By Hastings H Hart.
Director Child Caring Work, Russell Sage Foundation.
[This very illuminating book review of “Within Prison Walls,” a book by Thomas Mott Osborne, has, by
agreement, been published jointly in The Delinquent and The Survey. The editor of The Delinquent
had at first planned to give to several persons the pleasant task of reviewing Mr. Osborne’s important book.
But Dr. Hart has written so graphic a review that we shall be content with this. The second article in this
month’s magazine follows logically this review.]
In his book, “Within Prison Walls,”
“Tom Brown,” (Hon. Thomas Mott
Osborne) has given a remarkable study
of the mind of the convict. This book
should be read in connection with Donald
Lowrie’s book, “My Life In Prison,”
which portrays the prisoner from the
vantage point of actual and prolonged
experience but without the advantage
of Mr. Osborne’s wider knowledge of
human life and human philosophy.
Mr. Osborne’s study is an astonishing
achievement for a single week. To
break the crust of officialism and without
legal authority to command the co-operation
of unwilling prison officials; to
overcome the suspicions and the reticence
of the prisoners, to secure their
general co-operation in his plan, and to
gain admission to the inner circles of
convict life; and then to really put himself
in the place of a prisoner and to
realize how he feels, how he thinks and
to catch his viewpoint—to do all this in
a week was an astonishing piece of work.
Of course, his work was fragmentary
and incomplete, but the writer has known
prison officers who have associated with
prisoners for years without obtaining
such a knowledge of their mental processes
as Mr. Osborne gained in a week.
It is much to be regretted that Mr.
Julian Hawthorne did not seize the opportunity
of his experience at Atlanta
and apply his literary genius to record
and analyze the effects of prison life upon
himself and his associates. He might
have written a classic equal to De Quincey’s
“Confessions of an Opium Eater,”
but he choose instead to retell the gossip
and scandals of the State prisons, true
and false, as given him by second and
third-term convicts.
Mr. Osborne, having been appointed
by Governor Sulzer as chairman of a
commission to recommend improvements
in the prison system of the State
of New York, resolved to become a voluntary
prisoner at Auburn and to put
himself, as nearly as possible, in the
place of the actual convict. He frankly
declared his purpose in the prison chapel,
asking the co-operation of the officers
and prisoners to make his experience as
realistic as possible; and they took him
at his word.
He entered the prison gates in citizen’s
clothes and was registered by the
receiving officer as “Thomas Brown,
33,333x.” He was conducted by an officer
to the tailor shop, where in a corner
of the shop without any screens and
in full view of all passers in and out,
are three porcelain lined iron bath tubs
side by side. He stripped, bathed and
dressed in the conventional prison suit
and was supplied with a “cake of soap,
one towel and a bible.” He was admonished
by the Principal Keeper (“P. K.”),
was given a copy of the prison rules and
was assigned to work in the basket shop.
During the first two days he was catechized
as to his past life, occupations, habits,
etc., by the principal keeper, the chaplain,
the doctor, and the clerk of the
Bertillon identification system, with
much repetition.
It had been agreed with the warden
that Tom Brown should be placed, at
first, with the “Idle Company,” a group
of prisoners who were characterized by
one of the officers as “the toughest bunch
of fellows in the prison.” He was disappointed
therefore when he found himself
in the basket shop where the men
were courteous, communicative and
helpful, and was astonished after two
days to discover that this was the identical
“worst bunch in the prison” of
which he had been told. Tom Brown
was assigned to a cell 4 by 7½ feet and
7½ feet high. (Many of the cells are
only 3½ feet wide). Many cells of this
kind contain two men each. The cell
contained a stool, a folding shelf, a folding
bed, a wash basin, a tin cup, a broom,
a small wooden locker, and an electric
bulb.
