The prison mirror. [volume] (Stillwater, Minn.) 1887-1894, 1890-04-17

MAY BURST.
The Reformation of Criminals--Work
in the Past--The Demands of the
Present.
The science Of human government pre-
SCENTS no knOttier or more perplexing prob
lens than those which relate to the treat
ment Of crime and criminals. These prob
lens have been the despair of statesmen
and jurists for centuries, and their settle
ment upon any permanent basis is probably
as yet great way off. And the subject is
as repulsive to most people as it is perplex-
ing. Crime can hardly be made pleasant
study in itself, and the man who devotes
himself to it can find compensation only in
the hope of doing something to relieve So
clety of one of it's heaviest burdens, and
rescuing men from despair and ruin. Since
the day of John Howard and Elizabeth Fry,
however. there have been men and women
''crying in the wilderness" in behalf of
prison reform, but the numbers who have
needed this cry is very small. Something
indeed has been accomplished in the way of
removing or amelOrating some Of the most
revolving features of our present system,
but it is still black enough to torture the
heart of the philanthropist, and fill the
mind of the statesman with fOrebOdings of
calamity. The resources of civilization and
Christianity thus far developed have proved
insufficient in this country to keep the ratio
of crime from augmenting faster than the
population.
Is there not in this fact something that
should Starte us out of our SupineneSS, and
provoke us to graver thought and more en-
lightened action? The great difficulty hith-
erto has been the people have not believed
in the possibility of reforming criminals by
any means within the power of the State to
adopt and therefore they have consented to
see our prisons so managed as inevitably to
aggravate and deepen the decentralization OF
their inmates. Suggestions of reform in
the discipline, with view to the moral
elevation of prisoners, have been hooted at
as proceeding from "a rose water philan-
thropy." Christianity has been admins
tered more as the privilege and luxury of
the moral and respectable classes, than as
power divinely adapted to the recovery of
those who have strayed from the path of
virtue. In sentimental way the church
has believed that Christianity was of uni
verSal application; but in practice it has
been too ready to assume that the inmates
of our prisons were beyond it's reach.
There are signs of better day coming.
The Secretary of the New York Prison AS
ISOLATION has found courage to say that our
prisons should be refOrmatOry Institutions,
and that the criminal class must be reduced
by the recovery of criminals from their evil
ways. When this idea of the object and
aim of our penal institutions shall become
dominant in both the State and the Church,
revolution as beneficent as any that the
world has ever witnessed will have been
fairly inaugurated. Every convict will be
made to see and feel that there is no faint
of vengeance in his Incarceration; that the
State desires above everything else his re.
demptiOn from every evil way, and this not
alone on his own account, but for the safety
of the community. He will discover that
he is put under restraint not as all equiv
alent for his crime. still less as a measure
of retaliation, but as means of aiding him
the more efectually to break the bonds of
his iniqulty. When this time comes, the
most skllful and best endowed preachers
of the Christian faith instead Of minister
ing to the needs of those who are hardly
tempted to go astray, will be seen going
after the lost sheep" IN our penal institu-
tions and showing the world that Christian
ity under proper conditions will work the
redemption of even the most hardened
transgressOr. If we set only the most skill
full surgeons to mend the compound tract
ures of the body. shall we set the tyros and
billiards of the clerical profession to heal
the fractures of the soul? Let us. first of
all, rid ourselves Of the atheism which
prompts us to conclude that criminals are
beyond the reach of those moral and spirit
ual forces which are mighty through God
to the putting down" of the kingdom of
Satan, and the work of prison reform will
not fail to prosper in our hands.-Oliver
johnson.
s'Speech was given man to conceal his