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school of mutual instruction; it has given savoury fare to strengthen and animate him, and opportunities to make himself, and those around him, twofold more the children of hell than before. Neither system has regarded much the differences in delinquents, either of sex or of age. Punishment has been graduated to the offence, rather than to the degree of guilt. The distinctions in character, the variety of temptation, the estimates of crimes in the minds of offenders and in the communities in which they were educated, have been overlooked. Indeed, an almost universal belief now exists, that the vast machinery of Penitentiaries, is worse than useless; that they are the seminaries of vice and crime, their hardened inmates setting the community at defiance, adding a proselyte to worse iniquity in almost every new associate, and looking forward to the day of deliverance as to the day of revenge, or as giving an opportunity to repeat their crimes.

That there is truth in this picture, cannot be denied. Still we are not of the number of those who would altogether abandon the system of Penitentiaries, conceiving that with suitable improvement, it will be found adequate to effect all that may be reasonably expected. Bad as it is, we are satisfied that the other system was infinitely worse. It has been stated, that it has proved three times as efficacious in preventing crimes as the Sanguinary practice. This assertion appears to be corroborated by the fact, that the number of criminals has not increased in an equal ratio with the population, either in Europe or this country. This is particularly the case with respect to those guilty of the more atrocious crimes. If thus much has been done by a system fraught with so many evils, what anticipations of good may not reasonably be indulged, when prison discipline shall be administered according to the enlightened policy, which is beginning to dawn upon society.

It is now an established truth, that in prisons conducted on bad principles, crime and misery are produced and multiplied; and that in prisons, in which there is inspection, instruction, and employment, crime and misery will certainly be lessened, and the reformation of criminals be effected.*

* See 'Notes on a Visit made to some of the Prisons in Scotland and England in Company with Elizabeth Fry, by Joseph John Gurney,' a small work of much interest and merit.

*

Let us glance at the system, which prevailed within the recollection of most men now on the stage of active life. Prisons were considered only as receptacles of malefactors. Their seclusion and punishment were the only objects contemplated by the laws. Absolute idleness, or trifling and vicious employments, filled up the measure of their days. When driven to labor, it was for punishment, or to lessen the expenses of the establishment. The moral, intellectual, or physical improvement of the culprits was not thought of, or was disregarded. Suffering, in every form of cruelty and loathsomeness, was the lot of the incarcerated. We are informed, on undoubted authority, that not many years since, the prisoners in the great prison in Philadelphia, placed in the centre of the population of that refined and elegant city, were kept by day and by night, in one common herd, without distinction of age, color, or sex; that the prison keeper freely sold spirituous liquors to the inmates, at a bar within the prison, and with the knowledge of the public authorities; that to obtain money to purchase liquors, great outrages were customarily committed by stripping fellow prisoners on their first admission to gaol, which was 'a custom of long standing, under the name of garnish,' say the Minutes of the Supreme Executive Council of the year 1788; that children were permitted to remain in prison with their parents; that female convicts were allowed to associate with girls and young women confined by their masters or mistresses for sale or temporary punishment; that debtors and persons committed for criminal offences were indiscriminately confined together; that prison keepers were suspected of unlawful partnerships with the culprits; that the pitiable objects of punishment were hardly screened from the public eye; that passengers were assailed by obscene and profane expressions from the windows; and that the prisoners, in garbs that compelled them to shun the light of day, were, at the expiration of their terms of confinement, turned out into the midst of a populous city, ignorant, pennyless, and reckless of every thing useful, moral or religious. When the first attempt was made to preach to the convicts, the keeper reluctantly admitted the clergyman, though in the discharge of official duty, through the iron gate to a platform

* See Vaux'' Notices of the original and successive Efforts to improve the Discipline of the Prison at Philadelphia,' &c. 1826.

at the top of the steps leading to the yard, where a loaded cannon was placed, and a man beside it with a lighted match. The convicts were arranged in a solid column in front of the engine prepared for their destruction, in the event of the least commotion, while the first sermon ever delivered in the prison was pronounced The Philadelphia prison may be considered as a fair example of the gaols in this country at the date referred to But whoever will consult the pages of Howard, will find, that the foregoing is but a faint picture of what he saw in the European prisons; and a recent publication states, that the goals in Scotland remain as they were in the time of that eminent philanthropist. We fear that instances, not very dissimilar, may be found elsewhere at the present day.