Tom Brown swung open his cell door
at a signal, marched in line, carried out
and emptied his own cell bucket, ate
prison fare in the prison dining-room
(including prison hash), did his stint in
the basket shop with refractory material
which made his fingers sore, and served
on a detail moving railroad cars with
block and tackle. He received from his
fellow prisoners donations of sugar, of
doubtful origin, for his oatmeal. He
received communications and newspapers
from numerous sources by underground
communication. He learned to
talk without moving his lips and he
found himself instinctively joining with
his associates “agin the government.”
He details most interestingly the petty
items that make up the life of the prisoner
and revealed how much unhappiness
may be caused by things which appear
insignificant in themselves, such as
the collapsing of the folding cot, under
inexperienced hands, after the extinguishment
of the lights.
Tom Brown reveals startlingly the
horrors of prison life to the man of refined
sensibilities—the shock of the first
night of cell life when the lights went
out.
“The bars are so black that they seem to
close in upon you,—to come nearer and
nearer, until they press upon your forehead....
You can feel the blackness of those iron bars
across your closed eyelids; they seem to sear
themselves into your very soul. It is the most
terrible sensation I ever experienced. I understand
now the prison pallor; I understand
the sensitiveness of this prison audience; I
understand the high nervous tension which
makes anything possible. How does any man
remain sane, I wonder, caged in this stone
grave, day after day, night after night?”
He tells the ghastly story of the collapse
of a poor old prisoner in a shop:
“In due time a litter is brought; the pitiful
fragment of humanity is placed gently upon
it and is carried out of the shop into which
he will probably never return. The look on
his face was one not easy to forget in its
white stare of patient suffering. It seemed to
typify long years of stolid endurance until the
worn-out old frame had simply crumpled under
the accumulated load.”
He experienced the humiliation of being
the object of pursuit by pertinacious
curiosity-hunters and camera-fiends; yet
the change in his appearance was so
great that he escaped recognition by
personal friends who were watching
carefully for him. The crowning horror
he describes as follows:
“The cell house has settled down for the
night. Only a few muffled sounds make the
stillness more distinctly felt. Then, suddenly,
the unearthly quiet is shattered by a terrifying
uproar. It is too far away to hear at first
anything with distinctness; it is all a confused
and hideous mass of shouting—a shouting
first of a few, then of more, then of many
voices. I have never heard anything more
dreadful—in the full meaning of the word—full
of dread. My heart is thumping like a
trip hammer and the cold shivers run up and
down my back.
“I jump to the door of the cell, pressing my
ear close to the cold iron bars. Then I can
distinguish a few words sounding against the
background of the confused outcry: ‘Stop
that!’ ‘Leave them alone!’ ‘Damn you, stop
that!’ Then some dull thuds; I even fancy
that I hear something like a groan, along
with the continued confused and violent
shouting. What can it be!
“While I am perfectly aware that I am not
in the least likely to be harmed, I am shivering
close akin to a chill of actual terror. If
anyone near at hand were to give vent to a
sudden yell I feel that I might easily lose my
self control and shout and bang my door with
the rest of them.
“The cries continue, accompanied with
other noises that I cannot make out. Then
my attention is attracted by whispering at
one of the lower windows.... It is so dark
outside that I can see nothing, not even the
dim shapes of the whisperers....
“The shouts die down. There are a few
more vague and uncertain sounds—all the
more dreadful for being uncertain; somewhere
an iron door clangs! Then stillness
follows, like that of the grave.”
Tom Brown reported this mysterious
occurrence to the warden who promised
to investigate. Next day the warden
“has inquired into it, he says, and found
it was only a case of a troublesome fellow
sent up from Sing Sing, who was
making some little disturbance in the
gallery. After they had admonished him
he wouldn’t stop, so they had to take
him down to the jail. When the officer
entered his cell, he threw his bucket at
the officer and there was a little row.
‘I’m inclined to think,’ adds the warden,
‘that he may be a little bit crazy, and I’m
ed further investigation, telling the warden
that, from information which has
come to him, he thinks that the officers
are “trying to slip one over” on him.’
