Part 4

Though the publication of many striking instances of reformation that illustrate the effect of direct personal dealing with the prisoner has been forborne, lest the peculiarity of the cases should too directly point to the individual, and injure his prospects of success, yet one or two are given, that all, and especially prisoners, may comprehend the “possibility of reform,” even to the very vicious and guilty. It is believed that the offender, much more frequently than is supposed, contemplates in his cell the duties and work of reformation, while the discharge of that duty, and the commencement of that work are postponed, from the inability to see how the censure or suspicions of society are to be surmounted, or how, amid those censures and suspicions, so repulsive in their operation, he is to avoid the snares of former associates, and the temptations of former pursuits. The possibility of amendment, the practicability of virtuous resolves must be made apparent by judicious counsel and imitable example.

The effect of the moral improvement on the repentant prisoner, is soon manifested in the improvement of his physical, social, and fiscal condition. The confidence and favor of those who have promoted the change is communicated to others, and amendment of life is productive at once of an amendment of the means of living. The man of business pursuits is as anxious to procure the service of the honest and the able, as the honest and able are to obtain the patronage of active men.

With these great means of moral improvement, and, doubtless, with an eye to the temporal as well as the eternal consequences, the Society has always had in view the means of making prisoners better as well as more comfortable, of ameliorating the miseries of prisoners as well as prisons; and hence it has required action on the part of its visitors, and a regular report of what they have done, and generally how they have labored.

In dealing with the question of reformation among those who occupy the cells of the County Prison, it will be readily conceived that there are not only a variety of minds to deal with, but a great difference in the elements of character. Something must be attempted for those whose degradation is so great, that they hardly discover in their condition more cause for shame than does the unfortunate speculator who has failed in his plan of wealth. These miserable wretches seem to have no taste beyond the lowest dens of infamy, and no ambition but to gratify that taste in its utmost depravity. And there is a demand, too, for services among a few who seem to have few tastes for what are called low vices, and to have based their calculations of success on efforts that involve the higher degree of felony. The higher offences are in many instances rather the result of vicious habits than the resort of those who aim at the property of the industrious and the wealthy. Every one of these offenders against the law is within the scope of this Society, and his moral condition is in some degree provided for.

It has already been mentioned that the Society sends to both the Penitentiary and the County Prison, a Committee, whose business it is not only to note whatever in the administration of the institutions may have a bearing on the moral and physical condition of the prisoner, but also to be themselves missionaries to the inmates of the cell, moral and religious teachers of those who have failed in both. In addition to the labor of these committeemen, there is at the Penitentiary a regular moral teacher, (occupying what in some other institutions is called the chaplaincy,) but fulfilling other requirements, and making acceptable his more formal and general teaching by his frequent special and personal communication with individuals.

At the County Prison, the Agent of the Society, who is also the Agent of the Board of Inspectors, procures the services of a clergyman for religious general instruction, by preaching and prayer on the first day of the week. It may be added, also, that not unfrequently ladies and gentlemen, who belong to the choirs of some of the city churches, lend their musical aid, and give additional attraction to the religious services.

But it will be readily comprehended that as the prisoners remain in their cells during the whole of the religious exercises, they are not so likely to be influenced by the teaching and exhortation, as if they were assembled in chapel for social worship, and sat within sight, as well as within sound, of the preacher. The difficulty in this matter with a large portion of the occupants of the cells, especially when low vices rather than considerable crime have placed them there, is to get them to give attention to the speaker, whom they cannot see.

They, too generally, use the occasion of religious exercise for sleep or conversation; and the administering of discipline is, perhaps, more frequently called for, in consequence of mal-conduct during “Divine service,” than at any other time. As bringing the preachers face to face with his audience is impossible under the arrangement of the prison, and would be a departure from the plan of separate confinement, it follows, of course, that it cannot be resorted to as a remedy for the indifference to, and neglect of, the public teachings of the officiating clergyman.

In the Parliamentary Reports, partial abstracts of which are given under the head of “Correspondence,” in this report it is mentioned that the prisoners are brought into chapel without being able to recognize each other in their ingress or egress, and placed in separate stalls, so arranged, that while they can see and be seen by the clergymen, they cannot see each other. The prisoners while conducted to and from their respective cells, have their faces covered with a species of mask, which, being perforated, enables each to see and breathe, but not to recognize any other masked person. Whether this is a better system than is practised in our County Prison and Penitentiary, we are unable to say, but it supposes a chapel or chapels for several denominations, with a large number of stalls. The plan could be practised only with much inconvenience to the officers of the prison, and the object of the non-recognition among the prisoners must at least be endangered. Separate confinement and separate instruction, seem the safest.

