The mirror. (Stillwater, Minn.) 1894-1925, 1914-08-13
SHOULD THERE Be
PRISON ATTORNEY?
Is the Trouble of Righting Wrong
Worth WILHELM Every Pris-
on are Men Whose Woes are
Within the Remedy of Law.

In former issue of Good Words
the advantage aud benefits likely to
lie derived from the appointment to
prisons of a competent resident attor-
ney, to represent and care for the
interest of prisoners In matters of
law and personal well being were
outlined in well considered ar
ticIe by The Observer. The idea
may. as is usual with novel ideas,
have excited the derision of the ex-
emplaly citizen holding smugly to
his opinion of practical limits. All
spiritual truth newly discovered is
subject to that sort of censure until
it is appreciated in its activity.
Every phase of prison reform, every
attempt to radiate right thinking
respecting the treatment of prison.
ers. has had to withstand the sceptl-
cism of the foolish. the opposition of
narrow prejudice and the antagon-
ism of those who fatten on the spoil
of social delinqueuts. But the prison
attorney, or his moral equivalent,
will come as certainly as every other
relief comes when the reused heart
of humanity answers to humanity's
cry.
Reforms come laegingly because
intelligence ever finds it arduous to
liberate the vulgar mind from the
fungus of prejudice and the dry-rot
of accepted custom that smother its
growth. Any proposal to change
existing conditions is decried by the
conservative element, which imag
ines that change involves danger. and
many people pride themselves on
their conservatism, incapable of per-
ceiving that social conservatism is
really Intellectual stagnation, which
a little precedes moral damnation.
For a CHASTITY number of centuries
conservatism kept the prison status
on the plane of which Newgate,
London, was the gruesome type, and
which only departed from it's indls-
scribable horrors when the sublimi-
ty of woman's soul smote the pub
lie into shame.
Much to alleviate the mlseries of
prisoners has distinguished certain
penal institutions in recent years,
but much more remains to be done
both for exact justice and in simple
decency.
Until law is the fruit of lucid
equity, until prosecutors are actu
ated by pure motives. juries are un-
erriag, judges infallible and prison
management impeccable we cannot
be sure that convictions and sentence
es are so just that we may with com.
placency see prisoners committed 10
dungeons of despair. shut away from
appeal to, or the possible enjoyment
of. the justice they feel has been de-
MED them. There is no greater
crime than Indifference to tie pangs
and anguish of undeserved suffering
inflicted upon those we have render
ed powerless to relieve themselves.
Such crime, particularly in the
case of the innocent victim, out
weighs as a public injury thousand
of the offences defined by the crimi-
nal law. An honest and competent
prison attorney could and probably
would afford the remedy for this
and many minor wrongs against the
individual, ard serve society, TO its
very decided profit, by doing justice
to the helpless.
There is no more certain remedy
of crime than justice; but the public
has yet to learn that justice is not
the avenger of human laws but the
exponent of the Divine Law, love
one anolher."-Good Words.