From his fellow prisoners Tom Brown
obtained what he believes to be the correct
version of the incident, as follows:
“There had lately been sent up from Sing
Sing a young prisoner ... pale, thin
and undersized; weight about 120
pounds; age 21.” On charge of impertinence
to an officer he had been kept in
a dark punishment cell five days, on
bread and water. (The allowance of
water was 3 gills per day). He was
sent back to work but was unfit and
next day remained in his cell ill, but “in
spite of his repeated requests, the doctor
was not summoned. The reason probably
was that he was in the state known
in prison as bughouse—that is to say at
least flighty, if not temporarily out of
his mind”.... “In the evening, he
created some disturbance by calling out
remarks which violated the quiet of the
cell-block.” “I understand,” Tom Brown
says, “something of this sort: ‘If you
want to kill me, why don’t you do it at
once and not torture me to death?’ He
seemed to be possessed with the idea that
his life was in danger.”
“Now here was a young man, hardly more
than a lad, in a sick and nervous condition
that had produced temporary derangement of
mind. What course did the system take in
dealing with that suffering being! Two keepers
opened his cell, made a rush for him and
knocked him down.... During the brief
scuffle in the cell the iron pail and the bucket
were overturned. Then, after being handcuffed,
the unresisting if not unconscious
youth was flung out of his cell with such violence
that, if it had not been for a convict
trusty who stood by, he would have slipped
under the rail of the gallery and fallen to the
stone floor of the corridor four stories below,
and been either killed or crippled for life.
“Then the two keepers, being reinforced by
a third, dragged their victim roughly down
stairs, partly on his back, kicked and beat him
on the way, and carried him before the Principal
Keeper, who promptly sent him down to
the jail again.” (i.e., the punishment cells).
“This scene of violence could not pass unnoticed;
and the loud protests and outcries of
the prisoners whose cells were near by, ...
were the sounds I heard far away in my cell.”
A trusty who saw most of the occurrence “so
far forget his position as to venture the opinion
that it was ‘a pretty raw deal’. This remark
was overheard by an officer; and the
trusty at once received the warning that he
had better keep his mouth shut and not talk
about what didn’t concern him.
“If it is realized that these officers have
what almost amounts to the power of life and
death over the convicts it can be understood
that such a warning was not one to be lightly
disregarded.”
After three days further detention in
the “jail” the prisoner was transferred
to the hospital, where he received proper
care, but “he had at first no clear
recollection of the brutal treatment of
which he had been the victim.”
An interesting side light is thrown
upon the official side of prison life by an
episode connected with this case of punishment.
Immediately after the episode,
Tom Brown questioned one of the officers
who refused to answer the questions.
On the following morning the
same officer came to Tom Brown, who
writes:
“This morning he is exceedingly bland....
He enters upon a long rigmarole, the gist of
which is how necessary it is for a man to do
his duty.... Then he casually turns the
conversation around to show how closely connected
he is to various admirers of my father
and myself, and gracefully insinuates that he
also shares these feelings.... It is borne
in upon me that he not only knows all about
last night’s disturbance, but that he was probably
concerned in it, and is now deliberately
trying to switch me off the track.”
Another side light upon the official
side of prison life is that Tom Brown
discovered that prisoners under punishment
were never released from the jail
on Sunday. When he made an appeal
to the Principal Keeper to transfer the
sick boy from the dark cell to the hospital,
the Principal Keeper objected strenuously,
but when the prison physician
joined in the appeal, “finally the P. K.
with an air of triumph brings out his
last and conclusive argument. ‘There
is a great deal in what you say, gentlemen,
and I should like to oblige you, Mr.
Osborne, but you see this is Sunday; and
you know we never let ’em out of jail on
Sunday.’ ... ‘Sunday!’ I exclaimed.
‘In Heaven’s name, P. K., what is Sunday?