The Society has received the aid of members of a female association, whose wish to be useful have taken them to the cells of prisons, and whose devotion have placed them in immediate conference with the erring and miserable of their own sex; and great good has resulted from their labors. It is a beautiful testimony to the devotion of these females, that while generally connected with some religious denomination, and, of course, attached to their own creed and practices, they have limited their labors to the inculcation of great moral precepts that rest on revelation, and secured much success from a gentle and affectionate enforcement of their teaching, leaving the object of their efforts more in love with the theory of virtue, if not fully resolved to enter upon its practice.

This is undoubtedly the true course for those who resolve to be useful to all who will listen to them. But those who know the well-springs of affection in the human heart, know how often they are called into exercise by some incident that seems aside from the general or the ordinary mode of procedure; nor should those who look for improvement in the prison cells, overlook a great element of success found in the early attachment to the creed in which the prisoner was reared, and for which he possesses that kind of affection which is offended by the least impeachment of its efficacy, though his own life and present condition show how utterly inoperative for good it has been on him. Those persons are not Atheists or Deists in theory, only in practice. They recognize their obligation to their creed and their early instruction, and they mean at some future time to do better; but now they sin against their own knowledge.

They know the right, and they approve it, too; They know the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue.

As to these persons, and especially in the female department, nothing could startle them more than an imputation upon their _belief_, nothing offend them more than an attack upon their creed; and suspecting that their delinquencies in practice will be imputed to the deficiency of the doctrine in which they have been reared, they stand often on the defensive; occasionally, indeed, they seem ready to take the offensive against those whom they believe to be of another form of worship. This all may be wrong; it may be ridiculous, but nevertheless it _is_; and with those who seek to do them a good, and reclaim them from vice to virtue, it must be respected, so far as not to offend it by any evidence of hostility to aught but sin and vice. The confidence of the prisoner must first be secured, and this not always by the same means, that his improvement is to be effected; and few circumstances so soon open up the heart as a similarity of creed, and an evidence of belief that that creed is not answerable for the vices or crimes of those who rather hold it in abeyance than in practice. And in that view of the case, and of the wants of the prisoner, some of the Committee having been specially assigned to the female department of the County Prison, have solicited or accepted the offered services of educated and pious females of diverse religious denominations, and opened to them, by authority from the proper officers, the doors of all the cells, so that each may have access to every inmate, and deal with her mind and conscience in the way which shall seem best adapted to the peculiar case.

It is not expected, as certainly it is not desired, that these devoted women should attempt to proselyte the prisoners, looking rather to a change of creed than a change of conduct; or rather, to speak more charitably, seeking a reformation of conduct only through a change of creed; but it is, of course, supposed, that each will deal with the object of her care in the way in which her conscience shall sanction, and that advantage will be taken of a similarity of creed to enforce a renewed recognition of doctrine in which the offender was reared, and a resort to the means which, having been enforced and adopted in childhood, are easily comprehended and readily practised, and bring with them the reminiscence of the better days of home and early piety, while they give a stronger hope of future prosperity and happiness.

The stranger visiting the County Prison, has been gratified with the free ingress of these female missionaries, and has been forcibly struck with the harmonious, though not associated, action of women whose peculiarity of dress shows them to be of religious connection variant in creed and ceremony, but whose concurrent _general_ instruction shows them to be trying to serve one Master in the way which their consciences suggested and approved, and which is warranted by the example of that Master, who “went about doing good,” and who showed the duty of that conduct when he said, “I was in prison and ye came unto me.”

However beneficial may be the regular service of the clergy on the Sabbath, it will, it is believed, be admitted by all, that those who have the ear of the separated prisoner, who know the peculiarities of his case, and the proclivity of his inclinations, have a great opportunity of touching his affections, of making an impression on his mind, and rousing him to good resolves, when the dealing is separate and special, and the poor wanderer feels that every word that is uttered is directed to his own conscience, and every hope that is offered is founded on amendments that are peculiar to his own condition. This separate dealing is, in almost all cases of sin, of vice and crime, that which a friend would desire to exercise; it is that which the sinner, the vicious, or the criminal, would acknowledge the most efficacious, because less offensive to his self-love, and because it can be so specially adapted, as to meet every point of his own case, so as to leave no avenue for mental escape, and satisfy him that nothing less than entire reformation of resolves and conduct will save him from the augmentation of that punishment which he is now suffering, and which will cut him off from the sympathies as well as the intercourse of his fellow-beings.

