The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1891-10-19
FALSE PRISON METHODS.

The National Prison Congress now in
session at Pittsburg, listened on Tuesday
to Mrs. Ellen c. Johnson, superintendent
of the Reformatory Prison at Sherburne,
Mass, detailing her methods, such as the
use of flowers. good music in chapel, etc.
These methods should not be entirely ig-
nored in prison, but there is always the
danger of drifting into the error of max
ing prison an agreeable place of deten-
ton. There should be no spice of in
Justice or inhumanity in the government
OF prison; but no prison should ever be
made SO agreeable to a prisoner that he
should feel that it was a pleasant place to
return to in his subsequent life. As
matter of fact the "Reformatory Prisons"
for men are often SO conducted that
they tend to an increase Of crime, so COM
Portable is made prison life to the convict.
An able writer on prison reform perth
nently asks whether you could expect to
teach lazy man that the law of life was
labor by supporting him in a state of en-
forced idleness and breaking the monotony
of his life by entertainments and bou-
quets.
The true idea of prison should be to
make it place of such stern justice, and
nothing but justice, that no prisoner
should wish to return to its discipline.
Prison life should be one of hard work,
retribution of severe toll, comparative soli-
tude and shame. A wife-beater deserves
at least an uncomfortable and irksome
O - Sto hot M nf N
but absolute, wanton inhumanity. We
send lazy brute and vagabond to prison,
and make the prison better home than
he has ever known; he gets fruit col
lection" every Saturday, brass band and
negro minstrel show to amuse his leisure.
In their official report the Massachusetts,
commissioners of prisons point with pride
to the fact that eve give the prisoner OPP
portunity to listen to all the best lecturers
in the field" and provide musical and lit
erary enjoyments for him, so that he may
hear Orchestral selections, ""tenor solos,"
''piano solos," "paper on philanthropy"
and one on .sTeneriffe;" the whole pro-
gramme concluding with an illustrated
lecture and vocal selection by the prison
quartette." The weekly bill of fare of these
convicts includes tomato soup, beef soup,
clam chowder, baked fish with sauce,
mashed potatoes, corned beef with apple
sauce, roast beef with vegetables, baked
beans, brown and white bread with butter,
oatmeal and milk, gingerbread, prunes
and cheese, tea and coffee with milk and
sugar, frui. and cocoa. At Christmas and
ofhar saaSnps ho prisopor ia sunpliaJ xu;<l,
appropriate chrome Christmas cards.
On the 18th of June each inmate of the
prisons was furnished by the ladies of the
Flower Mission with a bouquet. Generous
gifts of fiction and other literature
are given to the library for the benefit of
"unfortunates" who have committed ar
son, rape. burglary, breaches of trust that
have reduced widows and orphans to pen
ury. The prison officials are not to blame
for this sentimental state of things, but they
are powerless against the will of the pro-
fessional philanthropist; they can only ex-
ecute his will and record the results Of
| this steady adjustment of the primitive
| idea of our fathers who strove so to treat q
prisoner that he would be profoundly inn
|
was place man should be very sorry to
enter, very glad to leave and very reluc-
tant to re-enter.
The records of the increase of crime
show that prisoners voluntarily return to
the soup-kitchen and school.boy life of
the modern reformatory prison. The rec
| ords for 1868 show that England and
| Wales, with population of IA, 900 900, had
but H,771 prisoners. or one to every 948
inhabitants; New York, with population
of 1920, 900, had LOSS prisoners, or one to
every 2,025 (the reformer was not then act
i've in New York;; Massachusetts,, with a
population of $1,000, had So prisoners, or
one to every s22 inhabitants.
| The last prison report for Massachusetts,
shows that while the population has only
trebled the number of prisoners has in
creased fifty-fold. In the county prisons
alone, excluding the state prison and re-
formatories, the record shows one prisoner
to every 461 inhabitants. According to
the official figures one person to every 222
in Boston was prisoner. With but one
seventh of the population of the England
of fifty years ago Massachusetts, had last
year more than three times the number of
prisoners-that is, A ,90S prisoners to Mas
sachusetts' 100000 population, as against
England's IA, I'll prisoners to her 1900, 900
population, over u per cent. more than
England.
Out of the 1920 prisoners convicted
during the last year in Massachusetts,,
over 1887 were recommitments. Not
counting the vast number unrecognized.
15S persons are known to have returned
to the county prisons more than fifty
times, and 1917 persons more than thirty
times. There is an old gardener at the
House of Industry in Boston harbor who
has had himself committed more than one
hundred times. He says he knows when
he is well off," The giving of tobacco to
the prisoners at the Charleston state
prison is so general and SO liberal that
many convicts acquire the habit of using
it after their arrival at the prison. The
commitments to this prison have more
than doubled in the last nine years. being
S,675 commitments to county prisons In
the year 1881, as against Is, DID in the wear
$500. In this last year there were also 49,
SIS persons committed to the Boston
House of Industry, and 800 to the state
farm.
The total annual cost of the support of
these prisoners is over a million of dollars.