Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/113

 CRIME IN STATE AND MUNICIPALITY 97

poration and deals mainly with the material interests of the com- munity. The state alone has the resources in men and in money requisite to carry on an enterprise so broad in character and important in results as the maintenance of a reformative prison system. This, as a measure of public protection affecting all the inhabitants of the state, logically comes within the highest func- tion of the state. The state cannot abdicate this supreme duty and delegate it to the municipalities with any more fitness than it can commit to the counties of the state the control of its mili- tary state guard.

Uniformity of prison administration, is essential to the suc- cessful operation of a reformatory system. If one prison treats its convicts with greater severity or allows them fewer privileges than another prison does, a sense of the injustice of such inequal- ity tends to counteract reformative influences. It is character- istic of the criminal to regard himself an injured person; the only way in which he tries to justify to himself the depredations he commits upon the public is by the fancy that the public has not dealt justly by him; he becomes embittered against society by nursing the belief that he has not had a fair chance in life, and he sets his hand against every man because he imagines that every man's hand has been set against him. To cure this morbid state of the mind, nothing is more indispensable in the adminis- tration of prisons than a discipline which is inflexible and uni- form. Such uniformity of administration can be secured only, by bringing all the prisons in a state under the direction and control of a central authority. It must not be forgotten that a reformatory system is, and always must be, a growing and devel- oping system. It advances by tentative methods; new experi- ments will constantly be tried and the results carefully tested. By this scientific method, existing systems have reached their present stage of development, and by the same method their future evolution must proceed. In this view, the advantages of centralization are sufficiently obvious. All the prisons in the state are then working in perfect harmony toward the same end ; experiments receive a broader and more conclusive testing; a successful measure secures universal adoption; and every con-