Herald and tribune. [volume] (Jonesborough, Tenn.) 1869-current, 1893-03-23
TIL PENITENTIARy.
A Summary Of the Report Of the Com
mittee.

We find on the whole that the condi
ton and management of the convicts
in this State for the past three years
has not been a credit to the State by
any means, but to the contrary. And
the committee believes the public, or
at least the executive and legislative
consciences need to be awakened to the
d~isgraceful neglects and cruel out
RACES that are perpetrated in the name
and under the protection of the State.
Il Il Il 4
In the enforcement of criminal law
in Tennessee today, these better princi-
Piles seem to be entirely ignored, and
our penal institutions, instead of ten
ding to reform, are veritable nurseries
of crime, anarchism and degradation,
and this to an extent that we fail to
appreciate, and with resultant econo-
mic loss and cost that would probably
astonish us if we could know the exact
figures. Attention is called to that
fact that something over 500 prisoners
enter and leave our penitentiary every
year; in a period of IN ord nary genera
ton of thirty years, some $4,000, a
small army. Many find their way
back and non practically are reform
ed, but most all are cultivated in crime,
contaminated, debased, degraded and
embittered. \
But to add to this inhuman treat
ment by neglect or overt act can but
brutalize and embitter even a man of
good character and impulses. The
simple statement of facts contained in
this report will hardly convey to the
ineffective mind the enormity of some
of the wrongs endured by the prisoners,
Many men are poor; hunger is known
outside prison walls; dirty households
are too common; men have slept in
the gutter, and many of our citizens
endured with heroic tortitude priva-
tons even for months during the wi, T
between the States and were glad at
times for even a piece of sodden cor
bread; but conceive of the hopeless
dissertation of the man who for ten,
fifteen or twenty years had to bury
himself every day but Sunday in a coal
mine with its attending dangers and
discomforts, toll to the limit of his
strength, carry his indigestible and
unsustaining food in his dirty hands,
to return at night to a supper whose
unvarying monotoDy causes his stom-
ach to revolt, is cabined and driven
into a o where fifty Others are
crowded in and packed like cattle
fixed for shipment, to sleep in his dirty
clothes with another prisoner, and SO
cramped that he can not turn or stretch,
and in a bed that from three to six
months at a time reeks and stinks with
filthiness, and in an air de vitalized by
fifty pairs of lungs and made noiscme
by the e~xalations from fifty dirty
bodies-a man whose spirit of man
hood is broken and who is made to
writhe under the lash for failure to
complete his task, who has not a single
foot of space nor a single thing he can
call and enjoy as his own, nor II mo-
ment of privacy, an almost deindivi
dualized unit of a suffering brutal
throng; conceive of an u~nvarying
daily round of such life for five, ten,
fifteen or twenty years and you have
a partial idea of the fate of some OF
the poor wretches at Coal Creek.
The wretched and debasing condi.
ton of the woman inmates at the
main prison has been referred to, and
everywhere we found strong evidences
of debasing, unnatural and junction.
able practice among the male convicts,
While the committee do not claim
that the evils noted and appearing to
the committee to exist are wholly
attributable to our lease system, nor
do they deny thatmany of them may be
corrected under the system nor do they
assert that in theory a humane and re.
formatory lease system can not be con-
ceived, yet this committee is decidedly
of the opinion, from investigation and
consideration of the matter, that aside
from the wretched construction of the
main prision most of the evils com.
planned of are largely due to the lease
system, and that under such a system
in our opinion an administration of
our penal institutions with a view to
reform will be practically impossible.
The controlling motive of those j IN
charge under the contract system will
always necessarily be to make the
last possible cent out of the flesh and
blood bought with their money and
never to reform.
We recommend, therefore, a discon-
tinuance of this system, for this and
other reasons, as early as possible.
"We recommend the early building
of a new penitentary on modern and
reformed lines, or to remodel and en-
large the old n if practicable"
LOCUST MOUNT.