Isn’t it the Lord’s Day? Very
well, then. Do you mean to tell me you
actually think if you take a poor sick
boy, with an open wound in his ear, out
of a close, dirty, vermin-filled, dark cell,
where he isn’t allowed to wash, and has
but three gills of water a day ... and
put him back into the hospital, where the
Doctor says he belongs—do you really
think that such an act of mercy would be
displeasing to God?’ ‘Why,’ he gasps,
‘that’s true. I think you’re right. We
put ’em in on Sunday; why shouldn’t we
take ’em out?’”
Mr. Osborne certified that this story
is fully corroborated by careful inquiry
from different men and comments as
follows:
“Doubtless some will say that the statements
of convicts are not to be believed. That
touches upon one of the very worst features
of the situation. No discrimination is ever
made. It is not admitted, that while one convict
may be a liar, another may be entirely
truthful; that men differ in prison exactly as
in the world outside. It is held, quite as a
matter of course, that they are all liars, and an
officer’s word will be taken against that of a
convict or any number of convicts. The result
is that the officers feel themselves practically
immune from any evil consequences to
them from their own acts of injustice or violence.
What follows this is inevitable. Our
prisons have often been the scenes of intolerable
brutality, for which it has been useless
for the victims to seek redress. They can
only cower and endure in silence; or be driven
into insanity by a hopeless revolt against the
System....
“The point is this: that no convict has any
rights—not even the right to be believed; not
even the right to reasonable considerate
treatment. He is exposed without safeguard
of any sort to whatever outrage and inconsiderate
and brutal keeper may choose to inflict
upon him; and you cannot under the present
system guard against such inconsiderate and
brutal treatment.
“I should not like to be understood as asserting
that all keepers are brutal or even a
majority of them.” ... But, “we must recognize,
in dealing with our Prison System,
that many really well-meaning men will operate
a system, in which the brutality of an officer
goes unpunished, in a brutal manner.
“The reason of this is not far to seek—a
reason which also obtained in the slave system.
The most common and powerful impulse
that drives an ordinary, well-meaning
man to brutality is fear.... In prison,
where each officer believes that his life is in
constant danger, the keeper tends to become
callous; the sense of that danger blunts his
higher qualities.... Undoubtedly there is
basis for his fear, for some of those men are
dangerous, rendered more so by the nerve-racking
System. I can conceive no more terribly
disintegrating moral experience than
that of being a keeper over convicts.
“I am not now in any way disputing the
necessity of a keeper being constantly on his
guard; I am not saying whether this view of
things is right or wrong; and when I use the
word fear I do not mean cowardice—a very different
thing, for a brave man can feel fear.
I am simply trying to point out that in prison,
as elsewhere, when men are dominated by fear,
brutality is the evitable result.”
In view of this episode, Tom Brown
determined to undergo the horrors of
the “Jail.” To this the prison warden
very reluctantly consented. It was
agreed that he should be treated exactly
like a convict under punishment except
that a “jail suit” should be cleansed for
his use, whereas the ordinary prisoners
use them interchangeably, without cleaning.
Accordingly, Tom Brown suddenly
knocked off work, declaring that the material
furnished was unfit and he wasn’t
going to work any more anyhow. His
shop captain, finding him obdurate, had
no option and was obliged to send him
to the Principal Keeper who, finding him
still obdurate, reluctantly ordered him
to the “jail,” which Tom Brown describes
as follows:
“A vaulted stone dungeon, about 50 by 20
feet, having on one side the death chamber
for electrocuting murderers, and on the other
side the prison dynamo with its ceaseless
grinding, night and day. It is absolutely bare,
except for one wooden bench along the north
end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept,
and eight cells, of solid sheet iron; floor,
sides, back and roof. They are studded with
rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch.
At the time that Warden Rattigan came into
office there was no other floor; the inmates
slept on the bare iron and the rivets! The
cells are about 4½ by 8 feet and 9 feet high.
There is a feeble attempt at ventilation—a
small hole in the roof of the cell, which does
not ventilate. Practically there is no air in
the cell except what percolates in through
the extra heavily grated door.” Two windows
in the vaulted room outside admit some
light but, except on a bright sunny day, an
electric light is necessary in order to see the
inside of the cell. “Up to the time of Supt.
