Evening star., 1934-03-25

of a single one of his fellow prisoners.
On the rare occasions that he does
leave his cell he wears a mask or head
covering.
remember standing with the warden
of a prison in Florence, Italy, looking
out over the exercise yard, which was
cut into small cubicles. When I ex-
planned to him that in an American
prison 1000 men would be permitted to
congregate in the yard he showed great
surprise and said it would be considered
dangerous to follow that system in his
institution.
On the other hand, at the Prison de
la Foret, in Belgium, where they have
abandoned the solitary system for a
system of congregate effort in shops
and dining room, the officer in charge
contended that the discipline was better,
more humane and more hopeful under
the new system, and that he would never
willingly go back to the old.
In spite of the difficulties we are
having in adjustment, it is evident to
the progressive penologist that the solu-
ton does not lie in the adoption of the
solitary system. In the first place, we
have not money enough to build a
single cell of sufficient size for each man.
In the second place, we must realize
that a man kept five years or more in
solitary imprisonment is an unfit and
dangerous person to live again with
other human beings-that unless we
can make men respect the rights of
each other and the rights of their Gov
ernment in prison we shall have little
hope that they will do so in the freedom
Of the outside world
Charles Dickens, speaking of solitary
confinement, used these words:
Il am persuaded that those who de-
vised this system . do not know
what it is they are doing that
there is depth of terrible endurance
in it which none but the sufferers them
selves can fathom, and which no man
has a right to infiict upon his fellow
creatures. I hold this slow and daily
tampering with the mysteries of the
brain to be immeasurably worse than
any torture of the body hesi-
tated once debating with myself
whether, if I had the power of saying
Yes or No I would allow it to be
tried in certain cases, where the terms
OF imprisonment were short; but now,
solemnly declare, that with no rewards
or honorS could I walk happy man
beneath the open sky by day or lie me
down upon my bed at night with the
consciousness that one human creature,
for any length of time, no matter what,
lay suffering this unknown punishment
in his silent cell, and the cause, or I
consenting to it in the least degree"
THE remedy for prison riots is not
the adoption of the greater evil OF
solitary confinement
What can we do about it? 1t seems
to me that our defense must be along
four lines:
1. The public interest requires that
adequate structural defense be main
tanned at all times. The safe prison
will not only be of ample size and
surrounded with an adequate wall, but
it will be provided with all the modern
mechanical protective devices in which
the tool-proof steel, the mechanical
telephone, the magnetic ray, the photo
electric cell and other electrical devices
will play prominent part. A sufficient
quantity of harmless tear gas may make
unnecessary a battery of machine guns.
2 We must be more concerned with
our personnel defense. While in some
,>~;co,, c1,ctaroc y,roUrocc ic hoiuo made