It is scarcely possible to say too much of this mode of separate instruction and exhortation,—this mode of softening the heart and moulding it to good,—the simple means of acquiring the confidence of the prisoner, and then leading him out of his miserable condition, to the commencement of that course which in a long run is to lead to the establishment of virtuous principles; but it is desirable that more could be justly said of the number of those who give themselves to this holy service. The number is small,—quite too small for the number of those who need those aids to virtue of which we have spoken; and especially is there a deficiency in the variety of religious views of the visitors. Not that it is desirable that distinctive doctrines should be enforced; but it is desirable, as has been stated above, that the attachment to creed,—almost as strong in the vicious as in the good,—should be respected as a means of confidence at least. Few virtuous, few pious persons of enlarged christian philanthropy consider the attachment or hostility of certain persons to certain creeds in which they have been reared, or which they have been taught to hold. Zealous attachment to creed survives all practices of virtue, all ground of self-respect, and is apparently, and perhaps naturally, more rampant in those who have no sense of the virtue which the creed enforces, than in those who understand the character of the creed, and the rights of others who do not profess it. And it is worthy of remark, that some of the most violent personal contests of which the Vagrant cells of the County Prison have been the arena, have been caused by the opposite _religious_ creeds in which the miserable occupants had been born, and in which they had been reared; and thus the broken forms of christian doctrine would be avenged in the receptacle of vice, and by the vicious, with all kinds of blasphemy and personal violence, and the religion of peace and purity be enforced with broken heads and broken commandments.

This strong case (entirely real) is presented to illustrate the idea that almost all hope of doing good to the class of persons to whom reference is made, must rest upon efforts that are put forth in some regard to the prejudices which are manifested by those whose benefit is sought.

To produce the ends proposed by the means which we recommend,—namely, an arousing of the conscience by gentle appeals to the hidden affections, by those whose circumstances qualify them to gain access to the confidence of the moral patients,—we must have many devoted visitors, willing to labor beyond the sight and without the applause of the world; and they, when properly vouched for in all requisite qualifications, must have free access to those whom they would aid. It is known that this Society has, by the laws of the Commonwealth, a sort of special privilege to visit in prison, by its members, the miserable, the wretched, the vicious and the criminal, to breathe through the gratings of the cell words of admonition, comfort and hope, or to open the door and participate in the confinement of the prisoner, and address him in accents that may, in the silence of all around him, awaken him to holy resolves. But even this privilege, greatly used, and, as we believe, never abused, is imperfect without a concurrent action on the part of those who directly administer the affairs of the prison. If they oppose obstacles to free access to the incarcerated, no assertion or proof of right will make the path easy, or often trod by those who represent us, especially the females; it will be found to add the disgust of contention with keepers, to the inconvenience of visits to the guarded. And still less effective will be any efforts by christian philanthropists to alleviate the misery of the cells, and improve the minds of the occupants, if their visits of mercy are followed by the coarse jeers of the unrefined and unsympathizing, ridiculing the efforts of the self-sacrificing visitor, and shaming the half-resolved prisoner; nor would it be better, if the regular official should, from bigotry or bad design, denounce the teaching of the voluntary visitor, because it might tend to other creeds than his own, or because it proceeded from other sources and in other channels than that by which his creed was formed, or those in which his conscience directed. It will be readily understood how potent such disturbing causes would be in producing injurious effects,—in marring, indeed, the good work of the moral teachers in our prisons. It seems therefore meet to say here, that while it is supposed that those who are entrusted with the care of the prisoner, in both Penitentiary and County Prison, have some well-established views of doctrine, and are connected with some religious denomination, it is not known that any of them have attempted to interrupt the work of the committee and agents of the Society, by hindering the access to prisoners, or by disturbing with contrary teaching the effect produced. On the contrary, it seems a duty at this time and in this place to bear testimony to the unfailing urbanity with which our visitors are received and treated at the prisons, and the aid always rendered to give them ready access to the cells and to the minds of the incarcerated. In the County Prison, where such a variety is presented, and so much care is required, and so much time demanded by the frequent changes, no occupation of the employees, male or female, ever poses an obstacle to the visit of those who come to help the helpless and improve the bad. No variety of creed induces a diminution of that courtesy which is the true exponent of benevolence; and in this respect the superintendent, keeper, clerk and matrons may be regarded as official assistants in the work of alleviating the miseries of the prisons which they are bound to regulate.