Riley’s and Warden Rattigan’s coming into
office the supply of water for each prisoner
was limited to one gill for 24 hours.”
There is a sink in the outer room but
“the sink was not used for the prisoners
to wash for the simple reason that the
prisoners in the jail were not allowed to
wash.”
On entrance, Tom Brown was instructed
to take off his clothes and put on the
jail suit which had been cleansed in anticipation
of his coming. He says: “If
these are the clothes which have been
carefully washed and cleaned for me, I
should like to examine—at a safe distance—the
ordinary ones. They must
be filthy beyond words.” He was carefully
searched by the captain to discover
whether he had any weapon or instrument
upon his person. His handkerchief
was taken from him, presumably
to avoid danger of suicide, because a
prisoner once strangled himself with his
handkerchief. He was given a small tin
water can.
The cell contained no seat, bed, mattress
or bedding—nothing except a papier-mache
bucket. A convict trusty
handed in through a slot in the door a
slice of bread and inserted the spout of
a tin funnel through which he poured
into the prisoner’s can exactly a gill of
water to last through the night. The
officers and the trusty departed and very
soon five other prisoners in adjacent cells
made themselves known. Then followed
an animated discussion on prison fare;
ethics of the jail; comparative merits of
transatlantic liners, politics, prison reform,
etc. Tom Brown says: “On the
whole, more intelligent, instructive and
entertaining conversation it has seldom
been my lot to enjoy.” To his surprise
he finds that these men, presumably the
worst in the prison, are human and even
sympathetic. One has been sent down
“because he had talked back to one of
the citizen instructors;” two others for
a little scrap which involved no special
bitterness; a fourth for hitting a convict
with a crow bar because he had called
him a bad name; the fifth was a sick boy
whose ear was still discharging after an
operation. He had been sent down for
making trouble in the hospital and was
not allowed a handkerchief to take care
of the discharge from his ear. All prisoners
punished, whatever the character
of the offense, received the same treatment
and in addition to confinement on
bread and water were fined 50 cents for
each day of confinement; the fine to be
worked out at the rate of 1½ cents per
day, allowed each prisoner as “earnings.”
The prisoner also has to wear a mark
upon his sleeve from that day forward
indicating that he has been punished and,
if he has previously earned a good-conduct
bar by a year’s perfect record, that
bar is taken from him and, finally, some
portion, if not all, of the commutation
time which he may have gained by previous
good conduct is forfeited. Manifestly
a prison punishment is a serious
matter to the convict.
After four hours confinement Tom
Brown was visited by two prison officers,
it having been understood that he
would not stay longer, but to their astonishment
he refused to go, having determined
to experience the full limit of
jail life. They left him very reluctantly.
As the night wore on he says:
“Now that all chance of escape is gone I
begin to feel more than before the pressure
of the horror of this place; the close confinement;
the bad air; the terrible darkness, the
bodily discomforts, the uncleanness, the lack
of water. My throat is parched, but I dare
not drink more than a sip at a time, for my
one gill—what is left of it—must last until
morning. And then there is the constant
whir-whir-whirring of the dynamo next door
and the death chamber at our backs.”
The prisoners seek to mitigate their
misery. One asks: “Say fellows! what
would you say now to a nice thick juicy
steak with fried potatoes?” One “sings
an excellent ragtime ditty;” another “follows
with the Toreador’s song from Carmen,
sung in a sweet, true, light tenor
voice that shows real love and appreciation
of music.
“This is the place where I had expected
to meet the violent and dangerous
criminals; but what do I find! A genial
young Irishman, as pleasant company as
I have ever encountered, and a sweet
voiced boy singing Carmen.”
These entertainments over, the night
drags on. The wooden floor proves a
hard bed until a prisoner instructs him
how to make a pillow of his felt shoes
and his shirt. Bed bugs infest the place
and after killing one, he imagines multitudes.
