many churches of the city various phases of the work of the Association were presented by delegates to the Congress. At the Cathedral Mr. Thomas M. Osborne, President of the George Junior Republic, Auburn, N. Y., spoke on “The True Foundations of Prison Reform”; Mr. George B. Wellington, of Troy, on “The Duty That We Owe the Convict”; and Prof. Henderson, of Chicago, on “Preventive Work with Children.” The latter maintained that the proper training of a child to keep it from becoming a criminal began before it was born. Crime was not a heritage, but criminal tendencies sometimes were. Judge Lindsay, the great enthusiast in behalf of children, had said that the Juvenile court was organized to keep children out of jail, but that now the problem was to keep children out of the Juvenile court. The problem is to get back to childhood, back to infancy. Babyhood determined whether there should be a large or a small criminal class. Place the child from earliest infancy into such a physical environment and under such mental and spiritual influences as will produce the habit of right living.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 17

MORNING

The meeting was called to order by President Collins and opened with prayer by the Rev. Thomas D. Anderson. After the appointment of committees and other routine business, the Wardens’ Association went into session. In the absence of the President, Mr. N. N. Jones, Iowa State Prison, Fort Madison, his address was read by Mr. Frank L. Randall, Minnesota, who had been called to the chair. The paper was a compact statement of the warden’s relation to current prison reform. With reference to prison labor it showed how small a portion of the total product is contributed by prisoners. Regarding the relation of discipline to reformation, the writer said: “Discipline is the medium through which all reform becomes effective. The attitude of the warden toward reform should be sympathetic and receptive.”

A paper on “Prison Labor,” by the Hon. John T. McDonough, Ex-Secretary of State, was listened to with considerable interest, because Mr. McDonough, as a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1894, had much to do with framing the constitutional amendment wiping out the contract labor system and prohibiting the sale of prison-made goods in the open market. Under the present laws of New York no work can be done by convicts in competition with outside labor. Whatever is made in the prisons of the State must “be disposed of to the State or any political division thereof, or for or to any public institution owned or managed and controlled by the State, or any political division thereof.” At the same time every inmate of the several State prisons, penitentiaries, jails, and reformatories in the State, who is physically able, must be set to work. By a strong array of figures and apparently favorable comparisons Mr. McDonough undertook to demonstrate the merits and success of the new system. In replying to the paper, Dr. Barrows maintained that in spite of the law several thousand prisoners in the jails and penitentiaries of the State are supported in idleness.

Mr. John E. Van De Carr, Superintendent of the New York City Reformatory of Misdemeanants, on Hart’s Island, read a paper in which he gave an account of said institution and its work. This reformatory, which is the only one in the United States solely for misdemeanants, is the child of Greater New York’s charter. By that charter it became the duty of the Commissioner of Correction “to cause all criminals and misdemeanants under his charge to be classified as far as practicable, so that youthful and less hardened offenders shall not be rendered more depraved by association with and the example of the older and more hardened,” and “to set apart one or more of the penal institutions in his department for the custody of such youthful offenders.” By an act of the Legislature, passed in 1904, the charter of the reform school on Hart’s Island was amended, and the institution was continued and known after January 1, 1905, as “The New York City Reformatory of Misdemeanants.” To this “any male person between the ages of sixteen and thirty, after conviction by a magistrate or court in the city of New York of any charge, offense, misdemeanor, or crime, other than a felony, may be committed for reformatory treatment.” The time of such imprisonment, which must not exceed three years, but must continue at least three months, is terminated by the Board of Parole, which consists of nine commissioners who serve without compensation for a term of one year. The first three rules under the system by means of which an inmate may work out his release on parole (which is determined by merit marks based on demeanor, labor, and study) are as follows: 1. All inmates enter the New York City Reformatory of Misdemeanants in the second grade. 2. If such inmate shall obtain 900 merit marks he shall thereafter enter the first or highest grade. 3. If such inmate shall violate any rules of the Reformatory, or shall in any way be disobedient or ungovernable, he shall be reduced to the third or lowest grade; and no such inmate shall reënter the second grade unless he shall have obtained 300 merit marks. When an inmate is eligible for release on parole, and is so recommended by the superintendent, he is placed on parole in charge of a parole officer for a period of six months, provided he has a home to go to, or employment whereby he can become self-sustaining. Should he violate his parole at any time, the Board of Parole has power to revoke the same and cause his rearrest and reimprisonment as if said parole had not been ordered. To make the system effective, the spiritual welfare of the inmates is faithfully cared for by the Catholic, Protestant, and Hebrew chaplains of the Department of Correction; mental training is provided for by a teacher from the Board of Education; and six different trade-schools furnish industrial instruction. The results so far have proved very satisfactory, the conduct of over eighty-three per cent. of those paroled being reported as satisfactory. “Our experience has already convinced us,” declares the superintendent, “that the modern ideas on this subject are purely scientific, and not sentimental, and that many sent to prison should first be placed in some reformatory where the class of institution in which they should justly be detained could safely be determined. We also feel that it may become necessary to extend the minimum term of three months to a longer period. A sentence is really not reformatory if the minimum is three months; at least the reformation is but temporary. Permanent reformation requires the teaching of a trade, and a trade cannot be learned in that time, although we have accomplished surprising results in that period. To secure the greatest good to the boy, the trades taught should be those that are best paid, namely, the building trades.”

