Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 4.djvu/578

 558 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

Director Link, of the Lichtenau prison, confirms the views of Marcovich by the results of his own considerable experience. He calls attention to the fact that experi- ments have been tried with success in Italy, Austria, England, and France. The prisons of Lichtenberg, Insterburg, Dusseldorf, Aachen, Miinster i. W., and Zwei- briicken are specially mentioned. He urges that the greatest care should be given to secure housing, the food, the clothing, the discipline, the education, and the religious influences.

One group of 36 prisoners worked for three months under 3 ofificers. In another place 80 men worked on a river dam under 3 oflicers. On the Elbe river works 75 prisoners labored for two years under the eyes of 3 ofificers.

It may be added that the experiment should not be tried in America without employing all the precautions mentioned by these Austrian and German directors.

It is a serious question whether such experiments should be tried on any scale whatever in America. The abstract is given without editorial mdorsement, as a con- tribution to discussion. The following comment of Superintendent Brockway may profitably be read in this connection. — C. R. Henderson.

"I have your personal note of the 5th with a condensation of the German article, which I have carefully perused.

" The publication of it in your magazine would be well warranted for communi- cating interesting foreign news as to the kind of attention they are giving over there to this phase of the prison question ; but if the influence of the publication should be, or the publication of the article is so intended, that the plan of employing prisoners upon public works or agricultural occupations in this country should be promoted by it, then I think it would be the advocacy of a false system of prison employment, and be injurious, perhaps, to the progress of true prison science. I quite agree with the comment you make, that, if prisoners are to be so employed, they must be carefully selected; only those who have served their time (approaching the period of their final release), who are not of the reckless class, those of rural life previous to their impri- sonment, adapted to farm labor, should be chosen. This principle of selection must needs result in the utilizing of a very small percentage of the prisoners of the state in this agricultural or public works employment. The prisoners so employed would belong to the corrigible class whose corrigibility carries with it an obligation of the state to fit them in the best possible way for earning, without painful effort, a sufficiency for their proper subsistence and enjoyments. This last-mentioned principle of employment, taken in connection with your plan of selection, would leave for such service only the prisoners who are to be engaged in agricultural employment or as laborers, plus any mechanics who might be properly and profitably employed in the construction of public buildings. The really difficult problem of prisoners' employ- ment is to find the best engagement to be provided for the prisoners not probably susceptible, for the period of the imprisonment, to confident preparation for legitimate industry and law-abiding behavior after their release. To employ such prisoners in agricultural work and on public works is, I believe, impracticable, that is to say, inconsistent with the purpose for which the state restricts a man's liberty for a period and turns him out again. The whole scheme of employing prisoners in large numbers in this country, in the open, is wrong. In these northern states it will not prove economical. The experiment, at the northern prison of this state, of building roads with convicts shows that the work performed by the prisoners could have been done by free labor at ordinary wages at less cost to the state than the actual cost of it as performed by prisoners. Such employment is also inconsistent with proper discipline. We can- not hold to suitable strict discipline prisoners working in the field, without the barriers preventing escapes and insurrections such as exist in a well-established prison estab- lishment. The experience of the whole world is that the convict gangs employed, as is proposed, are centers of corruption, both of the prisoners themselves so employed, and that a similar influence is disseminated to the locality where they work by their presence and behavior there.

"It maybe that where this experiment you refer to was tried, there were few escapes, but in this broad country of ours, without a national police, escapes or attempts to escape will be frequent under any supervision the state will pay for these gangs. Frequent escapes would disintegrate the whole plan, and the necessary 'casualties