St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1889-10-28
PRISON REFORM.
Cruel and Severe Treatment Eff
fects No Better Results With
Criminals.

Cruet anu severe ITedtHcuC FL
fects No Better Results With
Criminals.
Rev. Fl. II. Simmons, in observance of
the day, gave q sermon yesterday morn
ing at First Unitarian church on
''Prison Reform" of which the follow
ing is an abstract:
BY far the most important fact in the
prison problem is that nearly all the
prisoners are some time to return to So
ciety. Hence the chief question is, how
they can be treated so as to be least
dangerous when they thus return.
The old method was to leave them
without much Recommendation in idle
ness, often in association with others
worse than themselves; or to treat them
cruelty in order to subdue them and
warn them and others against crime
But both these methods have proved
failures. Idleness and evil companions
alike make them worse. Cruel treat
ment hardens and embitterS them and
turns them into lifelong enemies of so
ciety. And so little does severe punish
ment warn them or others, that even the
late uuadruple execution in New York
was directly followed there by ''an cpl
demic of murder and other grave
crimes" as one of our Mime
apOlis dailies said; and crimes have gen
ally fiourished most in the periods when
the punisliments for them were most
cruel. Hence we are learning to leave
these old methods and make impri SON
ment time for patient training. Pris-
oners must be kept at work, and sub
jected to a discipline that educateS
body. mind and morals; they must be
taught by prison experience that they
gain by well doing and lose without it;
they must be encouraged in well doing
by liberal system of rewards.
These principles have already been
pretty well tried in England and some
other European countries. In England
prisoners for short term are allowed
and good behavior; and those for longer
terms are allowed besides to shorten
their time by nearly one-fourth, and
then be conditiOnally released on a
''ticket-of-leave." The same system is
used with more or less variation all
through the United Kingdom, and has
worked so well that this principle of
conditional liberation of prison.
ers has been widely adopted
on the continent, by SaXOny in
1862, by Servia in 1869, by the
German empire in 1871, by Denmark in
1873, by the Netherlands in 1881 and by
France in 1885. So well does the re-
formed method work that Mulhalrs
tables show steady ami rapid decrease
of crime in England, Scotland and Ire
land during the last thirty years; and in
proportion to the population, the crimes
in the whole United Kingdom are less
than half as many as in 1855. And so
happy is its effect On prisoners that DR..
Dana. of st. Paul, said not long since
that statistics compel the conclusion
that from so to 90 per cent can be in
duced to lead law-abiding life after
discharge from prison."
Our own country has adopted these
reformed methods only sparingly in
certain states and prisons, and ap-
parently has suffered by not adopting
them. For it is said that our state
prisons have to take back, on the aver
age, about 60 per cent of their inmates,
and many of them several times; while
crimes, instead of decreasing, as in Eng
land, have been increasing as rapidly.