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Page 59
Italy up to the present time is almost the only country in which
prison officers receive any preliminary training for their duties. As
a result of this, it not infrequently happens, as Mr. Clay has shown,
that an inexperienced person suddenly placed in absolute charge of a
number of prisoners will in a few days destroy almost all the
reformative work of months and perhaps years. The late Baron von
Holtzendorff was of a similar opinion, holding that one man can in a
short time undo the work of ten. So much has this been felt, that Dr.
von Jageman and several other eminent prison authorities on the
Continent maintain that no man should be placed in charge of prisoners
till he has had some previous training in the nature of his duties. It
has been truly pointed out that the value of imprisonment depends to
an enormous extent on the qualifications of the person placed in
immediate charge of the convicted men. Others are with them
occasionally, he is with them all day long, and unless he comes to his
task with a full knowledge of the delicate and difficult nature of the
duties he has to perform, he will probably exercise a mischievous and
irritating influence on the prisoners committed to his charge. On the
other hand, a well-instructed officer can work wonders in the way of
good, while insisting with inflexible firmness on the rules of
discipline, he is able at the same time by tact and kindliness to
diffuse a moralising atmosphere around him. Some men can do this by
instinct, but the majority require to be taught; it is therefore most
essential that every person entrusted with the control of prisoners
should have some previous theoretical instruction in his duties. After
all, those who can do most real good to prisoners are the warders
immediately in charge of them. Visits from persons outside who take an
interest in the outcast and fallen, are, according to French
experience, comparatively worthless.[47] These visits are well meant,
but they are not paid by the class of people to which the prisoner as
a rule belongs; the gulf between the visitor and the visited is too
great for the establishment of that inner sympathy on which the
permanent success of moralising efforts so greatly depends, and it is
easy for such a visitor to do more harm than good. On the other hand,
if you have a competent and well-instructed class of warders, if you
have these men trained to regard their duties from an elevated point
of view, you possess in them a body of men who are not separated from
prisoners by impassable barriers; you have comparatively little in the
way of social antecedents to estrange the prisoner from the person in
charge of him: such being the case it is easy for the two men to
understand each other, and is, therefore a relatively simple matter
for the one to influence the other for good.
[47] _Revue des Deux-Mondes, Avril_, 15, 1887.
What is to be done with offenders when their term of punishment has
expired? This is a question which modern society finds it exceedingly
difficult to solve. What is the use of punishing a delinquent for
offences against the law if, the moment his sentence is completed, he
is sent back again into the surroundings which led to his fall. So
long as his surroundings are the same, his acts will be the same,
unless his mind has passed through a revolution during detention in
gaol. The latter event, it must be admitted, sometimes does happen,
although it is not easy in these days to get the world to believe it.
And when it does happen it is marvellous to see how men, through their
own unaided efforts, will redeem their character and wipe out the blot
upon their life. But many offenders pass through little or no change
of mind, and unless delivered from their surroundings they will
continue to fall. Here, however, comes in the difficulty. Many of
these people love their surroundings; they have no desire to change; a
life of squalor among squalid companions is not distasteful to them;
on the contrary, they will refuse to leave old haunts no matter what
inducements are offered them elsewhere. It is hardly possible to do
anything with these offenders, and they unfortunately constitute at
least one fourth of the criminal population. Such persons return again
and again to prisons; and the manager of an important Prisoners' Aid
Society in a great northern city, says, that to aid them "is a mere
waste of money, if not an encouragement to vice."[48] How to deal with
persons of this description is a most tantalising problem. More
vigorous methods of punishment are sometimes advocated as the proper
manner of deterring these habitual and incorrigible offenders, but if
we consider the constitution and antecedents of most of them, it
becomes perfectly certain that such means will not effect the end in
view. As a matter of fact, most of them are not adapted to the
conditions of existence which prevail in a free society. Some of them
might have passed through life fairly well in a more primitive stage
of social development, as, for example, in the days of slavery or
serfdom, but they are manifestly out of place in an age of
unrestricted freedom, when a man may work or remain idle just as he
chooses. A society based upon the principle of individual liberty is a
society of which the members are supposed to be gifted with the
virtues of prudence, industry, and self-control; virtues of this
nature are indeed essential to the existence of such a form of
society. Unfortunately, a certain portion of its members do not
possess them even in an elementary degree, and no amount of seclusion
in prison will ever confer these qualities upon them. Imprisonment, to
be followed by liberty, however rigorous it is made, is accordingly no
solution of the difficulty; the only effective way of dealing with the
incorrigible vagrant, drunkard, and thief, is by some system of
permanent seclusion in a penal colony. All men are not fitted for
freedom, and so long as society acts on the supposition that they are,
it will never get rid of the incorrigible criminal.
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