The prevention and repression of crime : being a report of the fifth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by Frederick H. Wines.

Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The prevention and repression of crime : being a report of the fifth section of the International Congress of Charities, Correction and Philanthropy, Chicago, June, 1893 / edited by Frederick H. Wines. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    will take a generation. My teachers have been developed at immense expense, and they are ideal, exceptional men and women. Nevertheless, Dr. Adler's school for the children of workingmen, as an ideal institution, has exerted great influence upon the education in this country, and will modify it still further. So with Mr. Brock- way, of Elmira. No matter what the imperfections of his system or of its administration may be, he has undoubtedly built up the most inspiring prison in the world, which no man can visit and come away from without feeling that he has gained an ideal and sentiments which he never cherished before. The strength of the opposition to him proves the power of his leadership. But to come nearer to the point, your inquiry, as I understand it, looks forward to the ultimate abolition of the prison. There is a great deal in it. We have tried cutting people's heads off and it did no good. We have tried burning them and torturing them, and that did no good. We have tried shutting them up in prison, and that did not do any good. We are now trying to reform them. But that will not do as much good as we think it will; and by and by we shall probably come to the conclusion that many of these men had better have been left alone. God and human society would have done more for them than we can do, under the conditions in which the government has placed them. Mr. Brockway's friend. Dr. Thos. K. Beecher, humorously calls him alittle tin god on wheels—a special providence in his prison. But no man is large enough to be a god or a providence, even in a little community like that of the Elmira Reformatory. He is bound to make mistakes, which God does not make. I would rather trust large numbers of my criminal friends outside of the prison than inside. I do not see that society itself would be any worse off^ Many men are punished too much. We convict too many of them rather than too few. We do not accom- plish what we think we do, and by and by there will be a great reaction. Baron Garofalo's paper suggested to my mind the thought that I don't know what business the government has to form character; what right a set of men who call themselves the government, who happen to be for the time being in political power, have to come to me and say, Here is the ideal character and you must conform to it. If you have a different ideal, I will take you and put you where you will be pressed into the shape which I want you to assume. In spite of all your resistance and your outcries, I will keep you there until I have either made you over or killed you. If we can eradi- cate the criminal character, so much the better. But we have no right to take a man, because we do not like his character, and mold that character over to suit ourselves. That was the practice in the Middle Ages, and the Inquisition grew out of it. We do not want to subject our prisoners to a moral inquisition. Mr. Charles F. Coffin, of Chicago.—I have listened with great interest to these remarks. After having studied the parole system