New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1867-08-10
THE TREATMENT or Conflicts.


Next in importance to popular education rs q
civilizng agency is the influence which may be
exerted for prevention of crime by prison
system conducted on enlightened principles.
This is too little thought of, in part, because
prisons are so seldom visited compared to
schools. Not one person i'll n thousand ever
enters prison i'll the course of his life, with a
view to examine the manner in which offenders
against law are treated and the effects of
that treatment Almost all that society knows
about the secrets of the prison house comes to
us from the reports of Commissioners, OF In
spectors, OF similar official documents. Few
benevolent societies have done as much
good az the Prison Association of New
York, organized twenty-threc years ago, and
which has been in operation ever since.
It's efforts were directed Ia the improvement of
the physical and moral condition of convicts,
and TO the substitution, in their treatment, of
the principle of kindness for the agency of
force. This has often been set down as a
sickly sentimentality, unjust, and out of place,
calculated to increase crime by diminishing the
punishment that deters from it. If prison is
conducted so humanely that it is no longer q
terror to evil-doers, thousands, it is argued,
will be tempted to commit Offcnses in order TO
escape from the restitution of the street and
the cellar TO the comforts of civilized habita-
ton. This is a somewhat plausible theory. Its
truth or falsehood cannot be determined in the
closet; we must look to facts--to the statistics
of crime and of prisons-for a trustworthy an
swer. The successive reports of the Associa-
ton to which we referred supply these, as re-
| CARDS the State Prisons and Penitentiaries of
our own State, furnishing abundant evidence
| that, some thirty or forty years ago, the sys-
TEN OF society was most effectually tried there.
| They show, also, the sweeping changes that
have been made toward system of humanity,
coupled with reform and they exhibit the re-
suits of these changes.
Under the old system the lash was the uni
versal punishment. 1t was employed to q
frightful extent. The record shows that, in a
single prison, 100000 strokes were given in a
single year 1t was resorted to for the most
triiing Offenses Prisoners were frequently
punished if they looked up at visitor. In one
case poor young fellow was flogged because
he turned his head to look at his mother, who
had travelled hundreds of miles to sec her con-
Wet son before she died. There is a record of
man who committed suicide to escape fog
ging; and of another. a negro, considered
crazy, and guilty of singing and shouting of
nights so as to disturb his fellOw-prisoners,
who appears to have died under the lash. The
statement in regard to this last, given on APP
parently good authority in the first report of
the Association, dsclOses almost incredible
atrocity He was dashed for an hour, first with
a whip Of eight cords as thick as clothes-lines,
the ends for two inches being bound with wire ;
then with a large raw and twisted cOw-hide.
Every time the keeper struck with this last
instrument Of torture, "the whip appeared to