Walks and talks of an American farmer in England (Part 2 of 2)

THE COUNTY JAIL.—ENGLISH PRISON DISCIPLINE.—THE PERFECTION OF THE PRESENT.—EDUCATION AND TAXATION.—WHAT NEXT?—CAPTAIN MACHONOCHIE.—THE MARK SYSTEM.—THE CHRISTIAN IDEA OF PUNISHMENT.

After breakfast, we visited the county prison. It is on the plan of the celebrated Pentonville model prison, near London, which is an improvement on what is called the Philadelphia plan. Any of my readers who are much interested in the great and most puzzling problem of prison discipline will be familiar with the elements of the last experiment of the British Government upon the sad subject.

This specimen of it at Hereford was all that could be asked for in its way. Evidently, no skill in planning and no expense in execution had been wanting to make it as perfect as such a thing could be.

We were first conducted through several long, light, and airy corridors, upon which opened the well-ventilated sleeping-cells of the prisoners—each cell appearing the perfection of a cell, as if made to the order of some noble amateur rascal, in the most complete and finished style which would be appropriate to an apartment with that designation: the walls of plain hewn stone, but white as bishop’s lawn; the floor damp-proof, of asphalte; the bedstead of iron, the bed of sufficiently appropriate coarseness, snugly and neatly made up as if by the joint labour of a tasteful upholsterer and a skilful laundress; warmed on the hot-water plan; furnished with a wash-bowl, and pure water brought by pipes; lighted by a beam of filtrated sunshine by day, and a jet of gas-flame by night; provided also with a bell or signal, by which the interesting inmate may at any time, in case of bodily ailment, summon a regular bred physician to his relief, or a veritable and legitimate “descendant of the apostles,” in case he should be taken suddenly aback with repentance during the night: at every bed-head too—regularly as the crucifix in the dormitories of monks, or the squat, yellow Josh in the habitation of the Chinese—a bible. “The Bible! ah! how must his heart melt, and his dark mind be enlightened, as in his retirement from the wild temptations of the wicked world the prisoner is left to be absorbed in its glorious tidings. What a feast, what a treasure, what a ——” nay, the shining leather and sticking leaves tell us that even the Bible Societies may throw pearls before swine.

“Aye,” says the turnkey:—“He can’t read—a young chap—in for two months; petty larceny.”

We open and read.—“He that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”

It was given him to have a mind uneducated except in ignorance and criminal contrivance, and it was required of him, he might tell us, to either starve or steal; and then there is given him good, comfortable, clean, wholesome air, water, food, lodging, and exercise, (not work.) Moreover, there is added this sealed book. Must he not think it mockery?

But we are not allowed to philosophize, or moralize, or criticise. We are expected only to admire, and are passed along to the culinary department.

Perfection again—of a kitchen with an admirable, stout, dignified chef-de-cuisine, graduate of Paris doubtless, presiding. The diet-table he explains to us, is scientifically ordered; the beef and bread and vegetable are of the best, and we are shown how the quantity for each man in each particular is accurately weighed out. The patients are also weighed periodically, and the allowance of food and of exercise is studiously adjusted to the condition of each.

Next we are taken to the day cells, which are in several separate courts. Within each is an ingeniously-contrived crank attached to a common shaft revolving through all. This crank is the exerciser. The prisoner stands at a certain distance before it, takes hold of it with both hands, and, as it turns, a certain motion is given to his whole body—the most healthful sort of motion: expanding the chest, and moving every joint of his limbs. He remains in this cell ten hours each day, Sundays excepted; and the usual allowance of exercise is half an hour, with ten minutes’ rest after it, continued alternately during that time. There is a library in the prison, from which primers, picture-books, and tracts, are served out for the exercise of his mind during the ten minutes’ bodily rests.

For Sundays, there is provided another sort of cells, which are so arranged that each prisoner can look at the same central point, but cannot see any other prisoner. At the central point is placed a humble vessel, (doubtless as perfect as can be made by ordinances, and duly clad in regulation vesture,) from which a stated dose of “gospel privileges” is scientifically discharged and systematically imbibed by every patient—prisoner I mean. There are two such rations given on Sunday, with a dinner between, and opportunity for reflection in private, before and after.

It is a first principle of the plan that labour should end where it begins. The exercising shaft is sometimes applied to a pump-brake to fill the reservoir over the prison with water, but never in any other way saves labour. Pains are taken in every way, not with absolute success it is admitted, to secure utter silence, and to prevent all communication between the prisoners. Criminals are rarely sent here for more than twelve months; and it is said, that with all the science and care that can be devoted to them, their health, both bodily and mental, is endangered, if their confinement is protracted longer.

It may be, as its admirers have no shadow of doubt, the happiest idea of a prison most happily realized that the world yet knows; yet it is one of the most painful things to examine that I ever saw. It is hardly possible to speak well of it but in irony, or to describe it without sarcasm, so absurd seems all this scientific care for the well-being—physical, mental, and moral—of these miserable transgressors, contrasted with the studied neglect, justified and made praiseworthy by strictly economical and religious reasoning, of the unoffending poor. While no talent, painstaking, and complicated machinery, is too expensive and cumbrous to be devoted to the keeping of the criminal, of the unfortunate, society, through the state, still says—Am I my brother’s keeper?