AFTERNOON

The principal address of the afternoon was by Mr. Warren F. Spalding, Secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association, on “Principles and Purposes of Probation.” He said in part:

“The probation system is the natural outgrowth of modern theories regarding the treatment of lawbreakers. The acceptance of the proposition that the State should reform and reclaim the offender led to the establishment of reformatories. Later it was realized that some might reform without imprisonment, even in a reformatory, and the probation officer became their supervisor and custodian. His functions are to investigate cases and report regarding past offenses, if any; general character, home, dependents, etc., and the probability of reformation without imprisonment, and he must visit probationers and help them in the work of self-reformation.

“Probation is better than imprisonment for suitable cases, because it saves the offender from the prison stigma, while it keeps him under restraint, controlling his companionships, compelling him to work and support those dependent upon him.

“The probation officer has custodial as well as supervisory powers, and may surrender the probationer for misbehavior. Probation turns the attention of its subject to the future rather than the past. Punishment deals with one past act. Probation deals with the future--with the establishment of character. It puts the emphasis upon what the probationer must do, not upon what he has done.

“Probation as a means of securing reformation has an excellent record. Punishment has failed in a great proportion of its cases. It is only reasonable that the records of the two systems shall be compared. If the law of the survival of the fittest is to prevail in this domain, it is certain that the use of probation is destined for increase, and the use of imprisonment to decrease, as a method of dealing with those who have broken the laws. It will be adopted more and more generally because it succeeds, while imprisonment will be more generally abandoned because it fails.”

Papers were also read by Mr. H. F. Coates, Alliance, Ohio, on “Probation for First Offenders,” and by Samuel J. Barrows, New York, on “The Organization of Probation Work.” Mr. J. G. Phelps-Stokes, New York, spoke on “The Justice of Probation.” Charlton T. Lewis once said: “We are not dealing with acts, but with actors; not with crimes, but with the men who have committed them.” A man is largely the creature of environment. Too often we overlook the fact that crime is not always chargeable to the individual, but to his surroundings. If punishment is to be just, we must know that he who is punished is justly punished. Some of the prolific causes of a criminal career are evil associates, street training, and bad homes. Do we ask as we should, whether those now in prison had such favorable surroundings as the reputable portion of society? How many children grow up without proper home training! Their parents must go out to hard work to the neglect of the children. There is no play for the child except under evil influences; and in New York alone there are 85,000 children deprived of the benefits of a public school education because of deficient school accommodations. Among those who can go to school, truancy is not uncommon. The recreation which every child needs is found by many in saloons, dance halls, cheap theatres, and other demoralizing places. The stress of hard work and long hours also makes it impossible for many parents to care properly for their children. Do we wonder that under such circumstances only harmful influences come to them? Punishment is just only in proportion to culpability; and yet how many have no opportunity to learn what is right or wrong!

The conditions to which first offenders are subjected in many prisons are simply appalling. Hundreds are thrown in with the vilest beings and the most hardened criminals, and are, in addition, obliged in the majority of prisons to endure a living death by reason of the most unsanitary surroundings. It is horrible to sentence a man, woman or child, not only to moral degradation, but to a physical death as well. Imprisonment as a corrective and deterrent is a failure. Punishment can have but two justifications: the correction of the offender, and the protection of society. Probation, on the other hand, at least results in making one refrain from such criminal acts as will send him to prison.