The sick prisoner accidentally
upsets his water can and soon becomes
delirious, seeming likely to become a
raving maniac. There is no way to summon
an officer, but one of the prisoners
with amazing tact and patience soothes
his agitation until he finally falls asleep.
At last Brown falls into a doze but is
speedily awakened by a patrolling officer
who awakens the prisoners at 12:30
and 4:30 A. M. but refuses his request
to renew the water spilled by the sick
prisoner because it is “’gainst the rules.”
At 6 A. M. on Sunday, Tom Brown is
released from his punishment, convinced
that the “System” is illogical, antiquated,
barbarous, cruel and destructive to
the character of prisoners and officers
alike. He is exhausted, body and soul;
but he finds strength to make a chapel
address to the prisoners, which must
have been memorable. The prisoners
are tremendously impressed by the fact
that this man of education, culture and
wealth has voluntarily endured for six
days the same treatment as themselves,
in the endeavor to understand their situation
and, if possible, to improve it; they
recognize that the cell, the march, the
shock and the dungeon affect the man of
culture and refinement more keenly than
the ordinary prisoner; but the thing
which affects them most profoundly is
the vicarious character of his act. They
would almost apply to it the words of
the prophet Isaiah: “Surely he hath
borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.”
Mr. Osborne is not content to discover
and reveal the vices of the prison
system but he seeks a practical remedy.
To this end he has taken counsel, not
only with the prison authorities and students
of penological science, but also
with the prisoners who live under the
system and, some of whom, are keenly
alive to its destructive influence. A
prisoner in the shops gave him the basic
idea. He says:
“For some years I have felt that the principles
of self-government might possibly be the
key to the solution of the prison problem; but
as yet I have not been able to see clearly how
to begin its application. There have seemed
to be almost insuperable difficulties. In this
connection Jack” (Jack Murphy, a prisoner)
“made a suggestion which supplies a most important
link in the chain.
“In discussing the various aspects of prison
life we reached the subject of the long and
dreary Sundays. Jack agrees with all those
with whom I have talked that the long stretch
in the cells, from the conclusion of the chapel
service, between ten-thirty and eleven o’clock
Sunday morning until seven Monday morning—over
twenty hours, is a fearful strain both
physical and mental upon the prisoners.
“‘Well, Jack,’ I say, ‘from what I have heard
Superintendent Riley say, I feel sure he would
like to give the men some sort of exercise or
recreation on Sunday afternoons; but how
could it be managed! You can’t ask the officers
to give up their day off, and you don’t
think the men could be trusted by themselves,
do you!’
“‘Why not?’ says Jack.
“I look at him enquiringly.
“‘Why, look here, Tom. I know this place
through and through. I know these men;
I’ve studied ’em for years. And I tell you that
the big majority of these fellows in here will
be square with you if you give ’em a chance.
The trouble is they don’t treat us on the level.
I could tell you all sorts of frame-ups they
give us. Now if you trust a man, he will try
and do what’s right; sure he will. That is,
most men will. Of course, there are a few
that won’t. There are some dirty curs—degenerates—that
will make trouble, but there
ain’t so very many of those. Look at that
road work! Haven’t the men done fine!
How many prisoners have you out on the
roads! About 130; and you ain’t had a single
runaway yet. And if there should be any
runaways you can just bet we’d show ’em
what we think about it.’
“‘Do you really think, Jack, that the Superintendent
and the Warden could trust you
fellows out in the yard on Sunday afternoons
in summer!’
“‘Sure they could,’ responds Jack....
‘And there could be a band concert.... And
it would be a good sight better for us than
being locked in our cells all day. You’d have
fewer fights on Monday, I know that.’
“‘But how about the discipline! Would you
let everybody out in the yard! What about
those bad actors who don’t know how to behave!
Won’t they quarrel and fight and try
to escape?’