Hold the hand! Dash not the book behind the grate, my conservative friend; I would hint at nothing more dangerous than education—a word one may yet speak in America without being finally condemned as an infidel and a socialist, and a man given to isms. Would you still call me to order, remind me that I am writing on the subject of prisons—English prisons—and that I may take up the subject of schools in another chapter. Yet there may be lessons learned from prisons, and English prisons teach lessons that all who do not care for the subject of education would do well to heed.

In the prisons of England, in 1841, it was found that out of every hundred criminals then supported by the state—

Only 28 in every hundred were over 30 years of age! So soon in crime come forward and pass away the children of ignorance.

The chaplain of the Brecon jail reports, that though the majority of the prisoners to whom he ministers are able to read imperfectly, yet their education has been so defective that they have no notion of the bearing and connection of one part of a sentence with another. Nine out of ten of them were ignorant of the merest rudiments of Christianity. The chaplain of the Bedford jail states that the great majority of prisoners there confined are “ignorant, stupid, and unconcerned.” Another jail chaplain observes of those “children, or men still childish,” under his care, who had been instructed in reading and writing, “they had not learned to think about or understand any thing that they had been taught; the ears had heard, the tongue had learned utterance, but the mind had received no idea, no impression.” (The reader may be reminded of what I said of sailors’ reading.⁠[8]) From the Bucks county jail it is reported that about half the prisoners have never been taught to read and write, and about one quarter are ignorant of the alphabet; and that “ignorance is uniformly accompanied with the greatest depravity.”⁠[9]

Had we not better give up our “godless schools,” and establish some godly prisons for the next generation? Surely we may learn something from the statesmanship that is wedded to a church.

I heard a crusty old bachelor say the other day, growling at the Free School Laws: “But I have no children, and I don’t want to pay for the schooling of my neighbour’s brats; if they were begging for bread, it would be another thing.” The land of free trade has something to tell us about this too. “Nine out of twelve of the inmates of the Poor-houses of Norfolk and Suffolk cannot write their names.”⁠[10]

Never forget, citizens of the United States, that the children within a republic are, and must be, “the children of the Republic.” Do your duty to them, or they will not do their duty to you.

To return to the Hereford jail: I intimated that every thing said in admiration of it seemed necessarily ironical and bitter; but I do recall one pleasant, and, I doubt not, true word, for it—“it is a palace compared with the old one.”

Good!—surely that is good: no one will ask us to go back to packing criminals, and all under surveillance of the law, promiscuously into great stone pens, giving them rotten straw to rest upon, and supplying only the cheapest grub that will offer to keep body and soul together. Few will be inclined to think that the world’s prisons—hell triumphant in Austria and Naples excepted—are not better now than in the day of Howard. Progress there has been, even here, true and substantial progress, thank God! Progress there must be, for the kingdom of God moves steadily on. This palace-prison is but a mile-stone on the road.

What next? There are some pamphlets before me in which an answer to this question is attempted to be given.⁠[11] The matter is one of so much difficulty and so great importance, so nearly connected with the progress of Christianity and civilized law, and the plan of a new prison is so often to be discussed and established among our thirty states and thousand counties, that I must beg my readers to carefully examine the new system of punishment that they propose, and I urge it the more, because, so far as I know, it has, up to this time, entirely escaped the attention of the American press.

But first let us distinctly recall to mind what is most unsatisfactory and clearly defective in our present prisons and system of criminal punishment.

There are two general principles with regard to the punishment of crime that have been theoretically received and approved of in the minds of all enlightened and Christian people, and yet to which there is much in our present system that is practically false and repugnant. We say “necessarily so,” and that this necessity is one of the awful results of crime or sin. God knows if we are right. If not, we are terribly wrong.

The principles or rules with regard to punishment, to which I refer, are these: that it should not be vindictive or revengeful, that it is not the business of human jurisprudence to satisfy the abstract claims of justice, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord;” that, on the other hand, it should be our purpose, in the treatment of criminals, so far as may be consistent with the good of society, to do them good, to make them better, stronger, and happier. This also is a corollary of the second principle to which I refer, namely, that the great end of criminal law is to prevent, discourage, and lessen crime.

I say that practically, among the mass of our community, the punishment of criminals is felt to be, and is engaged in as if it were, the satisfaction of a vindictive feeling against an enemy of society, a satisfaction that the law makes him pay (though “I will repay, saith the Lord!”) in the inconvenience and suffering of his confinement and hard labour, for the injury he has done society or some member of society. That, practically, the criminal has the counterpart of this feeling, considering that society looks upon him as its enemy, and, when it catches him, vindictively makes him suffer for his crime, as if it were a match between him and the law, in which he was the loser; and that the effect of looking upon it in this way is to aggravate and intensify the evil which we theoretically propose to cure by his imprisonment.

