SUPPLEMENTARY
TO
THE BREVIER LEGISLATIVE REPORTS.
VOLUME ELEVENTH.
The State Prisons----Their Government and Discipline.
IN SENATE.
FRIDAY, April, 30, 1869.[IN CONTINUATION-p. 135.]
The PRESIDENT pro tem. (Hon John K. Cravens) announced the special order for this hour (10 o'clock a. m.) being Mr. Kinley's bill [S. 120.] "to provide for the government and discipline of the State Prisons, for the oversight of County Jails, and to repeal all other laws or parts of laws inconsistent herewith."-
Mr. ROBINSON, of Decatur, moved to strike out the first section of the bill after the enacting clause.
Mr. KINLEY said:
Mr. President: The importance of this Bill will be conceeded. It proposes a radical change in the administration of the affairs of the State Prisons, and in the government and discipline of the convicts. Its changes in the administration are on the side of economy; in government, on the side of humanity; and in discipline on the side of moral reform. For all of these, it challenges the attention of the Senate.
Before entering into the discussion of the main features of the Bill, I desire to allude to a few colateral matters. These being somewhat personal to myself, I shall speak to them as a question of privilege.
The Bill had not been three days before the Senate when an enemy to prison reform and understood to be one of the directors of the State Prison south, rushed into print, denouncing the Bill and its friends-the first as being unconstitutional, and the others as impracticables and visionaries.
The author of that article has since had occasion to appear in print; not as then the advocate of existing corruption, but with the rage of a tried and convicted malefactor: and by his own showing, so infamous, that he may never again find a respectable newspaper through which to malign others or defend himself.
I should not thus allude to this gentleman but for the fact that since the introduction of this Bill into the Senate, he has labored assiduously and insiduously to defeat it before the General Assembly. He has met the members in the loby, on the street, in the cars, at their boarding houses. He has misrepresented the Bill and the motives of the Senator who introduced it seeking to bring the one into disrepute and to destroy the influence of the other.
I have been represented as being personally hostile to Mr. Meredith. And from this accusation a pretext has been raised to denounce my motives as sinister and my labors in the matter of prison reform as inspired by a desire to legislate Meredith out of a lucrative office.
I am accused of having sought to be placed on the prison Committee. Of unfairness in the examination of witnesses, and of a disposition to persecute Meredith and other parties implicated.
It is probable that a mere statement of these accusations is a sufficient refutation. It is hardly necessary to defend myself against such charges.
These gentlemen seem to understand enough of warfare to appreciate the advantage of the defensive, but not enough of dialectics to know that falsehood is the flimsiest of all arguments, and when refuted the most dangerous to the cause of him who uses it.
These charges are all and singly false. I had no hostile feelings toward Mr. Meredith It is true he had been brought up in my coun page: 367[View Page 367]ty and his reputation over there is not very good. Some very ugly stories are told about him, and I believed enough of them two years ago to withhold from him my vote in the nominating caucus. But I never had any personal difficulty with him. I never had any business with him of any kind. Neither did I use his bad reputation against him to defeat this nomination. It simply controlled my own vote. I believe that criminals may reform, and I know not what effect five or six years might have had.
The whole charge of personal hostility has been incubated from a serpent's egg to meet this particular case.
So far from desiring to disgrace legislation to gratify personal malice, it was my chief motive in being a candidate two years ago, to effect a reform in our Prison system. Mr. Meridith was not then a candidate for Prison director and I had no knowledge that he intended to be.
Mr. President: I take no pleasure in uncovering other people's iniquities. I do not delight in the discovery of depravity. There has not been a time since this investigation began that I should not have delighted to know that all the parties implicated are innocent of the charges of which they had been accused. I should this moment clap my hands with joy to know that where so much depravity was supposed to exist-so much of moral corruption and rottenness-there is in fact only purity and honor.
A Senator who could by any possibility be controlled by such ignoble motives-who could so subordinate the high objects of legislation into mere instruments of private revenue and personal hate, is unfit to transact legislative business, ought to be expelled from the Senate and ostracised from the face of all honorable men.
It is false also that I sought to be placed on the Prison Committee. But with my opinions and motives on the subject of Prison reform there could have been no particular sin in doing so, I suppose it is not uncommon for members of legislative bodies to seek places on committees or even aspire to chairmanships. But that I did not seek a place on this or any other Committee the President of the Senate can attest. Shortly after the committees had been made up, one of the friends of Prison reform expressed to me regret that I had not been placed on the Prison Committee. I answered that I also regretted it as I felt particular interest in the subject, but that I had had nothing to do with the making up of the Committees. When the Senate next met, some Senator-the Senator from Marion, I believe, moved that the Senator from Wayne be added to the Prison Committee. This is all my knowledge on the subject
The charge of unfairness and partiality in the investigation is equally without foundation.