“‘But don’t you see, Tom, that they couldn’t
do that without putting the whole thing on
the bum, and depriving the rest of us of our
privileges? You needn’t be afraid we couldn’t
handle those fellows all right! Or why not
let out only those men who have a good conduct
bar! That’s it!’ He continues, enthusiastically
warming up to the subject, ‘That’s
it, Tom, a good conduct league, and give the
privilege of Sunday afternoons to the members
of the league.’”
This suggestion of Jack Murphy bore
practical fruit. Soon after his “discharge,”
Mr. Osborne, with the co-operation
of the Superintendent of Prisons
and the Warden of Auburn Prison, succeeded
in establishing a Good Conduct
League composed of prisoners, with
officers elected by their fellow prisoners.
The prisoners are given the liberty of
the yard on Sunday afternoons, with a
greatly reduced force of guards. They
march to and from their cells and their
work under the direction of prisoners.
They prepare entertainments with the
permission and approval of their officers.
This plan has now been in operation for
several months without the slightest disorder
or accident and with marked improvement
in the spirit and behaviour of
the men.
This inspiring demonstration represents
no new discovery by Jack Murphy
or by Mr. Osborne. It is only a re-discovery
of what was practiced by Captain
Alexander Machonochie at Norfolk
Island with transported British convicts
seventy years ago. The writer saw Colonel
Gardner Tufts doing similar things
with convicts at Concord, Massachusetts,
nearly thirty years ago, where
prisoners were carrying on evening literary
societies in perfect order without
the presence of an officer. He saw similar
things done by Captain Hickox at the
Michigan State Prison more than twenty
years ago, where the old chaplain gathered
200 men in a single room for an
evening assembly with no officer present
but himself. This same principal is being
worked out in the State prisons of
Oregon and Colorado, in the Ohio State
Reformatory at Mansfield and in Doctor
Gilmour’s splendid work at Guelph,
Ontario. In all of these places it has
been found that when you build a wall
around a man he immediately wants to
climb over it and that when you turn
him loose and say, “I trust you and I
know that you will not betray me,” there
is almost always an instant response.
Mr. Osborne believes that this is the
first instance of the application of the
democratic principle to the management
of convicts in a large convict prison, and
that the Auburn experiment differs from
others in that the prisoners there themselves
originated the movement. He
says that “the good conduct of the prisoners
is in reality an outward expression
of an outward spiritual impulse.” “Hence
the name, ‘Mutual Welfare League,’;
hence the motto, ‘Do good, make good.’
By doing good to others the man makes
good for himself.”
Mr. Osborne’s demonstrations make
it clear that those who believe that severity
is an essential part of prison methods
need not worry. Every convict is
punished. When you pillory a man before
the world as a criminal, transport
him by public conveyance and march
him through the streets in irons, put him
behind prison walls, deprive him of his
liberty, subject him absolutely to the will
of another man who holds practically
the powers of life and death, lock him
in an ill-ventilated prison cell, 4½ by 7
feet (perhaps with an uncongenial cell
mate), dress him in prison garb, exhibit
him to curious visitors at 25 cents per
head, subject him to strict compliance
with thirty to fifty exacting rules on
pain of loss of privileges and increase
of term, restrict his correspondence to
two censored letters per month, permit
him to see his wife and children only in
the presence of an officer and clad in
prison garb—under these circumstances
no one need question that the prisoner is
punished, even though he may have the
privilege of listening to a band concert
and watching a baseball game once a
week, conversing with his fellow convicts
in subdued tones at meals and witnessing
a moving picture show once or
twice a month. Let it never be forgotten
that the convict is punished!
Those who ridicule or condemn Mr.
Osborne’s adventure make a mistake.
It may have been sensational, but there
was need of a sensation. His experiment
was valuable because it was sincere
and because it has brought out the
truth. But it has brought out only part
of the truth.