We will now turn our attention to prisons in this favored land, as they exist at this moment, in some of the most conspicuous places in the Union. We have much to gratify us in the fact, that we have advanced much farther than the country of our forefathers, in adapting our criminal jurisprudence to the improved state of the times, by bringing to speedy trial persons arrested on suspicion of crime, and in the construction and discipline of prisons. Still, we are very deficient in what might, and ought to have been done, in this cause of humanity. Our readers will learn with astonishment, that evils and abuses the most flagrant still abound; that in many places, no essential improvement has taken place in the general system of prison discipline; that the prisons are miserably constructed, the inmates crowded, the air of the apartments foetid, the most loathsome vices prevailing; that children and youth are permitted to herd with the hardened in crime; that the prisoners are contaminating each other, and carrying on within the walls of the prisons, a warfare of retaliation against the best interests of society.

In Connecticut, a committee appointed by the Legislature to inspect the condition of Newgate, state in their report, dated May, 1825, that the cells are partially below the surface of the ground, and are crowded with the births of the prisoners. In some of the cells are lodged thirtysix persons, in others thirtytwo, in others sixteen. The cells are excessively offensive.'

During the late session of the national congress, Mr Thompson, a member of the House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, distinguished himself by a report on the condition of the

He has unfolded a

prisons in the District of Columbia. shocking scene of human suffering under the immediate view and cognizance of the representatives of the people. We have already directed the attention of our readers to the state of the Philadelphia prison, as it was about the time when Congress held its sessions in that city. The state of that of the metropolis of the nation at the present time will in some degree enable them to judge for themselves, how far our remarks are justified, as to the slow advance of improvement during the last forty years.

When the District of Columbia was ceded to the United States, the laws of Maryland, as they then stood, were adopted for the government of one part of it, and those of Virginia, of the other. These states have since changed the whole system of their criminal jurisprudence, by substituting confinement to hard labor for the cruel practice of branding, whipping, &c. But the criminal laws of the District of Columbia remain unchanged. Hence on the south side of the Potomac, there are above thirty offences punishable by death, while on the other there are but fourteen. On one side, stealing to the amount of four dollars, and on the opposite to the amount of five shillings, is a capital crime. The construction of the prisons and the state of the prisoners are as might be expected, where such sanguinary laws prevail. The cells in the gaol at Washington, are eight feet square, and sixteen in number. Eighty persons have been confined in them at a time. The young culprit and the hardened villain, the condemned felon, and the person waiting trial, have been thrust into the same cell. Not only so, but there have been put into these 'abominable dens,' witnesses in criminal cases, who were unable to give security for their appearance in court. Cases have occurred in which the witness and the defendant have occupied the same cell. The smell from the sewers is said to be intolerable.

It is stated by the superintendent of the Bellevue prison, in New York, in answer to a question put to him by a committee, that the situation of youth in that prison is deplorable. He was compelled to put boys for their first perhaps small offence, into the same room with offenders, old, if not in years, in crime. The grand jury of Philadelphia, in 1817, presented the Penitentiary in that city, on account of its very crowded state. From

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thirty to forty were lodged in rooms of eighteen feet square, the untried with the condemned, the young offender and often the disobedient servant or apprentice with the most experienced and hardened culprit; so that it was said the institution began to assume the character of a seminary for every vice.

To come nearer home, the Massachusetts State Prison is not in a condition to justify boasting. The message of the Governor, at the last winter session of the Legislature, unfolded a picture of almost incredible iniquity. Solitary confinement is impracticable; for the prisoner cannot be placed beyond the sound of the voices of his comrades. Food has been conveyed to those sentenced to bread and water, through chinks made by themselves in the floors of the cells. Separate dormatories are out of the question, and large numbers sleep in the same cells. The young associate with the older criminals. Correspondence is maintained between the culprits and persons without the walls; false keys and other implements of mischief are manufactured in the prison; bank notes are received, altered to larger denominations, and sent forth for the joint emolument of the prisoner and his friend abroad; and plans of mischief and of crime are arranged with coadjutors out of the prison. The public is not protected from the depredations even of convicts sentenced for life, or for a term of years. For, through the agency of former associates who have been pardoned out, or have otherwise escaped the hand of justice, they still prey upon society.

Can any one contemplate the picture here presented, the correctness of which cannot be questioned, without feeling that society has been deficient in duty, and that the Penitentiary System demands immediate and effectual reform. The very first step to be taken is to provide buildings of improved construction. Let our legislators discard all shortsighted economy, and use a wise liberality. They have commenced a new system by authorizing the immediate erection of a prison, after a highly approved model, the New York State Prison at Auburn. The thanks of the community are justly due to the chief magistrate of this commonwealth, who, at the suggestion of a gentleman who has done more than any other individual

*

*It is to be built within the yard of the Massachusetts State Prison, and we rejoice that proposals have already been issued for its construction. For the sum of 50,000 dollars, a building can be erected containing 350 cells.

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