Page:The collected works of Theodore Parker volume 7.djvu/83

Rh different. Thus of the seven hundred and ninety prisoners in the Mount Pleasant State's Prison in New York, one hundred, it is said, could read and understand. Yet of all our criminals only a very small proportion have been in a condition to obtain the average intellectual and moral culture of our times.

Our present mode of treating criminals does no good to this class of men, these victims of circumstances. I do not know that their improvement is even contemplated. We do not ask what causes made this man a criminal, and then set ourselves to remove those causes. We look only at the crime; so we punish practically a man because he had a wicked father; because his education was neglected, and he exposed to the baneful influence of unholy men. In the main we treat all criminals alike if guilty of the same offence, though the same act denotes very different degrees of culpability in the different men, and the same punishment is attended with quite opposite results. Two men commit similar crimes, we sentence them both to the State Prison for ten years. At the expiration of one year let us suppose that one man has thoroughly reformed, and has made strict and solemn resolutions to pursue an honest and useful life. I do not say such a result is to be expected from such, treatment; still it is possible, and I think has happened, perhaps many times. We do not discharge the man; we care nothing for his penitence; nothing for his improvement; we keep him nine years more. That is an injustice to him; we have robbed him of nine years of time which he might have converted into life. It is unjust also to society, which needs the presence and the labour of all that can serve. The man has been a burden to himself and to us. Suppose at the expiration of his ten years the other man is not reformed at all; this result, I fear, happens in the great majority of cases. He is no better for what he has suffered; we know that he will return to his career of crime, with new energy and with even malice. Still he is discharged. This is unjust to him, for he cannot bear the fresh exposure to circumstances which corrupted him at first, and he will fall lower still. It is unjust to society, for the property and the persons of all are exposed to his passions just as much as before. He feels indignant as if he had suffered a wrong.