A fundamental condition of success in this respect is the financial independence
of the organization and its institutions.
This is not to be sneered at by those especially interested or occupied
in religious ministrations, as is sometimes done. The importance of this
feature cannot well be made too prominent. It is too much to expect in our
day that citizens generally will vote taxes upon themselves not only to
provide suitable institutions for the reformatory treatment of criminals,
but to support them in unproductive industry, and supply them with the indispensables
of reformatory progress, viz.: good diet, good clothes, good quarters, entertaining
educational agencies, and the pure personal friendship of a refined religious
instructor. If these are supplied regularly to prisoners, it must come through
their own exertions, and by levy of excise on the grosser appetites and
propensities. The labor of the prisoners, together with income from taxes
(for repression) upon traffic opposed to the public weal, must furnish funds
for all this, when once the establishments have been erected; otherwise
success is impossible for this or any system, designed for the curative
treatment of criminals. Then, again, there is little hope of reformation
for criminals generally, unless they can become self-sustaining through
their own honest effort, and this power must be acquired, or shown, while
under tutelage of these guardians. The habits of self-denial and productive
personal exertion must be imparted, or degradation and disaster will surely
follow their return to normal society. After medical treatment, the first
step toward moral improvement is, in many, perhaps most cases, industrial
training.
To train to productive industry those who are the victims of idleness,
ignorance and criminal impulses involves
compulsion as an element of discipline; and as the training is for
their own improvement, not for any body's pecuniary benefit as its object,
and since compulsion is necessary to hold them continuously in contact with
the means of culture provided, its use is justifiable. In a favorable frame,
one may elect to take the conditions and consequences of a course of moral
training; still fluctuations of feeling, vagrant impulses, are liable and
likely to get possession of the mind, and bear away the will into captivity
to evil, unless at such times compulsion is applied. It is doubtless true
that the reformation of a man cannot be compassed in opposition to his will;
that is, when the will is arrayed in conscious opposition. Yet the process
may go on unconsciously, and without his voluntary cooperation. It is not
true, therefore, that any restraint, involuntary privation, or compulsory
dictation subverts the desired result, as is sometimes claimed. It is impossible,
in the nature of the case, that a reformatory prison shall accord with the
desires of those whose tastes and disposition it is designed to revolutionize
and improve. An antagonism exists, of necessity, at the beginning; hence
compulsion, at this stage, is indispensable. Harmony cannot be secured by
modifying means and methods to meet the demands or desires of the prisoner,
without destroying the good designed, but must be had by the conformation
of their desires to their surroundings in these respects; and only thus.
The administration of a prison system, then, should be characterized by
inflexible purpose, based upon a firm foundation of principles. Indeed,
every step toward indulgence is fraught with danger, and more
likely to prove disastrous than the most tenacious adherence to routine.