Why is it Mr. President, that I should be singled out as the special object of all these maledictions? Why should I be made the head and front of all this offending? Two other Senators-prominent members of this body-were also on the investigating committee; and no question was asked, no conclusion arrived at, no report made no action had, that was not the concurrent work of the whole committee; and which did not also meet the endorsement of the corresponding committee on the part of the House.
Very clearly the object of these maligners is not so much to attack me personally, as to defeat the Bill I had the honor to introduce. It is sought by its interested and cunning enemies to destroy its reputation in the General Assembly by misrepresenting the actions and impugning the motives of its friends. I having been guilty of the unpardonable sin of introducing it in the Senate, am made the special target through which the Bill is to be struck to death. This is dishonorable warfare. It is mean opposition.
My whole course on this subject gives the lie to all these accusations. I did not go with the Prison Committee on its first visit to the State Prison south, although I had long ago heard some very damaging statements in regard to its management. The Committee returned after having gathered up a number of facts derogatory to Meredith, Ghee and others. After they had returned, a sworn statement was forwarded by the former warden detailing a corrupt state of things.
Under such circumstances, it was clearly the duty of the Committee to make a report. They certainly would have reported; and with the facts before them their report must have been very damaging to the parties implicated.
But the testimony had been all from one side. The evidence was all ex parte. I believe that the party accused had a right to face its accusers, cross examine the witnesses and if necessary bring in rebutting testimony. It was for these reasons as I stated at the time, that I moved the appointment of a sub-committee of investigation with power to send for persons and papers. If these parties have been innocent a committee of investigation is precisely what they should have asked; and they would have thanked instead of maligning me for having moved in the matter. If they had been innocent their innocence should have been known and public confidence in them restored. If guilty should be known and they removed from a place they had dishonored.
In moving a Committee of investigation, I did for them precisely what an honorable page: 368[View Page 368] man stinging under the sense of public reproach, would have demanded. No man who has a particle of manhood; no man possessing the slightest sense of honor but would have been restive under such charges of corruption This baby cry of persecution against a Committee that reports only facts, is at once an acknowledgment of guilt and a blatant publication of their own dishonor.
The two Committees-the Committee from the Senate and the Committee from the House-formed one joint Committee of investigation They acted harmoniously; they did their work in good faith; treated all parties honestly, fairly, candidly; and the result of their work is before the Senate.
So far from having done the parties injustice, the Committee returned-every member of it I believe-profoundly convinced that the great mass of this disgusting corruption had been only touched-that what was discovered wat not a moiety of what was concealed.
If any one has any doubt of this let him move a new Committee. Let it be composed of the especial friends of Meredith and Ghee. Give it power to send for persons and papers, with a weeks time to investigate, and they will come to you with a report by the side of which ours will be innocence itself. Swear all the guards Let the poor female convicts testily, and you shall have tales of wrong, and outrage, and bestial libidinousness compared with which thieves are respectable, and brothels houses places of virtue.
But quite enough has been reported for the credit of the State, enough to justify extreme measures on the part of the General Assembly. The testimony shows that officers and employees had been guilty of drunkenness and (debauchery with the female convicts-that two of the directors had received regular gratiuties from the Warden, and the Warden in turn from those beneath him as the price of their places. That one of the directors boasted that it was his object to make money out of the institution. That another director accepted a bribe from a convict to obtain his release, and with a part of his pay in his pocket, went to the Governor with an ingenious falsehood to influence a pardon; and finally in order to cover up his iniquity was guilty of direct and positive purjury before the investigating Committee.
A noticeable circumstance has been the aggregation of interests and influences brought to bear against this Bill. It is not corruption in the State Prison alone, with which the Prison reform has to contend. The rogue who steals in any one department is the natural friend and ally of him who steals in any other.
"A fellow feeling makes wondrous kind."
A common danger of detection and punishment, confederates rogues into rings of offensive and defensive.
It is said to be a curious fact in natural history that snakes of every description, kind and species, when they go into winter quarters wind and tie themselves into one general knot If you but touch the smallest of them, every mouth opens, and hisses, and spits its venom.
So it is with corruption. It forms rings and whoever has the limerity to touch the least one tn the combination, has the whole infernal confederacy to fight.
Timid persons may shrink from duty-cowards may flee from danger-corrupt men may form a serried phalanx around moral rottenness-there will yet be found those who have the nerve to do their duty-the courage to lace danger-and who have higher motives than, the rewards which corruption may offer.
