The evening tribune. (Pawtucket, R.I.) 189?-190?, 1897-05-17
FELONS ARE LASHED.
WHIPPING POST RE-EsTABuisHED IN
MISSOURI PeNITENTiARY.

10 Was Found to BE Essential TO Prison
Msnagement-Naturcs That Can Only He
Moved by the Fear Of Pain Punishment
Il Not Brutal.
Students of prison reform arc interested
In the news that tho whipping post has
been established In the Missouri peni-
tentiary. AS matter of fact, the whip.
ping post was never entirely abolished at
the institution, though for awhile 1t was
not maintained with the severity which
experience has demonstrated to be absolute
ly essential to tho proper management of
convicts. Colonel j. l.. Pace, who was the
predecessor of the present warden, tried
very hard to get along without applying
the lash to the bare backs of prisoners. who
committed infractions of the prison rules,
but 1t did not take him long to discover
the practical impossibility of maintaining
discipline unless there was behind it the
constant threat of corporal punishment for
those who were either too willful or too
careless to gauge their conduct by pre-
scribed standards.
In considering the whipping post as es-
scntial to prison management, study of the
criminal character is necessary to proper
understanding Lombroso and all other
students Of criminology are agreed that
the criminal character Is the result of ar
rested development and that the commits
sion of crime is evidence of a lack of men
tai growth and maturity. In other words,
the criminal intellectually Is child, with
additional disadvantages of inherited traits
and tendencies uniting him to follow the
beaten paths that civilization has made in
Its progress from barbarism and sayagery.
The animal being dominant in him, il
follows that physical pain Is moro potent
In governing him than an appeal to his
stnrted and often wholly lacking moral
sense.
Old prison officials say that the instinc-
tive criminal can always be told by the
manner In which he regards rules and reg
ulations OF the prison. Though the acci.
dental criminal may occasionally be sub
jected to the lash, 1t is only becauee he has
been overcome by violent fit Of passion
or anger that leads him into trouble, while
the instructive criminal commits breaches
of discipline In q cool and deliberate way.
He has sufficient intelligence to know that
he Is doing wrong, but Is lacking In ability
to keep constantly before him the certainty
of detection and punishment. If, then,
say these men who have spent years in
studying the criminal character and watch
ing its tendencies, the instructive criminal
is given to understand that there Is no
punishment awaiting his deliberate infrac-
ton Of prison rules, how is he to be deter
red from following blindly his natural in
olinations to do those things which are
subversiye of discipline and good orderp
1t may be best at the outset to impress
upon the minds Of those squeamish individ-
uals whose sublimated philanthropy causes
them to cry out Justify against all prison
management when they hear of convict
being whipped that the punishment Is not
as severe as their infiamed imaginations
picture 1t. The instrument used is small
whip employed by horseback riders and
not the big blacksnake whip which the
fancy Of the oversensitive bodies forth.
Seldom is q culprit given more than q half
dozen raps, and it is rare indeed that he
makes any outcry from physical pain. The
whipping Is administered more to show
the victim that punishment Is sure to be
his lot II he fails to live up to the prison
rules than to cause bodily suffering. This
spirit is so manifest In the penitentiary
officials that no further proof Of its exist
ence Is required than visit to the institu-
ton and talk with the officers. Judge
John ID. Stark, the present warden, says
that he made close and careful study Of
conditions and the history Of the manage
ment of the penitentiary before he con-
sented to re-establish the whipping post as
a regular feature of tho institution. He ac-
cepted tho Office with full share Of the
popular prejudice against the whipping
post He had not been at the head Of the
institution two weeks before 1t was made
Enthusiastically plain to him that the only
way a certain class of tho inmates could be
held in check was by keeping constantly
before them the fear of physical punish
ment. "That class Is much smaller,
though, than one unacquainted with the
conditions hero would guess" said Judge
Stark. "We have now in round numbers
2,2OO convicts. i find that less than 20 of
them need tho correction of the whipping
post. This is less than 1 to the 100.
Certainly there is encouragement in that
to the prison reformer and the people who
believe the world is growing better instead
of worse don't doubt that 30 years ago
the proportion of tho incorrigible was
much heavier. Some of the old deputies
and guards here tell me that it was.
"The offense for which whipping Is
more often employed to punish than any
other Is willful failure or neglect of pris-
oners to do the work assigned them, I"
Judge Stark went on to soy. "The con-
tractors here are the only source of revenue
to tho pcnitentiary, or at least the only
means of relieving the state of the heavy
burden of tho Institutions support. They
employ tho convicts from the state to do
certain work. If the work isn't done, the
contractors have no recourse. They are
not permitted to punish the men who
work for them in any way, and the sole
dependence they have for getting work out
of the men they hire Is through the disoi-
pline of the prison. II man shirks his
work or Is careless and wasteful In its ex-
ecution, tho contractor reports that fact to
me or to deputy warden. Then 1t Is our
duty to sec that the convict properly does
the work for which the state Of Missouri
receives pay"
The contractors declare unreservedly
that since the nominal re-establishment Of
the whipping post the discipline Of the
prison has undergone marked improve.