The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-12-25
PRISON REFORMS.
Timely and Thoughtful Essays on
Topics That Are Inter-
esting to All Citizens.
San Francisco Was the
Birthplace of the Big
Single-Tax Movement.

Single-Tax Movement.
very largely defeats the very object for
which State prisons exist and are in
tended to effect Present incumbents of
offices in these institutions cannot reason
ably be held solely accountable for defec-
tive management simply because the
system under which they hold Office al
most precludes possibility of better results
than now obtain. The warden or chief
officer of a State prison should be ap-
pointed by the Governor to hold office dur
ing life or the term of his competency and
fidelity. The Governor should be guided
in his selection by the wishes of State citi-
zens, expressed in petition, and prospect
i've of the politics of the candidate.
The Warden should have his assistants
whose tenure of Office should, like his own,
rest solely upon qualification and good
service.
This phase is the most difficult to deal
WITH and can really be exhaustively con-
sidered only by those who have had &C
tual experience as officers or inmates. AL
though the writer has visited many State
prisons in the United States, Iectured fire.
quently and talked to officers and in
mates, and also had some experience with
ex-convicts he is as yet but student of
the problem, and certainly does not as
sumo to be an authority upon prison dis
cipline. Still, observation and experience
demonstrate that present methods are but
very partially perfect, and afford ample
scope for improvement.
A prison is world in itself. inmates
naturally classify themselves, and class
distinctions are usually based upon the
varying character of crimes committed.
The slums, the middle class and the upper
ten, with all intermediate stages, are faith
fully represented, together with every kind
and degree of crime. There are innocent
inmates, unjustly and unfortunately con-
vcted; others confined for crimes either
greater or less than were actually COM
mitted; some in for life, others again for a
long or short term, and sIill others who
are incorrigible criminals, now serving a
third, fourth and even tenth term--a
conglomerate mass of human beings, with
differing objects and aspirations, high and
low.
Stolidity. mediocrity and brilliancy
jostle and surge together. Hopeful and
hopeless, young and old, the hardened
wretch and some mothers boy, eat, sleep
and work and go through the mechanical
routine of prison daily life like automatons.
All are huddled together with scarcely any
discrimination as to age, degree of crime
or term of service, or fitness for this or
that vocation. These beings are dead
before the law during their term of incar-
ceration. They have no rights which any
one is bound to recognize or respect; no
privileges except those doled out to them
ofttimes on the within Of a capricious keeper.
True, credit system exists whereby good
behavior shortens term of service, but
often "good behavior" depends upon the
favor of a tyrannical keeper, who holds
his position for political reasons and not
because OF competency, and who may be a
greater criminal than those over whom he
domineers.
The greatest judicial CRIME of modern
civilization is capital punishment. When
murderer is executed he is neither killed
nor is his criminal career cut short. The
reverse is the fact. Were he kept alive in
his physical body and lodged in prison his
sphere of action would thus be restricted
to prison limits and his evil powers and
propensities be imprisoned as we'll as his
body.
But when he is hanged, decapitated or
electrocuted, he is deprived of all present
opportunity for reformation, which should
be the first object in view. Besides, his
physical body alone is destroyed, while
his evil and ferocious mind, seething with
desire for revenge, is liberated from the
physical and goes forth in the astral body
to seek and find the haunts of the vicious
and criminal minded and to influence and
impel them TO commission of similar
crimes.
Furthermore, capital punishment does
not lessen crime nor the criminal class,
but increases both evils. Statistics prove
that one suicide or murder, judicial or
otherwise, is usually succeeded by train
of similar occurrences.
This fact is so conspicuous that soclolo-
gists are now giving it studious attention.
The reason for the above fact is that the
souls of suicides and judicially executed
victims are earthbound and naturally at
tracted to those still in the body in whom
lurk laten: tendencies toward suicide or
murder, which aroused, too frequently
eliminate in similar acts. 1t is believed
that when this subject becomes rightly
understood, nations will abolish capital
punishment, if for no other reason than as
protection for the living against the
vampirism of the ghoulish, miscalled dead.
The factors OF revenge and punishment
must be eliminated from public considera-
ton of criminals before even entrance is
had to the realm of probability as to their
reform.
Intemperance is now regarded as a dis
ease, and at no far future day it is believed
that crime will be regarded in it's true light
and accepted as evidence of mental dis
ease, to be treated accordingly. Nova
days the criminal is too often focus for
vent of venom and vengeance. With the
can't phrase, "May God have mercy upon
your SOUL poor devil, often as much if
not more sinned against than SHINING, is
assigned to judicial murderer the hang
man. During the interval between con-
viction and execution he is waited upon
by those who. frequently by violence of
force and fear, induce him to accept the
fallacy that "Jesus died and paid it ALL"