Mr. President: I should not have alluded to the results of the investigation by the Committee but for the singular course of the opposition to this Bill outside of this chamber. But I do not complain of their course. I am compelled to admit that they have been consistent. There is a logical connection between the villains who perpetrated the enormities of the southern Prison and the system itself. The corruption and bestial indecencies testified to before the Committee must be disproved in fact or the system under which such irregularities are possible must be condemned, the enemies of Prison reform see this and hence their defence of Ghee and Meredith-hence their attempt to falsify the facts in the Prison report, and their mean insinuations against the honor and integrity of the Committee. We accept the issue and plead the testimony now before the Senate in justification of our report. No candid person can read the testimony without arriving at the conclusion that some of the Prison directors ought themselves to take places along side of the convicts. Not a convict in all the Penitentiary can be lower than the man whether officer or guard who was sailed in nightly debauch with the female convicts. Not a burglar or robber in the Prison more deserving his place than is the Prison director of a like condemnation who proposes for a bribe to turn loose unreformed, unrepentant burglars on society. We propose you a remedy. We propose a Bill which repeals the law by which the directors were appointed. We propose to turn the river into this augean stable.
Let us examine this Bill. Let us consider this remedy. It is not pretended to be faultless. Reasonable objections doubtless may be raised. I could, I think, improve it in many essential respects. But it is a great improvement on the present system. The change is in the right direction and it goes as far perhaps, as is safe at the present. Impatient per page: 369[View Page 369]sons would move faster. He who sees, or thinks he sees, the value of a proposed reform, would leap at conclusions, and wonders that others hesitate. He who has given his thoughts to a subject until he has mapped out in his mind all its bearings, relations and tendencies, grows impatient of hesitation and would realize results. But it is wise to move slowly; and the more radscal the reform the greater should be the caution in its adoption.
We are not ready to say so now but the time will no doubt come, when the convicts' road to freedom, after having served out a prescribed time, will be through manifest reformation. When crime will be treated as the result of moral insanity, and penitentiaries only as hospitals for their cure.
Mankind will doubtless sometime recognize the great truth, that man in every stage of his existence is the outgrowth of pre-existing causes, and the moral reformer will labor to elevate the race through the influencing conditions.
The Bill before the Senate recoganizes this principle but does not carry it to the full extent of its logical conclusions. It is safe to travel in roads which experience has demonstrated to be practical. Beyond the teachings of experience we have not presumed to go.
The difference between the Bill before the Senate and the present system is mainly in the animating spirit. While it retains the idea of punishment as a terror to evil doers, the reformation of the criminal himself is its most salient feature. It provides therefore for the instruction-intellectual, moral and religious of the convicts; and requires the Moral Instructor to give to the convicts, his whole time and attention.
But before discussing the merits of the Bill itself, it is better to consider and if possible to answer the objections to it. These being removed we shall be able to see its provisions in a better and clearer light.
It is to be regretted, however, that the opponents to Prison reform should not have confined themselves to arguments against the proposed reformation itself, and not trusted their cause to maledictions against its friends.
The first objection urged was its unconstitutionality. This indictment contained two counts.
1st. The Bill as originally introduced provides that the Prison Board should severally retain their offices for ten years, whereas the constitution provides that in offices created by the General Assembly the terms of office shall not exceed four years.
This objection, if a valid one has been obviated by the amendments to the Bill in Committee to conform to the constitution.
It is true the question might have been raised whether a member of a Board with only a nominal salary to defray expenses, is an office in the constitutional meaning of the word. The members of the Board for the House of Refuge hold their offices for a term of six years; and if the objection to this is valid, it must apply with equal force against the law organizing that institution.
The Bill organizing the House of Refuge was introduced, I believe, and certainly defended by the able Senator from Laporte, Judge Niles, himself a member of the Constitution Convention and a lawyer of the very first legal abilities.
The second objection dignified into a constitutional one, lies in the fact that it repeals the law arganizing the present Prison system, and thereby legislating the acting Prison directors out of office. Those who urge this objection, hold that an office is of the nature of a contract; and that a person having once accepted an office, the office belongs to him of right until the expiration of the term for which he has been elected or appointed. The Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this State prohibit the General Assembly from passing any law impairing the obligation of contracts. It is held that the election to and acceptance of an office constitutes a contract carrying with it certain vested rights.
I do not know that this argument Is worth an answer; but since it is urged and relied upon to defeat this Bill, I may be pardoned for giving it a little attention.
I admit that an office is something of the nature of a contract; and that on the acceptance of an office with the discharge of its duties, certain rights rests.
