The Birmingham age-herald., 1915-07-24
What Thomas Mott Osborne
 Says About Prison Reform
SOCIAL SERVICE DEPARTMENT By MRS. SIDNEY N. LILLIAN

siience IL Is the system of constantly "atching man. Can you imagine how you would feel If you were watched every time you got up in the morning, when you went to bed at night. and rom the time you got up in the morning until you went to bed at night? You read Tn the newspapers sometimes that a man In prison has gone suddenly insane. DO you know why? Because of the sys- tenn of silence and the system of con- s'ah'iy peing watched. A guard watches you all the time
 Except by slow degrees we cannot do much in Sing Sing to get better system or industry. We have to wait upon the iesislature just as you have to wait upon the legislature here to do away with your very wrong contract system. All the while you may think it saves you money, but it doesn't save you money In the long run, because it Is a vicious system and the sooner you get rid of 1t the better
 In Sing Sing we have destroyed the old system of silence. Men can talk to- gether. They talk in the work shops when they have any business to talk about, but they are not expected to talk In the work shops and more than they would talk in any mill or factory outside. We are trying to make 1t an incentive for the men to work we'll
 We are trying to teach them that 1t pays to work well; that 1t will pay when they come out If they learn to be efficient and honest workers in the prison. The result is that in our shop for the month of January they have increased the out put 56 per cent over last January. It has been the largest output of shoes in any one month in Sing Sing prison.
 Tn the knit shop where they used to have more disorder and more punish ment than in any other shop in the insti- tuition, in the month of January they In creased 80 per cent over last year. think that is a pretty handsome in crease.
 During the hour of recreation every afternoon from to the men can talk about anything they please all they want 10. They are free to go wherever they like inside the yard. of course. They can- not go outside, although I am beginning to feel. I told the boys the other day, that the real object of the wall was to keep people out.
 At meals when they sit in the mess hall they can talk just like any other hu- man beings and when they go up into the chapel for their entertainments they can talk just like any other human beings The result has been an immense im- provement, immediate improvement in the whole morale of the institution You can see it in the light from the
 
 heads set upon their shoulders. You can see it in the way they march to and from the mess hall.
 Life is no. longer monotonous at Sing Sing. Things are happening every day, interesting things, things that interest us. We want to know who is going to be hauled up before the court this afternoon. We want to know who has been fighting in the mess hall; what the judiciary com mittee is going to do with the fellow when they find he Is a disturber. and how they are going to handle him. Take a fellow who has been a disturber outside and there is nothing so useful as to have somebody disturb him. You see he gets to understand his own attitude toward society by dealing with the other fellow. That is what I want to come to. That Is really the rub of the whole question. The trouble with the old system is that 1t was wholly unnatural Men didn t gain any experience inside the prison which was of the slightest value after they got outside. After they got outside there was nobody to tell them when to march nor how to march. There was nobody watching them while they were eating.
 '"The only way to run race is to train | for it. If I should start to run mile race at the present time I should die of heart failure before I got very far and the req son is that I am out of training It Is some time since I used the pick and shovel out on the highway Tn just the same way we shut men in prison and stop them from training and then expect them to run their race the minute they get outside the prison walls. They die of heart disease.
 "The trouble with the men coming out of prison is that their weakness Is so strong that what we must do with these men is to give them strength inside the prison walls. We must keep them inside the prison all right, whether the prison is farm or whether it is Sing Sing. I believe in exiling the man and keeping him in prison and keeping your hold right on him until he Is strong enough to go out in the world. While he is there he must be educated. It Is nothing but a problem of education
 We must strengthen him physically to meet the world we must strengthen him mentally to meet the world; we must strengthen him spiritually to meet the world.
 If we have not done these things we have omitted to do the very thing which has made 1t right for to set him aside. We have had no right to take the man and make him weaker physically, weaker mentally, weaker morally. That is a crime to the individual and 1t is crime against God.
 We are working out the experiment of how people can govern themselves as citizens without any autocrat. benevolent or otherwise to tell what ought to be done. When we look across the ocean. I think we are all pretty well satisfied that democracy. whatever it's shortcom- ings is. after all, a pretty safe invest ment
 We are applying the great democratic