The Portland daily press., 1873-01-09
The Criminal Mill.


The Criminal Mill.
The jails OF Maine turn out criminals as
the factories turn out cotton cloth. This has
come to be an axiom that no one disputes.
In the first place the State furnishes the raw
material by allowing its children to grow up
in ignorance. The work is then carefully
finished off in the jals where evil associa-
tions and idleness are precisely what are
needed for that purpose. We are glad, there
fore, to see that Gov. Perham in his late adj
dress calls attention for the third time to 'the
pernicious and demoralizing system that char
acterizes the management OF our jails, and
refers to the recommendations of the COM
missioner appointed in 1870 as embodying
the principles of true reform. That report
is the ablest document OF the kind, so far as
we know, ever Laid before the Maine Legisla-
ture. Its object was to show how our penal
institutions may cease to be schools OF vice
and how the State may make its dangerous
classes into good citizens. Nor does the en-
terprise seem to us to be visionary one.
Why should generation that has cJntended
SO successfully with physical ills, and the OBJ
stacles to human happiness presented by the
material world, the generation that makes
the blind see, the deaf hear and the dumb
talk, tenderly administers the draught that
gives the sufferer safe repose, and prevents
the spread of disease by the observance OF
sanitary laws,-why should it sit down in
despair before moral diseases or deliberately
al1 TO- I,a;p 10 Ill 4lo;,
Lightly? Mind is more plastic than matter,
and submits itself more readily to remedial
agencies, where the trouble does not arise
from cerebral disease, as in insanity 1t is
crime of the greatest magnitude to make it
well nigh impossible for the victims of early
neglect and poverty to become prosperous
and happy citizens, as we now do. In other
lands and in other States philanthropic men
and women have initiated a new system of
depressing crime, the essential element of
which is a cure of the criminal tendency.
The theory of the Jail commissioners of
1870 is this: in the first place ignor-
ance, the p me element in the production of
crime, must be eliminated. Sta .istics show
that person who cannos read is eleven times
as Likely to commit crime as one who can-in
other words some third OF all the crime IN the
country is committed by one .fftieth Of the
pe0pte-that is by those who have not sufff-
Gent education to read. The first thing to
be done, then, is to make education co npul-
sorry 50 that there shall no longer be posi-
bility of falling into vice through want of
light. 1t cannot be pc sible that the State
will any longer neglect this subject, involving
as it does interests so tremendous.
Bat what shall be done with those in whom
the C iminal disposition has already been i'm
planted? At present if they commit none
OF the higher crimes they are sent to Jail for
a period of from thirty days to a year. At
the expiration of hat time they emerge from
retirement in the same state of moral debility
which brought about their commitment.
They have learned nothing, they have earned
nothing, nd the disgrace attending imprison.
ment inhames their resentment against So
cety and makes it more difficult tor them to
earn an honest living. The greater part of
them are young, and are susceptible in
hi h deg. ee to reformatory influence, but
IOhS diO duOLuOus IuSy oOOu lCbNiA w J1iA'
Criminality beco mes their normal condition.
Tney lead lives of misery and inflict on 90
ciety the burden of their support, besides en-
dangerng its peace and security. The origin
al wrong of permitting them to grow up in
darkness is many times reduplicated. The |
this end in view they propose to provide in
1ustlial establishments in connection with |
the jails at Portland, Augusta, Auburn and
Bangor, to which prisoners from the different
Counties may be sent. Here they are
lot only expected to support themselves, but
% learn USEFUL trade that will enable them
% maintain themselves after their dismissal
rom confinement. Moreover the criminal
endency is to be eradicated, if possible, by
mental and moral instruction given every
lay. Meantime the bad effect of mingling
together offenders of very
iferent grades who mutually corrupt each
ther is to be avoided by a classification of
be prisoners, and system OF promotions
rom one grade to another as the reward of
God conduct. The jails are also graded, so
hat prisoners may thus be more easily sep
rated into classes. Prisoners shorten their
erm of confinement by good conduct on the
rinciple now so usefully employed in the
tate prison. Theoretically, indeterminate
which are satisfied only when the
fender ia believed to have thoroughly re-
rmed, are preferred, but the innovation
ould be SO great that it. is doubtful if it
ould at present be acceptable to the people.
ut in lieu Of this longer sentences should be
adopted, together with super
sion ofprisoners released on account of good
'nduct before their term has expired and a ,
for their full term, if necessary.
Tnder such system, supplemented by the
,vival OF the old common school which once .
id so much toward making good men, it is q
slieved that crime and criminals would soon
much less common in Maine than at pres y
If