But, allowing it to be a contract, it is a contract, it is a contract with conditions. One of these conditions is the reserved right of the General Assembly to alter, amend or repeal any law of its own enacting. This condition enters into and is a part of the contract. With a full knowledge of the existence of this reserved right in behalf of the State, the office is accepted. It very clearly follows that the repeal of a law creating an office is no violation of the contract-is no bad faith to the office holder. It is but the happening of a contingency, subject to which the office has been accepted.
In the State Constitutional Convention a precisely analagous question was raised. Under the old Constitution certain County officers held their place for seven years, and certain, judicial officers during good behaviour. Although these had been elected and qualified, and were serving in good faith in their respective offices, the Convention did not hesitate to cut short their terms of service regardless of any supposed vested rights. It is true were Constitutional offices. But the cases are page: 370[View Page 370] analagous, and the same principle applies. They had been created by one Constitutional Convention and a subsequent Constitutional Convention nullified a part of the term of service. On the same principle a Prison director created by one General Assembly may be abolished by another. In a case where the necessity of change is so manifest, I hope this General Assembly will not hesitate to follow so distinguished a precedent.
Precisely in the proportion that the Constitution has the character of fixedness and permanency is the force of the precedent increased. While the action of the General Assembly might not be authority for a Constitutional Convention, a Constitutional Convention is authority for a General Assembly. If under the remote possibility of a change, the acceptance of an office is conditional, much more is the acceptance of it conditional under the more mutable laws of the General Assembly.
Again, on this theory of vested fights, the General Assembly would have no power to increase the duties, or diminish the salary or perquisites of an officer without his consent. For the salary is a part of the contract, and I presume with these political curmudgeons the chief part. They might not object to having their salaries increased.
If offices vest rights as against the State, they should also vest in behalf of the State. I hardly think however, it will ever be doubted by this Senate, that officers may sometimes resign, regardless of all vested rights that the State may have in their services.
It is a safe rule that no rights vest against the public good. The power of the General Assembly to alter, amend or abolish any law of its own enacting is unquestionable. I have heard no further objections to this Bill. It is not denied, I believe, that the proposed system is more economical, will be better for the convicts and will be batter for the State.
In the place of a system which has cost the State Treasury an annual appropriation of many thousand dollars, and which has culminated in the most loathsome corruption, we offer a system that will be likely to secure good men in office, and instead of being an annual drawing on the Treasury may be made at least self-supporting. What is of vastly more consequence to the State and to humanity at large, instead of degrading the convicts into deeper vice, proposes a reasonable hope for their elevation-one which experience in other places has demonstrated will so far reform a large proportion of the convicts as to fit them to take their places in society as citizens.
It differs from the present system in the method of appointment of the Prison Board. Under the proposed law, the members of the Board will be appointed by tho Governor by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Under the present system, it is patent every Senator that Prison directors are select ed with little reference to qualification. Long previous to the meeting of the General Assembly, it is true, we receive letters and recommendations from citizens of various parts of the State, notifying us that they will be candidates for office before the ensuing session of the General Assembly. But we have little or no opportunities to know any thing about the standing or fitness of the candidates. The reasons usually assigned do not imply that the applicants regard qualification as an inducement for a vote. We are generally told in these letters of application that the writer has served the party, has perhaps been unfortunate in an election and asks the dominant party to reward him with a rich office.
Two years ago Mr. Meredith came with just such a tale of sorrow on his lips. He had been defeated in a race for the Clerk's office of his county, and we were asked to reverse the decision of the people and give him a sinecure. Whoever received a letter from an applicant for Prison director stating as a reason for his application any interest he had in the Prison or its inmates?
When the General Assembly meets the dominant party must be carried. A caucus nomination must be received. A majority of the dominant party must be secured. This, no one of the many applicants is able to obtain. Combination arise. Kings are formed. A sufficient number combine to control a majority of the caucus. Every session of the General Assembly witnesses the buying and selling of the votes of members like stock in the market. And thus it is that men without honor, honesty or character work themselves into lucrative offices.
This Bill provides the appointment of the Board of Prison directors by the Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. He has the whole State to select from. He has opportunity to look into the character of his appointees; and finally his appointees are passed on by the Senate.
Another feature of the present Bill is the merely nominal salaries of the members of the Prison Board. The office of Director under the present system is a sinecure. In the southern State Prison; even if the directors had been honest and received only what the law allots, the pay is eight hundred dollars a year for only a trifling amount of time and labor. In the northern State Prison the pay is still greater for the same service. The law allows them three dollars a day. This is construed to mean every day of the year whether any service is rendered or not, giving the directors over a thousand dollars annually. An annual salary page: 371[View Page 371] of eight hundred or a thousand dollars without any adequate services rendered is in itself a strong inducement for unworthy persons to geek the position. When you add an opportunity for an indefinite amount of stealage it is not strange that such public plunderers as Meredith and Ghee should occasionally find places on the Prison Board. It is not strange that an unmanageable director should be bought off with a sum more than double his honest salary for his own term of office.