We wish that Mr. Osborne would secure
an opportunity to be installed as
prison guard in some one of the great
prisons of the United States like the
Illinois State Penitentiary, the Indiana
State Prison of Michigan City, or
the Penitentiary at Pittsburgh, Pa. Let
him go incog., unknown to anyone except
the prison warden, and let him come
into the same intimate familiarity with
the life and thinking of the prison guard
as that which he has acquired in the case
of the prison convict. He has already
discovered the demoralizing tendency
of life of the prison guard, and has discovered
its chief flaw, namely, the ruling
principle of fear, to which must be
added the lack of psychological understanding
of the prisoner and the entire
lack of any adequate preliminary training.
There must be taken into account
also the fact that there exists among
prison guards, in an exaggerated degree,
the sentiment that it is dishonorable to
“snitch” upon a fellow officer and, while
a superior officer is likely to report a
subordinate for cruelty or misconduct,
the exposure of such actions by a guard
of equal rank is very unusual. The difficulty
can only be overcome by improving
the personnel and raising the moral
standards of prison guards. The day is
not far distant when training schools
for prison guards will hold the same relation
to prison work which training
schools for nurses hold to well-conducted
hospitals.
We wish that Mr. Osborne, or someone
equally discerning, might put himself
in the place of the convict all the
way through and tell an equally convincing
story. Let him go forth with a five-dollar
discharge suit on his back so marked
as to betray to every passing policeman
the shop where it was made. Let
him go out with five dollars or possibly
ten dollars in his pocket to satisfy a sharpened
appetite and find a job in these
hard times. Let him meet the watchful
policeman, or the plain clothes man, who
advises him that “We’re on to you.”
Let him meet the discharged convict
who solicits the loan of a dollar with
implied threat of exposure. Let him take
a job in good faith and render faithful
service, only to be discharged at the end
of the second week because somebody
has given him away.
Let him be arrested, guilty or not
guilty, as a suspect of some crime. Let
him be subjected to the inquisition of
“the third degree,” regardless of the
rights which are supposed to be guaranteed
to every citizen that he shall be
deemed to be innocent until proven to be
guilty. Let him experience the starvation,
buffeting insults and detectives’ lies
which are incident to this inquisition.
Then, by all means, let Mr. Osborne’s
representative await trial in a county
jail and discover the beauties of a System
which is twice as vicious as the Auburn
Prison System which he describes.
Thrust him into a steel cage and exhibit
him to all comers like a wild beast in a
menagerie. Let him share his cell with
five other prisoners in a place where he
cannot keep himself free from vermin,
where he cannot take a bath, and force
him into intimate association, day and
night, with a mob of prisoners who are
kept in idleness, with no occupation except
to corrupt one another and to concoct
plans to escape by bribing or mobbing
the jailer or by cutting out of jail.
Let him stand trial in a court whose
judge is overwhelmed with business or
is fixed in the tradition that severity is
the only remedy for crime, with a prosecuting
attorney whose reputation depends
upon making as many convictions
as possible. Let him have assigned to
his defense an attorney who, because of
inexperience, incompetency, or indifference,
cannot present his case properly,
in order that his innocence may be demonstrated,
if he is innocent, or any
mitigating facts may be made clear if he
is guilty.
Or let Mr. Osborne’s representative
essay the role of a paroled prisoner, going
out as a ward of the State under the
direction of a parole officer, in order that
he may discover the efficiency and equity
of the Parole Board, the fidelity and
good-will of the parole officer, the patience
and fair dealing of the employer,
and the advantages and disadvantages
generally of the parole system.
It is a good thing to call the attention
of the public to the deficiencies of the
convict prisons, and the public ought to
know that Sing Sing is, and has been for
many years, far worse than Auburn.
Think of a prison where rheumatism and
tuberculosis form an inevitable part of
the prison sentence for a large proportion
of the prisoners, whose number can
be definitely predicted! But the prison
problem of the State of New York can
only be solved by a thoroughly organized
and persistent attack under the leadership
of men and women who have
social and economic vision.
And the prison problem of the State
of New York will not be solved until it
is recognized as a technical problem, demanding
the services of tried and expert
men. Prisons, like other educational institutions,
should be headed by superintendents
of demonstrated training and
efficiency, selected without reference to
geographical lines.