Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1883-02-20
THE WOMANsD PRISON.



There are many things in this world whose
worth cannot he estimated BY money values.
1t is utterly impossible to reduce them to
dollars and cents. Their relation to human
life and human progress cannot be tabulated
and averaged and computed, as may be done
with those matters which relate merely tn
the material side of living. The sou, i.
worth more than the body, as all thar il
spiritual is of infinitely higher value than
that which is material. To be sure thew are
closely allied in many ways, and one has to
pay FOR sustaining material life while adj
vancing the spiritual welfare So it is that
to the mere statistician, and to the pseudo
political economist, who takes only one view
OF situation, the accounts do not have a
satisfactory showing. and the balance ia on
the wrong side of the ledger. But TO those
who know the results which cannot be enter.
ed BY any system Of commercial book. keen
ing now in vogue, and whose value to sociefv
at large cannot be computed, the showing is
most satisfactory, even when the debit side
so far as dollars are concerned. il in advance
OF the credit. This is probably more true of
the Massachusetts Reformatory Prison
for Women at. Sherborn than Of
any other institution in the State
because from its very name, the object of
us existence Is shown. 1t is not simply a
penal institution, where punishment is to he
enforced without regard to the moral future
OF the criminal undergoing sentence. but its
duty is to endeavOr to reclaim the women
sent there; and in place of forming portion
OF criminal class, to be more or less con-
stantly under the surveillance of and sun
ported by the Commonw ealth, they were. if
possible, to be made seIf-support;ng, self-re-
specting individuals. taking the places which
they had won in the worlds work and in the
worlds esteem. For seven wears, without
wearying or tagging. those mem and women
in the Commonwealth who had the public in
ters st most nearly at heart worked for the
establishment of this prison, feeling that so
long as men and women criminals were in
one institution, treated by the same modes,
guarded by the same people, there would be
little hope of achieving anything in the way
of morality.
When at the end Of that time their efforts
were crowned with success, they undertook
the work with an arrest devotion which has
continued to the present Time and every sue.
ceeding year has made more emphatic the
arguments in favor of reformatory prison
work among women One of the first re-
quirements made by those in charge of the
prison, or perhaps, it would be more
correct to say one of the first requests.
was that sentences imposed upon the
women, especially for drunkenness and
night-walking, should be the extrem-
est allowed. request that is usually
complied with by the judges and Justices
throughout the State. And this gives rise to
one of the objections recently made against
the prison by one, who
Drest in a little brief authority,
shows that authority by endeavoring to make
the minimizing people of the State dissatis-
fled with the existing order of things. For
the same crime, he says, man and woman
are sentenced respectively, one sixty days and
the other year; then comes an appeal to
justice against such en- outrage to woman
hood to catch the sympathies of the senti.
mental. followed by the respective costs of
keeping each criminal, to bias the judgment
Of the practical part Of thecommunity, whose
pet axiom is figures won't lie" But all
sight is lost of the fact. which is a fact. as
anyone can prove by studying the records of
the houses Of correction, that the woman
when sent to such an institution with light
sentence is returned again and again under a
succession of light sentences, until so fire.
quent are her visits that it might justly be
said of her that her entire life is spent in
correctionary institution, with occasional
short intervals spent in proving her right to
such residence. So she becomes pensioner
on the commonwealth, and would resent any
suggestion that she has higher duty to her
self and the State. But her entrance
into the reformatory prison usually
opens up new view of life and of
her own relation to it to her. The lawless
person is brought under discipline and made
to respect the law. if not of communities, at
least of the community of which she forms
part: the stubborn person is made to feel
that there is will superior to hers whose
supremacy she must acknowledge; the idle
is taught habits of industry and thrift; the
morally irresponsible is so surrounded and
hedged in that her very weakness is turned
into a channel by which it may become
strength. although it is as well 10 acknowl
e,lse that this class is the least often re-
f,rmed. because so soon as the protection is
Withdrawn they are pretty sure to fall back
again, and the physically unclean is made to
pursue cleanly habits, which will help to a
moral purity. if only the person can be held
in custody until such habits are confirmed
To learn these lessons thoroughly, and to
reach all these results. or even to approx
mate them. time must be given. and it will
not need an expert in matters either of politi-
cal or social economy to say which is better
for the State-to make the criminals pension
ers on bounty, withsnt effort to place them
above this situation, or to take time, even at
the expense of a few months extra board, to
try to put them outside the criminal or de-
pendent classes.
The discipline of the reformatory is pecu-
liar to itself, and the prisoners are acquainted
at once, on their entrance, that upon their own
behavior depends their advancement. There
are four divisions, and into the first of these
every prisoner is entered after the four
weeks probation has elapsed that follows her
reception into the institution. The first four
weeks she passes BY herself, seeing only the
marrons and such officers of the institution as
have occasion to visit her, and such members
of the prison commission as may be visiting
the institution. She takes her meals in her
own room, which is apart from the division
cells, has work given her to do there, but does
not mingle at all with the other prisoners.
At the end of the time she is regularly en-
tered as first division prisoner. unless she
has been in the prison before, in which case
her probationary term is doubled, and made
eight weeks. On her entrance tn the division
abe il given record card. which is marked
weekly by her matron. and on this depends
her promotion to the second division. She
will be promoted when she has gained Ger
tain numb, of credit marks For each week
Of perfect conduct. labor and study. ten credit
marks are allowed, and for each misconduct