The single fact that the corruption and crime developed by the Prison Committee are a possibility, condemns the system and demands reform.
A salient feature in the proposed system is its economy. The annual salaries of the directors of the northern Prison amount to three thousand two hundred and eighty-five dollars. Those of the southern Prison amount to two thousand four hundred dollars, making a total of five thousand six hundred and eighty-five dollars against one thousand five hundred under the proposed system. And yet while a salary of five hundred dollars a year will not be an inducement for dishonest persons to seek the position, it is a sunicientpay/or the service actually rendered.
Another feature of the proposed Bill, which will commend itself to the judgment of the Senate, is the consolidation of the two Prisons into one general system, having the same Board of Commissioners for both. This gives unity to the system and enables both to work to the same end.
The Board of Commissioners will be composed of men eminently qualified for their position. They will have been selected on account of their interest in Prison reform; on account of their sympathy for the fallen; on account of their enlightened opinions on the subject of Prison discipline; and Prison management; and their characters would be a pledge for an honest and economical administration of Prison affairs. You should not expect, under their administration that five thousand dollars could be paid to get rid of an unmanageable director. You should not expect officers and guards to hold carnival and debauch with female convicts; or to have to have to pay subsidies for the privilege of holding their places. Above all, you should not expect a director to accept a bribe for securing a pardon for an unreformed and unrepentent convict, for turning loose on society the very class of persons for the confinement of whom penitentiaries have been established.
The whole Prison corps, from guard to commissioner would be conposed of persons of integrity, and honor who would deal justly and humanely with the persons under their charge and honestly with the interests of the State. Th system of stealage would be abolished. As an economical measure, the amount saved to the State from this source alone will go far towards meeting the annual appropriations.
Another source of economy which should not be left out of the account will arise from the reformation effected among the convicts themselves. This will be felt in many ways beneficial to the State finances. It will enable the managers to diminish the number of guards. The humane treatment by the present Warden even during the short time which he has held his place, has greatly decreased the discontent of the convicts.
The reformation which will be effected will increase the number of trusty convicts, and render it practicable to employ a greater force of convict labor outside the prison walls. Grounds enough can thus be cultivated by the convicts themselves to supply the Prison with vegetables, adding at once to the economy and the health of the institution.
Another and the great source of economy to the State will arise from the reformatory effect of the Prison as a means of preventing crime. A large proportion of the released convicts will be reformed and perhaps all of them returned to society better men than when they left it, certainly none of them worse. These will be ready to become useful in productive industry. It will thus diminish the amount of crime committed; diminish the number of criminal cases to be tried in the Courts, diminish the number of convicts convicted, and increase proportionately the security of public and private property.
The hands of desperadoes and outlaws who make day and night hideous with their crimes, have their ranks daily recruited from the released convicts of the penitentiary, and this by men graduated in crime and rendered desperate by the loss of all hope and all self-respect.
Under the present system it is only occasionally that a convict is reformed. There are no means, no appliances to reach the moral nature, and wake up the slumbering conscience. Some Prison directors have boldly avowed that there is no hope for the reformation of the convict. And while every man connected with the Prison, is there simply for the salary, with the superadded stealage, or as a speculator out of the Prison labor, it is to be expected that only occasionally a man conscientiously interested in the Prisoners themselves will find his place among the Prison officers. And when he does, he is likely to be so outvoted by a majority as to deprive his humane propositions of any beneficial effect.
But towering above all questions of personal interest, all questions of mere economy, is the reformation of the convicts considered simply in the light of a moral good accomplished. If page: 372[View Page 372] it should cost double the present system-ten times the amount, we should be inexcusable for rejecting a proposition which held out a reasonable hope for the reformation of any considerable proportion of the convicts.
We send missionaries to all the continents and islands of the earth-to every clime-to every latitude and longitude-to reclaim the heathen and idolater to christian civilization. Here gathered in the walls of a prison are the congregated barbarians of the state-men of onr own nation, and race, and kindred, whose moral degradation is a constant appeal for more light.
The condition of these men is partly their misfortune, partly their fault. They are generally ignorant, a large proportion being unable to read. A still larger proportion of them as we ascertained, are the victims of the wine-cup. If we go into their private histories we find them to have been children of drunkards, or orphans, or children brought up in the street. Born with a degraded constitution, subject to debasing surroundings, in their childhood many of them have been almost as completely shut off from the benignant influences of a higher civilization as if they had lived in Timbuctoo or the Fejee Islands. Taking into the account their circumstances-the history of their early lives, they strongly appeal, at once to our reason and our sympathies, demanding opportunities for mental and moral growth.
