While it may be expected that the true system, properly administered, will
exert a repressive influence upon crime
generally, an actual diminution of crimes be effected, and a large percentum
of prisoners be reformed, it is not true that the former will necessarily
follow from the latter; that the repression of crime in the community will
certainly come from either the punitive or reformatory treatment of persons
in prisons, as seems to be hoped in these days, and is plainly stated in
descriptions of the Irish system. Is it not possible that the late far-seeing
statesman, Count Cavour, is misunderstood in this matter? Did he intend
to say, in his letter to Sir Walter Crofton, that the only efficacious
means of discountenancing and checking crime is by the treatment of
prisoners upon the principles of the Irish system? or was it, that the only
way in which this result may be effected by prisons is by administering
them thus, without committing himself upon the broad question whether prisons,
as such, can accomplish any general result of the kind named? Those who
study closely the causes of crime and the character of the criminal classes
must all feel the inutility of this measure, and the hopelessness of such
expectations. It were as wise to attempt the destruction of a tree by plucking
its fruit, to steer a ship by the topmast, or to bail the ocean with a bucket.
The administration of a prison system for a state, with this sole view,
is narrow, incomplete, and never can succeed. Whatever of repression is
effected will not be seen in depopulated prisons, as the sanguine expect:
a true prison system involves advanced civilization, which always takes
cognizance of crimes, and swells the criminal record. High civilization
is found in crowded communities; and density of population increases the
incitements to crime. I have not the figures at hand, but venture the opinion
that those states where the intelligence and virtue of the people is confessedly
greatest will be found to have the fullest prisons; so that, until we tide
over into millennial society, a true prison system will not be useless,
and we shall have plenty of work to do in this department.
It is true, nevertheless, that the reformation of prisoners during their
imprisonment is indispensable to the preventive effect sought; for to return
to society discharged prisoners unreformed is to poison it with the worst
elements possible; and to retain them in prison indefinitely, while affording
at the same time protection from their evil influence, would impose a burden
impossible to be borne; therefore, the grand design, the all-animating purpose,
may well be to accomplish this result, which is feasible in a large majority
of the cases that would be under treatment by this system.
