Evening bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1895-1912, 1907-05-09
CURING CRIME BY PUNISHMENT

! Quite in line with the discussion
Of reform schools and the treatment
CT children carried on in these col
lmns by patrons of the Bulletin and
friends of the children, is an article
| by Brand Whitlock in the current
number of Everybodys magazine.
Whitlock does not approve of present.
day prison systems which attempt to
cure crime by punishment. The av-
erage man will pooh pooh his ideas
but such a marked advance has been
made during the last generation
through humanitarian methods, the
idealist of today has prospects of be-
ing the leader hailed as practical to-
morrow.
Whitlock claims that the average
Judge is as much at fault as the sys-
TEN under which he operates. These
are the reasons he gives:
Many men in prison are suffering
for the sins of the judge that con-
6emned them quite as much as for
their own, The magistrate has no
means of knowing the really signifi-
cant things about the man before
him: what strange, occult, mysteri-
Gus currents Of human will or fate
moving in the mans mind or in the
minds Of his ancestors, impelled him
his deed he has no means of know
ing how far the man has been the
prey of economic forces that the
Judge does not understand, or what
hidden physical defect may have
created moral defect or obliquity in
him.
All the judge knows is that in a
certain book it is printed that be-
tween minimum and maximum limi- !
tations there is mysterious number
Of years that must be prescribed for
burglary, another number for larceny |
Of sum over $50, another for steal |
ing a horse, another for forging a |
note, another for firing a dwelling; |
CT that there are so many days for |
larceny of a sum under $35, so many |
for getting drunk for creating a dis
and so on.
1T would be just as sensible for
doctors to say that man with ty-
)hOtd fever must go to a hospital for
.wo years, a man with smallpox sew
IN years, a man with appendicitis
hree years; man With a boil thirty
lays, man with a cold ten days,
md so on. When man is cured of
I physical disease, he is discharged
rom hospital; when man is cured
i moral disease, he should be dis
'harged from prison, that is, as
uming that man could ever be cur
ID of moral disease in a prison,
which, of course, he cannot-as So
iety itself admits by continuing the
reatment when he does get out. But
hen the law, on the criminal side,
las made no progress in two hundred
ears, and SO cannot be compared
With medicine
Though we are no wiser than the
zen of Blackstone's time in our deal
ng with those we catch doing wrong,
Re are not nearly SO honest They,
ute candidly, punished men in or
er to be reyenged on them. But we
radually grew ashamed, feared to
Omit as much, and so invented a
eW excuse; we claim to punish for g,
ne sake OF the example to others, 4.
hich in addition to showing our
lslngenuousness, if not hypocrisy,
lows also our folly. If example ,
ere of any avail, the millennium,
ldeed, would long ago have dawned.
he example is seen to do no good
zen to the one selected to afford the
sample; he is confidently expected
do the same thing again at the
'st opportunity. But by what right
we select one man to act as an
sample for the behoof and better
ent and benefit of another man? If
lie punishment is not for revenge.
1T Tor example, if it cannot correct
reform the offender himself. and.
9nce, If it bears no relation to his