The State demands their improvement. As citizens of a commonwealth honorable among her sisterhood of states, glorious in her history and grand in her promised future, we should allow no personal considerations, no selfish desires of men to cling to sinecure offices, to stand in the way of a measure promising so much for the future of Indiana,I know there are those who are constitutionally, I almost said infidel, to all human improvement, and who regard the fallen as permanently lost. They may perhaps, agree that sentiment looks well in print, and serves well to round the periods of a speech, but laugh at those whose deep and earnest convictions would make sentiment an existing fact-ridicule as visionaries and impracticables, those who would follow to their logical consequences, the great ethical principles of human nature and which lie at the foundation of human society. These are but the Jack Puncheons, the political charletans of society; however much they may pride in the misused and dishonored name of conservative. Eight is policy, and justice is practicable.
Can convicts be reformed? Let us look at this question in the light of philosophy and in the presence of actual experiment. It is a well established principle, that any human faculty, whether moral or physical, is made strong by use and enfeebled by the want of it. "Exercise" says Spurzheim "strengthens power." The muscles of the blacksmith's arm grown strong from use. Daily effort has made John Winship a Hercules in physical strength.
This principle applies as well to the moral as to the physical man. Our world is full examples of persons endowed by nature with only mediocre powers, who by persistent effort have become intellectually great.
So too the examples are numerous of those who by persistent effort have subdued a, strong passional nature and raised themselves from a vicious to an honorable and conscientious life.
Growth, whether moral or physical is a slow process. Its manifestations, sometimes indeed sudden, as where a powerful effort of the will has put base passions and immoral habits beneath the feet. But even this is the result of a long struggle upward, by which virtue gradually overcoming the passions and appetites culminates in a powerful and conquering resolve.
So too, many persons have been dragged down by their evil surroundings, from good to bad, from bad to worse, until passion and appetite overtopping the reason and the moral sense become their masters. Here the same principle applies. "Exercise strengthens powers," Men have fallen, become criminals and outlaws, not because they were by nature worse or more depraved than thousands who have not fallen, but because of their more vicious surroundings.
Fallen men and women have changed their course of life-climbed up into habits of virtue, not because they were better by nature than thousands of fallen who have not climbed, but because of circumstances that have strongly opperated to their reason and moral nature and enabled them to make the resolve to reform.
Now human nature is the same wherever found-whether in a State Prison or out of it, men possess the same passions and emotions-are subject to the same laws-The Prison Reform proposes to apply these laws, and make them the instruments of reform.
The prisoner in the Penitentiary is peculiarly susceptible of improvement. Whoever visits the State Prison-converses with the prisoners in their cells-sees them at their daily vocations-meets them in the chapel, and reads in their anxious countenances the emotions struggling in their souls, will never repeat the falsehood that the convict is hopelessly lost. Those who tell us that the doorsill of the Penitentiary-marks the line between possible virtue and hopeless depravity-between possible reformation and hopeless ruin-but proclaim their ignorance of human nature and human experience.
It is not true as too readily believed, that the condition of imprisonment necessarily precludes the possibility of moral influence. Cut off from companions who have led them into page: 373[View Page 373] crime, - away from the temptations that have overcome his better nature, occupying a position the legitimate consequence of his crime,-with the long silent hours of his cell for meditation the convict has peculiar opportunities for moral improvement, and is singularly susceptible, as the Chaplains all testify, to moral influences.
This being the fact, is it not our duty to surround the convicts by influences and opportuties which will tend to reformation, so that when their terms of service have expired they will not go back to society to repeat their offences, and drag others into the same vortex of crime. Let those who cannot read and write be taught to read and write. Let those who can read have a good library to draw from and light and other facilities for improvement in their cells.
According to the report of the Chaplain, near two-thirds of all the convicts had been, before conviction given to habits of intemperance. According to the statement of the convicts themselves full three-fourths of all the convicts have found their way into the Penitentiary, directly or indirectly, through the influence of intemperance. Two or three years of total abstinence-two or three years imprisonment from the consequences of intemperance, with the teachings of the Chaplain and the example of officers and employes would in most cases cure the appetite and send the convict back to society reformed.