It is true, that in accordance with the purpose of improving the character of criminals during (I cannot say, by) their imprisonment, we employ chaplains to preach and counsel them, and give them books, that it is supposed, in the absence of any other employment of the mind, may engage their attention. And these are the only means employed at present for the purpose of training them to be active, efficient, industrious, and well-disposed members of society, upon their release! I might bring forward endless statistics in proof, but few will be inclined to deny that for this purpose these means constantly prove themselves entirely inadequate; that, in this respect, our system is a constant and complete failure. Why? Because of the “foolishness of preaching?” Because virtue is taught only theoretically; and a field of practice, of resistance of the temptation to the peculiar sins which we denominate crime, is required to give such lessons practical value? Because under a system in which a man is provided with good and sufficient food, clothing, lodging, fuel, and other necessities of health and life, to a degree of perfection that he never knew before, without the exercise of any personal care, forethought, skill, or labour, much of the real manly virtue of active life becomes a dead letter, and cannot be acquired? Because the religion that is preached does not make necessary the practice of prudence, energy, economy, industry, and honest ingenuity? Because, under such circumstances, instead of the reception of an elevating, reforming, purifying principle of life, a religion of weak, mystic frames of feeling, and sentimental professions, is more likely to be encouraged, and is hardly distinguishable or avoidable to be confused with vital piety? Or is it because nearly all the other influences about the imprisoned criminal are enervating, or opposed to reform and virtue? Horrible thought! But let us consider how he is situated; what are the influences, what the natural motives, that are likely to be operating upon him in the circumstances in which we place him.

The criminal is sentenced, we will suppose, for ten years, and finds himself locked into a narrow cell, where it is only at occasional and comparatively distant intervals that he can be communicated with, even by his keeper, chaplain, or physician, the only human beings who have access to him. It may be for a certain time each day he is set to labour; hard labour being given him, not as a privilege, not as a relief, not as a means of bettering his condition, or in any way as to be loved and valued; but as an addition to the punishment of solitary confinement. It may be practically a relief; but when we admit it to be so, under the circumstances in which it is engaged in, we must have some notion of the dreary loneliness and tedious prospect which he has in his cell, though in it comforts, which in the ordinary government of Providence he would have been taught to look upon as the natural rewards of activity, prudence, and labour, are crowded around him. He is left to his own thoughts; his recollections are vicious; are his anticipations likely to be virtuous? With ten years to be spent under these circumstances, what will his mind be most likely to be directed to? Will it not be to means of beguiling his time in sleep or self-forgetfulness, or to evade his compulsory labour? Could any way be better contrived to fix a man in a disposition to idleness and vagrancy? His life stagnates, his impulses putrify, his only activity is directed in the search for opportunities of personal gratification—which are obtained, we are told, even in ways most horrible—and for this purpose his powers of deception are sharpened, or, when unable to offend in act, he seeks in fancy a gratification by gloating over impure images.

And is this lame, inconsistent, miserable plan, all its details so working at cross purposes, the end of all the philanthropic labours, private and associated, that have been given to the subject during the last fifty years? The result, good friends, not the end. Then, in God’s name, WHAT NEXT?

An answer from Captain Machonochie will be found in the Appendix C, and I beg for it, with all earnestness, the thoughtful perusal of my countrymen. It is based on plain, distinct, uncontradictory principles, which are applicable to the punishment of all criminals, and to the construction of all criminal laws. It is the plan of no closet philosopher, but of a cool-headed, warm-hearted sailor, who was chosen by his government, for his manifest natural qualifications for undertaking the superintendence of criminals, to take charge of one of its most responsible penal establishments. It is a plan that has been well considered, and is ably defended to the minutest details, as the reader, who is willing to study it further, will find, on referring to the pamphlets I have mentioned in the note on a previous page.⁠[12]

It seems to me like a great invention, so simple, so natural, so in every way commending itself immediately to my mind, that I am amazed that the world is but just arriving at it, and I thank God that I have to live and do my work in the day it brightens. For it seems to me more than an invention—an inspiration. At least I find in it the principles of Jesus Christ, now at length consistently and satisfactorily applied to the treatment of criminals. The most prudent regard for the interests of society at large will oblige us no longer to set our teeth, and clench our hands, and steel our hearts to pity, in the jury-box, but will combine with the truest kindness, hope, and prayer in faith, for the individual good of the criminal. Under our present criminal laws, and with our present systems of punishment, the first task of the prosecuting attorney is, too often, to turn us from the estate of warm-hearted Christian love, into cold, calculating, vengeful savages. But now, that which has heretofore been the most trying, confounding, and insnaring responsibility upon the Christian citizen, may become a reasonable, happy, improving duty and privilege. Punishment shall be awarded with loving-kindness. Punishment shall be the handmaid of Love.

And now, is it more than a question of how long we halt in this wretched, self-destructive darkness? Is there not light enough for the next step? Speak out, good heart of the People! Shall we henceforth do battle with Criminals or with Crime?