Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 15.djvu/481

 AMERICAN REFORMATORY SYSTEM 467

compulsion, "Compulsion first, then the sense of duty, auto- matic, the connection expanding into knowledge of ethical habit, then the habit creating conviction, then relations, then the capacity for general ideas." Thus coercion is often of initial indispen- sable educational value. Not infrequently prisoners who were assisted out of a stalled condition by means of an applied physical shock have expressed to the managers their grateful acknowledg- ments therefor. Many such prisoners who without the physical treatment would have remained long in the ranks of the incor- rigible have, after the simple treatment, developed well and ultimately established themselves in the confidence of their com- munity as reliable, useful inhabitants.

There should be within the reformatory course a reserve of penological surgery similar in beneficent design and in scientific use to the minor surgery of the healing art of medicine.

THE PROCEDURE THE MECHANISM OF MEANS AND MOTIVES

Efficiency of the reformatory procedure depends on complete- ness of its mechanism composed of means and motives; on the force, balance, and skill with which the means and motives are brought to bear upon the mass, the groups, and the individual prisoners; and not a little on the pervading tone of the reforma- tory establishment. A mere enumeration of means and motives of the mechanism is, briefly, as follows:

I. The material structural establishment itself. This should be salubriously situated and, preferably, in a suburban locality. The general plan and arrangements should be that of the "Au- burn" Prison System plan but modified and modernized as at the Elmira Reformatory; and 10 per cent, of the cells might well be constructed like those in the Pennsylvania System struc- tures. The whole should be supplied with suitable modern sanitary appliances and with abundance of natural and artificial light.

2. Clothing for the prisoners, not degradingly distinctive but uniform, yet fitly representing the respective grades or standing of the prisoners. Similarly as to the supply of bedding which,