But the argument is not all theory. Fortunately for those who have no faith in abstract truths, and who flout the deductions of reason actual, practical experience has demonstrated the capabilities of Prison life and discipline for the reformation of convicts. From Massachusetts, from Michigan, from Wisconsin, from the Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, and even from Ireland comes a concurrent and united voice declaring that the fallen may be raised up, and that enlightened Prison discipline may be made an efficient means of reformation. Mr. Cordier of Wisconsin, after he had been Warden four years, states that during that time two hundred and eighty-four convicts had been discharged, that of this number nine only had been returned. One of these at the time of his statement was the editor of an ably conducted monthly magazine; another was in the employ of the Government; and others were mechanics, farmers, laborers; and that all whom he had met were in prosperous circumstances, of sober habits and of exemplary character.
Mr. Cordier is a humane man attracted to Prison labor on account of his sympathy for ye fallen, and his statement tells the result. To this other and valuable testimony could be added.
It is sufficient to say that success in a single Prison demonstrates the possibility of success in every other. If convicts may be reformed in Ireland, Michigan, Maine, and Wisconsin, they may be reformed in Indiana.
Let us not under estimate the value of this object. Aside from all motives of humanity-aside from all sympathy we may be supposed to have for the fallen, as a matter of State policy, few objects of legislation can more worthily command the attention of the General Assembly. The State Prison north and south contain about eight hundred convicts. Allowing these to be confined at an average of three years, it will follow that during every three years, there will be turned loose on society eight hundred discharged convicts. Whether or not these men-this army of convicts-shall be turned loose on society as useful citizens, or as recruits to the bands of leagued robbers, gamblers, incendiaries, and murderers of the State-this is a question of gigantic import, from which the honest legislator cannot avert his attention.
Mr. President: It is industriously circulated that the authors of the proposed system are visionaries and impractical enthusists. I believe it is graciously admitted that they are honest in their views on the subject of Prison disipline, but being enthusiasts their counsels, it is held can not be safely followed.
In reply to this it is sufficient to say that since the introduction of this Bill correspondence has been had with the most experienced Prison men in the United States, and it has been without exception, commended.
It may be further added that this charge has been originated by those pecuniarily interested in the present system. Doubtless to these gentlemen, the loss of a sinecure position is impratical and visionary. But they should remember that the interests of the individual can not stand against the State. The public good is the supreme law.
The system is nothing new nothing untried. We propose only to incorporate into the Prison law of Indiana principles which experience elsewhere has proved to be a success.
The Commissioners will make changes only when changes are necessary-only where and when the interests of the Prison demand change. They will place the whole system on a reformatory basis and administer it according to the most advanced principles of Prison science.
The influence of man on man is conceded to be great. The very look inspires in others corresponding emotions though not a word be spoken. Much more do actions speak and influence. But what motives of virtue are inspired in the mind of the canvict when one of the highest Prison officers approaches him with a proposition for a bribe? The road to freedom is not, as it should be, through the page: 374[View Page 374] gate of reformation but through the averice of the director. What motives for reformation are held out to the poor female convicts, when they are nightly made the victims of beastial lust by creatures viler than themselves? and these their keepers?
I argue that this is a state of crime abnormal even in a penitentiary. But from a possibility it has become a disgusting fact. This ought to be the condemnation of the system that has permitted it.
Under the proposed system you shall expect none of these things. No drunken Prison officer or employee shall seek in beastly debauch to drag to lower depths of degredation, the poor female convicts. No employees will be compelled to pay subsidies for their places; and no Prison directors take bribes for turning loose on society those whom it is their duty to confine and if possible reform. You shall not then expect the matron to exclaim in despair, as in her last report, that it is a painful reflection to see the female convicts, one by one, as they leave the Prison, with minds averse to good, with hearts full of sin, only to re-enact the scenes of their former life, and to sink still deeper in crime.
Another impression is assidiously attempted to be made. It has been represented that the advocates of this Bill propose to relax the Prison disipline, and destroy the authority of Prison officers. Nothing can be further from the truth. It is indeed expected that kindness in many cases will take the place of severity, that the reason of the convicts will be appealed to, and that severity will be the last resort. But the strictest discipline will be enforced. But while the convict will be subjected to the strictest disciplin-while he is taught to work and to pay the expense of his keeping by his own labor. He will be surrounded by such humane and christianizing influences, as will give him better thoughts, raise him up from his degredation, and at the end of his term of service give him back to society prepared to discharge the duties of the citizen.
Mr. President: I plead for these fallen unfortunate men and women, in the name of civilization itself-look over the earth-go back through the ages-and you will find everywhere and at all times, the established penal system an index to the civil and social state. Occasionally, it is true, a lawgiver or person in authority may rise up who may sink the Prison system below or raise it above, the average humanity of the age; but the rule is as I have stated it. The Knout of the Russian, the Bastinado of the Mussleman States, and the Whippingpost of certain States of this Union point unmistakably to a semi-barbarous state of society The Indian War dance is no more a mark of barbarism than the gauntlet though the captive must pass on the stake at which he is burnt. The millions who rose at the call of Xerxes to fall at Thermopylae, Marathon, and Salamie, are no stronger evidence of the tyrany of the rulers and the slavery of the people than are the studied tortures through which the Persian convict expiated his offense against the state. While the Galley slave of some of the European states proclaims to all the world that the rulers are tyrants and the people lost to the sense of honor, dignity and manhood.