EVENING

The speaker of the evening was Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth, of the Volunteers of America, who delivered a most eloquent and sympathetic address on “The Hopeful Side of Prison Work.” Mrs. Booth began her work among “her boys” behind the bars ten years ago, at the time of the division in the Salvation Army, which resulted in the formation of the Volunteers of America. To-day she is everywhere known among prisoners and ex-convicts as “The Little Mother.” Mrs. Booth said in part: “I am not here to instruct wardens and chaplains, nor have I come to represent myself, but the work of the organization for which I stand. I see before me another audience to-night, namely, those behind the bars. All I know regarding this work is from within the walls, and I speak, therefore, from the standpoint of the prisoner. I was always told that the task with criminals was a hopeless one, but I have learned to know better. People who talk like that have never been behind the walls of a prison. The theorist looks upon convicts as men who are generally unredeemable. Not so the wardens and chaplains and other prison workers, who have had practical experience. No man or woman would be any good among prisoners without hope. Where there is life there is hope. I do not forget the crime or the stain, and am not a sentimentalist regarding the reformation of criminals; but I firmly believe that no one has fallen so low as to be absolutely beyond redemption. Many of those behind the bars have from earliest childhood never known anything of human or divine love; but have only been cuffed about in the world. Bring these the touch of sympathy, and tell them something of the Father’s love and of the Saviour’s power to save, and you again bring hope into their lives. This must be the foundation of our work _within_ the prison; and where those who have served their time come out, it is love again--mother love, if you please--that must direct their course. In dealing with the convict, our first endeavor must be to enkindle new hope within his heart; and toward the ex-convict the public must assume a better attitude. Finally, if we leave God out we shall not succeed.”

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 18

MORNING

This day of the Congress had been set apart by the New York State Prison Department for an excursion to beautiful Lake George. At 8.30 o’clock over three hundred delegates left Albany by special train. On arrival at Lake George the steamer _Horicon_ was boarded, and after a sail of several hours on the lake, the excursionists were landed at “The Sagamore,” where a basket luncheon was served, after which the meeting of the Chaplains’ Association was held, the Rev. William J. Batt, D. D., of the Massachusetts State Reformatory, in the chair.

After a brief paper by the Rev. W. E. Edgin, Chaplain of the Indiana State Reformatory, Jeffersonville, on “Soul-Winning in a Reformatory,” and an address by Prof. Edward Everett Hale, the president introduced Mr. Joseph F. Scott, of the Elmira Reformatory, whose admirable paper on “The Chaplain from the Warden’s Point of View,” we here reproduce in full:

“Because prisoners are men, they have the same impulses, motives, hopes, and aspirations, and are susceptible to the same influences and amenable to the same forces as other men, though possibly in a less degree. Because some men are prisoners they need the same inspiration, faith, strength, and courage that other men find themselves in need of.

“In the prison of which I am superintendent, there are burglars, pickpockets, and thieves of every description. There is no law on the statute books that has not its offenders there, and they are thought of and spoken of by people in general as such. But when the parents of one of these write me, they say, ‘My son’; or if the brother or sister write, they say, ‘My brother’; and I believe if it were possible for me to hear the words of the Father in Heaven, concerning one of these, they would be, ‘My son,’ or the words of Jesus, ‘My brother.’ Should not our words be the same?

“If I had a son of my own I should insist upon such rules of diet, sleep, and exercise as would insure to him a healthful body and a good constitution, such education, necessary to a well-disciplined mind, such works or pursuits to assure success in life; such disciplinary and moral training as would build up a stable character; all to the end that his place in life would be that of a useful citizen. The need of the prisoner and the prison discipline brought to bear upon him need be nothing more, and should be nothing less than this. He needs physical development, mental quickening, industrial training, discipline and moral instruction, if he is to be returned to society a self-sustaining and useful citizen; and no prison is doing its proper work that does not in some way afford means for these essential elements of discipline.

“The moral instruction is the especial work of the prison chaplain, and he should be given that freedom of action and breadth of scope to make his work efficient. I believe that Christianity is the greatest moral force in the lives of men to-day, because it has humanity as the basis of its ethics. It has come down through the years as a forming, transforming and reforming force in the lives of men, and I believe it is to go on through the ages until selfishness shall have been uprooted, and men brought closer and closer together; when we shall love our neighbor and be willing to work for him as for ourselves, and will do unto others as we would be done by; when we shall live in one great fraternal organization; when wars, and robberies, and strife shall cease and poverty shall be no more; when the strong shall carry the burden of the weak, and succor the unfortunate, and men will live together in brotherly love, under a Christian socialism or in the New Jerusalem, or such designation as you may please to give it. This force, which has accomplished and is to accomplish so much for the world, we cannot deny a place in transforming the lives and characters of prisoners, to that of upright living.

“The prison chaplain, in his work among prisoners, should thoroughly believe that these great Christian forces which have done so much for the world are applicable to the men under his charge and are as efficient in their lives as in the lives of other men; and any Christian clergyman, desirous of helping his fellow men and entering into the service of the Lord and humanity, and of placing himself where he can do the most good, should not hesitate to accept a prison chaplaincy; and a call to such a place should be in his mind equal to the call to one of the best churches in the land.

“It is not my purpose to give a detailed outline for the work of a prison chaplain. No two men can perhaps be successful and do their work in the same way; but every person connected with the prison, be he superintendent, warden, or chaplain, or other officer, should seek every inspiration and good example and ideal within his possibilities, and then simply be his natural self in dealing with the prisoners’ needs.