The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1883-05-03
REFORMATION FOR A COMING
LEGISLATURE.

growing colonies. France continued
this system of transportation, and
low it has assumed an interesting |
stage. A great many convicts |
have been transported to New |
Caledonia, in the South Seas,
and the plan is to first employ them |
at hard labor for the government, but |
to afterward encourage them to set
up for themselves and accumulate
property. An illustration of the diff
Guilty, and, at the same time, the ne
cessity of implantiDg habits of indus
try in men who have grown up in the
practice of crime, is contained in the
fact mentioned by late correspond
ent, that out of one hundred and
thirty convicts who had served their
time, but were living in a condition
of semi-imprisonment and idleness,
only eight would accept the offer of a
mining company to give them en-
ployment at fair wages. So careful
is the government to remove all OBJ
stacles that could interfere with the
possible reform of these men that any
one insulting reformed convict by
taunting him with his former con-
dition is liable to severe punishment.
In some of the ansported felons the
criminal instincts are almost or quite
ineradical, and crimes of violence in
New Caledonia are of frequent occur
renee. Such an experiment in penal
colonization us this could not be long
conducted without classification, and
hence the government is preparing to
establish another penal colony for con-
frnled criminals. The French call
them "recidivists," and it is said
there are ten thousand of
them in France who will
never reform so long as they are in
society upon which they may
prey. OF course new criminals will
spring up to take the place of those
transported because crime is trade
like any business the new gen.
Grafton will not be so numerous or so
debaSed as their predecessors. Ply
siologists have proved that crime is
often an inheritance, and the dark
stream can be traced back from chill
dren to parents for many genera
tions. To get rid of those who are
certain to be the progenitors of GRIM
inals is therefore to diminish the fe-
cundity of crime, and this is what
France will attempt to do. This pol
icy is infinitely superior to that fol-
lowed in the United States, where we
imprison criminals for short periods
and then turn them loose on So
ciety again, to wallOw in
the slums, polluting and corrupt
ing by their contact. Were our penal
prisons reformatory it might be differ
ent, but instead they are the places
where the mind is depraved far more
than it is in open society. The Amer
lean recidivest might be taught les
sons Of virtue in contact with the
world. but there is no prospect of re-
form in penitentiary walls. This is
| one of the evils at which organized
society must strike. The STATES
MAN has lately mao e an earnest
struggle for the establishment
of reformed prison management
in Texas, but failure, it
appears, crowns victory, and the
demand that prison reform be estab-
lished in Texas is as living an issue
now as it was before. The DISPOSE
ton has been to drift into the dam
gerous plan of combining all convicts
in penitentiary walls, when the hui
manitarian and reformitory method
should be to take them away from
cell life, to put them under the
clear sky of heaven. in
the green fields and among
the growing corn and cotton
and cane, to allow them to hold inter-
course with nature, to see the flowers
and listen to the birds, and at night
to look out upon the starry firma-
ment, and to be led to hope there is
something of happiness beyond. The
intention of the legislature was good;
it was hoped by resumption to do
much in reform, but under the exist
ing order of things this ap-
pears hopeless measure. Vio-
lent opp ositiOn, that may triumph,
even in defeat, prevented as COM
plete reformation as was intended,
and the work begun in 1883 is to be
added to until our state convicts may
be treated as those of France, not
purely to punish the criminal, but to
make him valuable, if possible, to
society. To do this he must be made
valuable to the state; he must be
made to make money for the state,
portion of which, if he become wor-
thy, might be returned to him at the
end of his term. Texas has no islands
in the oceans, where penal colonies
may be established, but there are re-
gions of the state where reformatory
plantations might be established that
would pay handsome revenue to the
state. Systems of promotion might
be instituted, whereby the convict's
merits would advance him upon
his good acts through his
term of service. In fact,
the work of prison refor-
nation is only just begun. Under
the plan lately fixed by the legislature
it looks as though there must be tenn
porary postponement; but the pur-
pose was apparent, and, if there should
be failure in these two years, the re-
suit will not be a doubtful one after
the nineteenth legislature has acted
on the questions involved.
SEyENTY-FIvE cities and villages