Take the penal system of any nation, trace its history from the savage slate, and you shall always find that the punitory laws keep step with the moral advancement of the people. Of this truth England is a notable example, a fact patent to all who are familiar with English history, or with the writers on English law.
I insist that the time has come for Indiana to take an advanced step in her Prison system. Public sentiment has sufficiently advanced in refinement to demand that we put behind us all ideas of merely vindictive punishment, and make the reformation of the convict the leading object of Prison discipline. Public opinion is sufficiently enlightened to sustain a system founded in philosophy, and which practically applies in the management of convicts, the most advanced principles of penal science. The sentiments of Christian charity have become so much an element of public sentiment as to justify legislative enactments for the reformation even of the convicts of the Penitentiary. Public sentiment will not hold this General Assembly blameless if it suffers a system to remain saddled on the State capable of the disgusting vices recently brought to light in the southern Prison. The odium hangs on the State. We shall remove it by amending the Prison system and removing the guilty parties.
I urge this because the evil is inherent in the present system-is the natural outgrowth of its animating spirit. If one set of corrupt men are removed by this General Assembly there is no security against the appointment of similar ones by some subsequent General Assembly. Not that the General Assembly does not desire good officers. But we are compelled, as I have already shown, to select among those of whose character we are ignorant and can therefore have no assurance that we are electing honest and capable persons.
The present system is founded on the idea that there is no hope for the fallen. With this infidelity to improvement and reformation, it is natural that no effort should be made for the reformation of the convicts.
We have a Chaplain indeed, for each of the Penitentiaries - good and efficient men I believe. But he is so cramped in his powers -so limited in his opportunities-and above all the parties over him have so little sympathy with his work, that his usefulness is in a great meas page: 375[View Page 375]ure cut off.
The records of the Prison show a cruelty - an absolute barbarism in the treatment of prisoners shocking to the sensibilities. Men have keen beaten worse than brutes for the most trivial offences, women whipped on their bare backs with an instrument that would make a southern overseer respectable in slavery's palmiest days. What could the Chaplain do? These cruelties were practiced or authorized by his superior officers. While the convicts could see over them men not better than themselves - men with whom some of them could have changed places to the benefit alike of both the prison and the State, what power for reform could the words of a single moral instructor have ?
Under the proposed system no public plunderers will find places on the Prison Board. No wassailers and bouts would be appointed Wardens and Guards about the Prison. Only honest and humane persons would accept places on the Prison Board - such persons as would not be induced perhaps to come here and join in a scuffle for office. The convicts, instead of coming in contact with villians differing from themselves only in the fact of their not having been convicted of crime, would be surrounded by honest officers and guardsmen who could sympathise for fallen and whose presence would be a constant invitation to reform. Justice tempered mercy will be mete out to the convicts. They will be made to feel that the restraint and discipline to which they are subjected are for their own good, and that those about them are their friends.
Mr. President: I feel deeply on this subject; and this is my apology for having taken much of the time of the Senate. During the late war our State made for herself a noble record. In the Congress of the United States her statesmen take rank among the first, Her executive, administrative, and judicial officers, give honor and dignity to the State. Let us remove the foul disgrace of the southern Prison and make haste to place her institutions on the level of the highest.
Look down into the State Prisons. See there eight hundred of our fellow citizens as convicts. A large majority of them are young, susceptible of honest, humane, and generous impressions, pleading in their degredation for a little help,- peering through their moral darkness for more light.
By so simple a word, as aye, on the passage of this, you will carry hope to their desponding,- light into their darkness. Do it and ages to come will honor the General Assembly who thus honored the commonwealth.
Mr. JOHNSTON, of Montgomery, indicated his opposition to the bill.
Mr. BRADLEY would support the bill with an amendment to the sixteenth section, striking out the provision that the term of a recaptured convict shall be increased by the judgment of the Board of Commissioners, and inserting in lieu a provision that the convict shall be required to serve for such further time in addition to his original term as the Court or jury trying the case shall determine.
And then -
The Senate took a recess till two o'clock p. m.
In the afternoon session the bill was amended and passed the Senate by yeas 29, nays 8.
[See report of the House Committee on the Affairs of the State Prison south, printed on pp, 61 - 64.]
