Pioche daily record. [volume] (Pioche, Nev.) 1872-1876, 1873-10-05
soC1Ery AND THE CRIMINAL.

According 10 tue latest returns, there
are in the United States forty-one State
Prisons, of which New York has three,
Pennsylvania and Indiana two each, and
the other States one each, with the ex-
ception of Delaware, where the whipping
post saves them the expense Of peni-
tantiary. The number of County Jails
is over two thousand; and there are, be-
sides, houses of correction, local peniten-
tiaries, etc, for adults, to the number of
twenty-five, chiefly in New York and
Massachusetts.
The State Prisons of this country con-
tain at this time about 5000 convicts;
and there were in May, 1872, about 49,
500 persons in confinement for various
crimes and offenses, in prisons of all
kinds, in the whole United States. 1t
thus appears that, according to the for
mula of a sarcastic Frenchman, the de-
tected and convicted are to the undetec-
ted part of our population as about one
to one thousand But as the imprisoned
part is mostly between sixteen and forty
years of age, a truer comparison would
be with the population comprised be-
tween those ages, and this would give
about one to every $50 in a Jail of some
kind.
When a man or woman is sentenced to
prison for term of years, society ceases
to trouble itself about him almost as
much as though he had been happily
shot or hanged While he remains in
prison he is clothed, warmed and fed,
and more or less disciplined, at societys
expense, and, like q naughty child shut
up in a closet he does not bother"
anybody except his keepers. When his
term is served, he is summarily turned
out from the place which has meantime
become home to him; and with his old
clothes, and enongh money to pay his
way to the nearest big city, he is left to
do what he chooses-or rather what nec-
essity, weakness, ignorance, the force of
old associations, the desperation of lone
liness, all combined, may tempt him to
do. His readiest friends are his old COM
panions in vagrancy or crime, and the
top of his ambition is to maintain his
place among the great mass of the uned-
ucated. If the police are too crafty for
him, if he is again caught. society, virtu-
ously indignant, sends him back to pris-
on, where, of course, he figures as an in
corrigible, and receives double doses of
discipline, hortatory and otherwise. In
some few cases he reforms, and becomes
more or less useful member of society.
But all who have had to do with crimi-
nails report that genuine and lasting re-
form is but seldom found, and that when
boy once gets into Jail, he will probably
continue to prey upon society as long as
he lives, and that on the score of econ
ony, and leaving humanity out of view,
1t would have been better to shoot or
hang him at the beginning.
The general conviction that, as Quet-
elet puts it, sit is society which prepares
the crime, the criminal being only the in
strument which executes it,, has be-
couS so deep, that society has in mod
ern times conseientiously imposed upon
governments the task of not merely con-
fning, but trying to reform its criminals.
With society organized as at present
that is to say very rudely, imgerfeetly
and selfshly-we know that, given "A Ger
tain density of population, we shall find
certain definite and predicable num-
Der of thefts, Of robberies, of burglares
and murders. The diffusion of intelli-
gence, the decrease Of intemperance and
other circumstances affect this result, but
they are themselves affected by the
density Of population, and itremains true
that the statlstican can foretell with start
ling correctness how many thieves, burg
lars, robbers and assasins there will be in
any Christian community whose nun
bers per square mile he knows. Society
being constituted as it now is, certain
proportion will be criminals, just as
certain other proportion will be dyspep-
tic, or will have weak eyes, and another
proportion will be virtuous, lfdenying,
conscientious and amiabe. The burg.
lar Is as much the natural and legitimate
product of society as Jim Fisk was the
inevitable result of the indecent scram-
ble for wealth, and the semi-barbarous
love of ostentatlous living which distin-
guishes New York.
When, therefore, Scroggs is detected,
convicted, and sentenced to Sing Sing,
society is guilty with Scroggs and know
ing this, 1t enjoins upon Scrogg's keeper
that he shall not torture Scroggs, that he
Shall give him enough to eat and fit
place to sleep in, that he shall cause
Scroggs to be instructed in letters and
morals, and that he shall in general try
TO prepare him to become useful mem
her of society, instead of beast of prey.
And in order that all this may be done,
and thus the guilty social conscience be
put at rest, society, which is an ass, puts
politicians in the places of prison mana
gers, and inspectors, and then goes about
Its business. Its duty is done.
By-and-by Scroggs has served out his
term, and unless he was ward politi-
cian-in which case he is all right, and
can take up his old calling without delay
or hinderanee-he is turned out of pris-
on presumably reformed, and with good
impulses where bad ones were, with yir-
tue triumphant in his bosom, and with
an old suit of clothes on his back, and a
dollar and half in his pocket.
NOW, If it was the duty of society to
make man of him, it has conspicuously
iailed. II it owed him any thing, it owed
MIN far more than it gives him. For the
most part, 1t has not even given him
good superiors in prison. Within five
years, on an Investigation into the man.
asement of the New York State Prisons,
ah intelligent convict deposed that the
PRISONERS were the only reputable people
~ the prison, and there was reason to
oeieVe at the time that he did not exag-
eerate. What with contractors who
make fortunes out of the convict's labor
Is IN evidence that a profit of fifty
pci ttl Tue capital tluS
Invested is very moderate, and that a
hundred per cent. is not unknown; what
with politicians filling the places of keep.
ers and subordinates, and making per
cehtage of their own; what with such ex.
.ra'agance in management that. accord
ing 10 an official report, in 1857, 1880
prisoners in New York cost $l12 "a per
nead, nead, and in 1865, 1885 prisoners cost
sIlo per head; that during twenty-three
years also in the New York prisons. the
average per diem for the hire of convict
,aoor Increased only fifty per cent, while
a. Az the same time the cost of maintaining
.ne prisoners increased 300 per cent,
anu that in the same time the State Pris-
o uns cost, to maintain, ten millions, while
,ne convict labor yielded four millions,
SisaSlng deficit of six millions, of which
tsooto.oO0 have been actually raised BY
aAation within the last six years-with
such example of greed, incapacity, faith.
,essness to trusts, lack of economy, and