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

“Our present punishments resemble every thing that is most deteriorating in ordinary life: and they deteriorate accordingly. If we would infuse into them those impulses which, under Providential guidance, make other forms of adversity improving, we would make them improving also.”

The constituent elements in secondary punishment are labour and time. Men are sentenced to hard labour for a given time:—but the time is here made to measure the labour,—and the first proposal of the Mark System is, that instead of this the labour be made to measure the time. This idea is not peculiar to it. In his letter to Earl Grey the Archbishop of Dublin uses these words: “The best plan, as it appears to me, would be, instead of sentencing men to imprisonment for a certain time, to sentence them to render a certain amount of labour. A fixed daily task may be imposed on them, but with power to exceed this at their own discretion, thereby shortening their period of detention. The effect would be, not only that criminals would thus acquire habits of labour, but of attaching an agreeable idea to labour. By each additional step they took on the tread-wheel they would be walking out of prison—by each additional cut of the spade they would be cutting a way to return to society.”

It would be difficult to express the direct primary effect of the system in happier or terser terms; and even when thus stated, the improvement contemplated on existing practice appears immense. But much more when the ulterior consequences are also considered. By substituting a powerful internal stimulus to exertion for that physical coercion which must ever be at best an imperfect external one, while all necessary bondage and suffering as the consequences of crime would be retained, direct “slavery” would be banished from among our secondary punishments. The tendencies of our management would be to good, whereas those of the existing system are “to evil continually.” Men would improve under it, instead of becoming worse. And the administration of public justice would acquire a place among the Christian agencies of our land: it is painful to think how far it is at present removed in operation from any such character.

But another view may be also taken of the question thus involved, not less interesting. If we look abroad into ordinary life, we cannot but be struck with the resemblance which our present forms of secondary punishment bear to every thing that is in this most enfeebling and deteriorating, and how directly opposed they are to those forms of adversity which, under the influence of Providential wisdom, reform character and invigorate it. Slavery deteriorates—long seclusion deteriorates—every condition, in a word, more or less deteriorates, which leaves no choice of action, requires no virtue but obedience, affords no stimulus to exertion beyond this, supplies the wants of nature without effort with a view to them, and restores to prosperity, through lapse of time, without evidence that such restoration is deserved. Yet this is our present system of secondary punishment. What improves, on the contrary, is a condition of adversity from which there is no escape but by continuous effort—which leaves the degree of that effort much in the individual’s own power, but if he relaxes his suffering is deepened and prolonged, and it is only alleviated and shortened if he struggles manfully—which makes exertion necessary even to earn daily bread—and something more, prudence, self-command, voluntary economy, and the like, to recover prosperity. To this, as yet, secondary punishment bears no resemblance; but were our sentences measured by labour instead of time,—were they to the performance of certain tasks, not to the occupation of a certain time in evading any,—the approximation might be made indefinitely close.

Labour being a vague term, the system next proposes that it be represented by marks,—the earning of so many thousands of which, in a prison or penal settlement, as the case may be, to be made the punishment of all offences according to their degree. A proportion of these marks to be credited to individuals daily, according to the exertion made in whatever labour is allotted them,—all supplies of food and clothing to be charged in them,—all misconduct to be punished by fines in them,—and only the clear balance to be carried to account towards liberation. By this means both wages and savings’ banks would be introduced into prisons—wages to stimulate labour, and give an interest in it, and savings’ banks to give a similar interest to habits of economy and self-command. To make the resemblance to ordinary life still closer, and at the same time promote kindly and social, as opposed to selfish, feeling, it is further proposed that during a portion of their entire period of detention criminals be distributed into parties or families of six, with common interests and accounts, rising or falling together, and thus all interested in the good conduct of each. By this means a strong physical check would be laid on crime in prisons, with a yet stronger moral one; and an apparatus would be gained by which good conduct and exertion would be made popular, and offence unpopular, in the community, and all would be interested in promoting the one and keeping down the other. My experience on Norfolk Island—(which was imperfect, because my views were not then sustained, as I trust they yet will be, at home, my powers and apparatus were consequently imperfect, and my results rather indicated tendencies than gave precise conclusions) yet leads me to attach great value to this, as to several other details explained in other papers. But I regard them all only as they seem to me to carry out the principles laid down. If these are right, when once established, the best details to found on them will soon become of themselves apparent. With a near tangible end, like individual reform, in view, no mistakes, however at first great, can be long persisted in.

Severity, then, with a directly benevolent purpose,—modelled with a view to recover criminals as well as punish them,—controlled and guided by the enlightened pursuit of this noble end, made as great, for the benefit both of the individual and the community, as is compatible with it, but neither greater nor other than strictly subordinate to it,—this is the guide here sought to be introduced into secondary punishment: and unless it is attentively considered, it will be found difficult to believe the number of new views that it will open up of interest and promise. It will adjust the controversy between harshness and lenity which has long divided reasoners on the subject,—the one impulse having authorized the most distressing cruelties, while the other has occasionally led to indulgences scarcely less injurious in their ultimate consequences to both the criminal and society, enfeebling the one, and leading the honest labourer, in the other, painfully to contrast his own position with that of the convicted felon. It will thus solve many preliminary difficulties, and conduct to many important conclusions. It will give a new spirit to punishment by giving it a new direction. By raising its object it will raise its administration. It will be difficult to be either cruel or careless with such an object as individual reform in view, and while wielding an agency offering a reasonable probability of attaining it. (The last is of great importance: we become indifferent, in spite of ourselves, when engaged in a hopeless task.) It will assimilate this branch of our administration to those ways of Providence to men which must always be our surest guides when we seek to influence them. It will thus imitate the highest wisdom, and thereby enable us to obey the highest precept. We may love while we chasten, and be substantially kind even when enforcing the strictest commands of punitive law. It will succeed with little effort, because it will study the human nature implanted in us, instead of trampling its impulses under foot. It will further conduct to great economy as well as efficiency, partly through this cause, partly because the virtues of industry and self-command which it will be its great aim to foster will equally bring about both results. The practical change may be thought a small one on which to found such anticipations—the change from measuring labour by time to that of measuring time by labour—or, in other words, from giving our criminals time-sentences to allotting them tasks:—but the one course is the direct reverse of the other, and the difference may be thus the whole difference between right and wrong, success and failure. It seems, indeed, even impossible to follow out the chain of reasoning suggested without coming to this conclusion. When men are smitten with adversity in ordinary life, and thus punished for previous follies or misconduct, they are not condemned to this adversity for a certain time, but until they can retrieve their position. They suffer under this task; they sorrow over it (but without resentment); they struggle with it; their characters improve under the various efforts and emotions called out by it, (both deepened if they have others to care for as well as themselves;) frequently they rise even higher than before;—and society is instructed by such examples in every way—it shrinks from the preliminary sufferings exhibited in them, and emulates, in due proportion as its own case may require, the manly struggle that has at length overcome them. And so it might be with our punishments, if we would model them on the same type. They are now for the most part barbarous in every sense, in their want of skill and adaptation to high purpose, and in the crime and misery they thus gratuitously produce. We might make them beneficent in every sense, merely by copying the wisdom that is around us;—and when this is fully understood, it is not to be imagined but that every lover of his kind will take even an eager interest in bringing about the change. The real difficulty is to influence to the inquiry.