AGENT.

The Society continues to have the benefit of the labors of WILLIAM J. MULLIN, who for so many years has filled the place of “Agent” at the County Prison. His services are important to the Society, in the amelioration of the condition of a vast number of men, women, and even children, whom he finds in the cells of the prison, victims of the errors of public officers, of their own follies, of the vindictive feelings of unkind neighbors, of their own inordinate love of litigation, or their own or their parents’ crimes. He is not called to look to the cases of those who may be released by the Inspectors. His labors are with the prosecutors, the aldermen, the district attorney, and the court; and those labors resulted in the release of one thousand four hundred and ninety-one persons during the year 1863. These releases, of course, were all effected with the consent of some established authority. And it may be added, that of the whole number released, _forty-three_ were children.

The amount of domestic misery consequent upon the arrest and incarceration of the 1491 persons is almost inappreciable. The injustice corrected by the successful interference must have been immense, and the pleasure brought to a suffering family by the restoration of parent or child to approved innocence, and the duties and comforts of home, must have been truly great.

But we are not to consider all these 1491 persons entirely innocent of the charges brought against them. The magistrate had the commitment supported by the oath of some complainant, and the complainant himself was undoubtedly often justified by the conduct of the prisoner. The blow for which assault and battery was charged, was probably given, and the fruit or toy whose loss led to the imprisonment for larceny, was taken by the accused. The pane of glass in the tavern window was probably broken by the intoxicated creature who was charged with “malicious mischief.” Nor, under these and similar circumstances, are we always to censure the magistrate for taking the oath of a citizen. He commits to prison, or holds to bail for trial, those who stand accused of the violation of private rights. The offender knew, before he entered upon his offensive conduct, that he was about to do wrong. But probably he did not understand the extent of that wrong, and especially was he ignorant of the extent of the penalty which he was about to incur.

We all know the axiom of criminal law, that “ignorance of the law excuseth no man;” but we all know, also, that the axiom is not of equal force in moral law; and the administration of criminal law itself has practical exceptions to the rule. We have already said that a large number of cases sent to court might easily be settled by the parties, but especially by the interference of the magistrate; and we may add, that more than two-thirds of the cases in which the magistrate holds, or commits the prisoners for trial, could, before reaching the prosecuting attorney, be settled, with benefit to the community and the offender. The requirements of the law are seen and felt by the accused before he finds himself committed. The vengeance of the law would do little towards reforming one who already sees his fault, and is ready, as far as possible, to make reparation. In such cases the interference of the Agent has been found most beneficial, not merely in procuring the discharge of the innocent, separating him from the association of untried vagabonds and thieves, and sending him back to his family and business, to work out and work off the stain which even _false_ imprisonment has set upon his character. But greatly advantageous has been that interference in behalf of the guilty, of him who had actually committed the act charged, but who felt the danger of his position as well as the error or turpitude of his conduct, and who needed only to be saved from the actual verdict of the jury and the sentence of the court, to become a candidate again for public confidence and general respect. To all visitors of prisons it is known that hundreds, who commit a violation of the criminal law, never feel the degradation of their act, or submit their minds to its disgraceful consequences, till they are made companions of culprits in the prison cells,—that to be known to the good as having done a notable wrong, is a mortifying means for repentance and amendment; while to be in companionship with the admitted bad, is to be almost certainly sealed to future infamy. This strong but correct view of the cases of new offenders, is that upon which the Agent has based his action; and it is not only due to him, but to the plans and labors of the Society, to say, that while it is probable that some of those whom he, with much labor, has released from prison, have shown that they did not improve by his beneficent efforts, it is most true that by far the largest portion have shown by their subsequent conduct that they appreciate the benevolence that interposed in their behalf, and were ready to make the only compensation which is acceptable to their benefactor, viz., an amended life.