Criminal Sociology [109]
not amend the social environment, it is useless to lavish care on our prisoners if, as soon as they quit prison, they must return to the same conditions which led them into crime. No adequate social prevention can in any way be provided by the more or less arcadian devices of the prisoners' aid societies. The chief mistake of the prison experts has been to concentrate their attention exclusively on the cell and in the cell, forgetting the external factors of crime; so that, by a familiar psychological process, the cell has become for prison experts what money is to the avaricious: it has ceased to be a means, and has become an end in itself.
Again, the cellular system is ineffectual because the very isolation which was its original object is incapable of realisation. Prisoners find a thousand means of carrying on communication with each other, during their walks, or by writing on the leaves of books lent to them to read, or by knocking on their walls according to a conventional alphabet, or by writing in the sand, or by using the drains as telephonic receivers, as was done in the cellular prisons of Mazas, Milan, &c. Plain proofs of this may be found in Lombroso's ``Les Palimpsestes des Prisons.'' ``The public, and even well-informed persons, honestly believe that the cellular prison is a dumb and paralytic thing, without tongue or hands, simply because the law has ordered silence and inactivity. But as no decree, however vigorous, can counteract the nature of things, so this organism speaks, moves, occasionally wounds or slays, in spite of all the decrees. Only, as always happens when a necessity of humanity is opposed by a law, it acts by less known, underground and hidden means.''
Moreover, the cellular system is unequal in its application, for difference of race has much to say to it, and in fact it is a clumsy machinery of the northern races, repugnant to those of the south, more dependent on the open air and light. Apart from that, isolation has very different effects amongst people of the same nation, according to the different vocations of the prisoners, especially of occasional offenders. In this connection the testimony of Faucher, Ferrus, and Tarde is thoroughly just, that in prison administration we ought to observe a distinction between dwellers in town and country.[23]
[23] Yet the question whether the cellular system should be modified in accordance with the nationality, social condition, and sex of criminals, which has not been brought forward since the Prison Congress at Stockholm, was there decided by the following resolution:--``The cellular system, where it is in operation, may be applied without distinction of race, social condition (as regards townsmen or rural population), or sex, provided that the authorities have regard to these special conditions in matters of detail. Exception may be made in respect of the young, and if cellular discipline is applied to them also, it should be in such a way as not to prejudice their physical and moral development.'' (``Proceedings,'' 1878, pp. 303, 617.)
Again, the cellular system is too costly to be adopted as the only form of imprisonment--which, however, is enacted in the Italian penal code, the French law of 1875, and elsewhere.
And it is just by reason of the enormous expenditure on vast prisons that the grievous and mischievous contrast arises between the comforts provided for murderers and men guilty of arson in their cells and the privations to which the honest poor are exposed in hospitals, poorhouses, town garrets, country hovels, and barracks. One of the most significant results which I noticed at the exhibition of various plans of cells in connection with the Prison Congress at Rome in 1885 was that it demonstrated to the general public how the cellular system treats prisoners (whether before trial or after sentence) better than the poor, who continue to be honest in spite of their wretchedness.[24]
[24] Even prison experts have been concerned by the vast expense of the cellular system, and the following question
Again, the cellular system is ineffectual because the very isolation which was its original object is incapable of realisation. Prisoners find a thousand means of carrying on communication with each other, during their walks, or by writing on the leaves of books lent to them to read, or by knocking on their walls according to a conventional alphabet, or by writing in the sand, or by using the drains as telephonic receivers, as was done in the cellular prisons of Mazas, Milan, &c. Plain proofs of this may be found in Lombroso's ``Les Palimpsestes des Prisons.'' ``The public, and even well-informed persons, honestly believe that the cellular prison is a dumb and paralytic thing, without tongue or hands, simply because the law has ordered silence and inactivity. But as no decree, however vigorous, can counteract the nature of things, so this organism speaks, moves, occasionally wounds or slays, in spite of all the decrees. Only, as always happens when a necessity of humanity is opposed by a law, it acts by less known, underground and hidden means.''
Moreover, the cellular system is unequal in its application, for difference of race has much to say to it, and in fact it is a clumsy machinery of the northern races, repugnant to those of the south, more dependent on the open air and light. Apart from that, isolation has very different effects amongst people of the same nation, according to the different vocations of the prisoners, especially of occasional offenders. In this connection the testimony of Faucher, Ferrus, and Tarde is thoroughly just, that in prison administration we ought to observe a distinction between dwellers in town and country.[23]
[23] Yet the question whether the cellular system should be modified in accordance with the nationality, social condition, and sex of criminals, which has not been brought forward since the Prison Congress at Stockholm, was there decided by the following resolution:--``The cellular system, where it is in operation, may be applied without distinction of race, social condition (as regards townsmen or rural population), or sex, provided that the authorities have regard to these special conditions in matters of detail. Exception may be made in respect of the young, and if cellular discipline is applied to them also, it should be in such a way as not to prejudice their physical and moral development.'' (``Proceedings,'' 1878, pp. 303, 617.)
Again, the cellular system is too costly to be adopted as the only form of imprisonment--which, however, is enacted in the Italian penal code, the French law of 1875, and elsewhere.
And it is just by reason of the enormous expenditure on vast prisons that the grievous and mischievous contrast arises between the comforts provided for murderers and men guilty of arson in their cells and the privations to which the honest poor are exposed in hospitals, poorhouses, town garrets, country hovels, and barracks. One of the most significant results which I noticed at the exhibition of various plans of cells in connection with the Prison Congress at Rome in 1885 was that it demonstrated to the general public how the cellular system treats prisoners (whether before trial or after sentence) better than the poor, who continue to be honest in spite of their wretchedness.[24]
[24] Even prison experts have been concerned by the vast expense of the cellular system, and the following question