or received were submitted to a severe censor- ship, which was the cause of repeated conflicts with the administration.
The food of the prisoners is, in my opinion, quite insufficient. The daily allowance consists chiefly of bread, 850 grammes per day (one pound and nine-tenths). It is grey, but very good, and if a prisoner complains of having not enough of it, one loaf, or two, per week are added to the above. The breakfast consists of a soup which is made with a few vegetables, water, and American lard — this last very often rancid and bitter. At dinner the same soup is given, and a plate of two ounces of kidney- beans, rice, lentils, or potatoes is added. Twice a week, the soup is made with meat, and then it is served only at breakfast, two ounces of boiled meat being given instead of it at dinner. The men are thus compelled to purchase additional food at the canteen, where they have for very honest prices, varying from three- farthings to twopence, small rations of cheese, or sausage, pork-meat, and sometimes tripe, as also milk, and small rations of figs, jams or fruits in the summer. Without this supple- mentary food the men obviously could not maintain their strength; but many of them, 288 In Russian and French Prisons.
and especially old people, earn so little that, after deducting the percentage-money raised by the State, they cannot spend at the canteen even twopence per day. I really wonder how they manage to keep body and soul together.
Two different kinds of work are made by the prisoners at Clairvaux. Some of them are employed by the State, either in its manufac- tures of linen, cloth, and dress for the prisoners, or in various capacities in the house itself (joiners, painters, man-nurses in the infirmary, accountants, &c.). They are mostly paid from 8d. to Wd. a day. Most, however, are employed in the above-mentioned workshops by private undertakers. Their salaries, established by the Chambre de Commerce at Troyes, vary very much, and are mostly very low, especially in those trades where no safe scale of salaries can be established on account of the great variety of patterns fabricated, and of the great sub- division of labour. Very many men earn but from 6d. to 8d. per day; and it is only in the iron bed manufacture that the salaries reach Is. 8d. and occasionally more; while I found that the average salaries of 125 men employed in various capacities reached only lid. (1 franc 17 centimes) per day. This figure is, however, In French Prisons. 289 perhaps above the average, there being a great number of prisoners who earn but 7d. or even 5d., especially in the workshop for the fabrica- tion of socks, where old people are sent to die from the dust and exhaustion.
Several reasons might be adduced as an apology for these small salaries; the low quality of prison-work, the fluctuations of trade, and several other considerations ought no doubt to be taken into account. But the fact is that undertakers who have rapidly made big fortunes in the prisons are not rare; while the prisoners consider with full reason that they are robbed when they are paid only a few pence for twelve hours' work. Such a payment is the more insufficient, as one half, or more, of the salaries is taken by the State, and the regular food supplied by the State is quite inadequate, especially for a man who is doing work.
If the prisoner has had a previous condemna- tion before being sent to a central prison — and this is very often the case — and if his salary is lOd. per day, 6d. are taken by the State, and the remaining 4d. are divided into two equal parts, one of which goes to the prisoner's reserve-fund and is handed over to him only on the day of his delivery; while the other part — u u 290 In Russian and French Prisons.
that is, 2d. only — is inscribed on his " dispos- able " account, and may be spent for his daily expenses at the canteen. With 2d. per day for supplementary food a workman obviously can- not live and labour. In consequence of that a system of gratifications has been introduced; they mostly vary from two to five shillings, and they are inscribed in full on the prisoner's " disposable " account. It is certain that this system of gratifications has given rise to many abuses. Suppose a skilled workman who is condemned for the third time and of whose salary the State retains seven-tenths. Suppose further that the work he has made during the month is valued at 40s. The State taking from this salary 28s., there will remain only 6s. to be inscribed on his "disposable" account. He proposes then to the undertaker to value his work only at 20s. and to add a gratification of 10s. The undertaker accepts, and so the State has only 14s.; the undertaker disburses 30s. instead of 40s.; and the prisoner has on his disposable account 3s., as also the whole of the gratification — that is, 13s.; all are thus satisfied, and if the State is at loss of 14s. — ma foi, tant pis!
Things look still worse if the great tempter In French Prisons. 291 of mankind — tobacco — be taken into account. Smoking is severely prohibited in prisons, and the smokers are fined from 5d. to 4s. every time they are discovered smoking. And yet every- body smokes or chews in the prisons. Tobacco is the current money, but a money so highly prized that a cigarette — a nothing for an accom- plished smoker — is paid 2d., and the 5d. paquet of tobacco has a currency worth 4s. or even more in times of scarcity. This precious mer- chandise is so highly esteemed that each pinch of tobacco is first chewed, then dried and smoked, and finally taken as snuff, although reduced to mere ash. Useless to say that there are undertakers who know how to exploit this human weakness and who pay half of the work done with tobacco, valued at the above prices, and that there are also warders who carry on this lucrative trade. Altogether, the pro- hibition of smoking is a source of so many evils that the French Administration probably will be compelled soon to follow the example of Germany and to sell tobacco at the canteens of the prisons. This would be also the surest means for diminishing the number of smokers.
We came to Clairvaux at a propitious moment. All the old administration had been recently u 2 292 In Russian and French Prisons.
dismissed, and a new departure taken in the treatment of prisoners. A year or two before our arrival a prisoner was killed in his cell by the keys of the warders. The official report was to the effect that he had hanged himself; but the surgeon did not sign this report, and made another report of his own, stating the assassination. This circumstance led to a thorough reform in the treatment of prisoners, and I am glad to say that the relations between the prisoners and the warders at Clairvaux were without comparison better than at Lyons. In fact, I saw much less brutality and more human relations than I was prepared to see — and yet the system itself is so bad that it brings about most horrible results.
Of course the relatively better wind which now blows over Clairvaux may change in a day or two. The smallest rebellion in the prison would bring about a rapid change for the worse, as there are enough warders and inspectors who sigh for " the old system," which is still in use in other French prisons. Thus, while we were at Clairvaux, a man was brought thither from Poissy — a central prison close by Paris. He considered his condemna- tion as unjust, and cried loudly day after day In French Prisons. 293 in his cell. In fact, be already had the symptoms of a commencing madness. But, to silence him the Poissy authorities invented the following plan. They brought a fire-engine and pumped water on the man through the open- ing in the door of his cell; they then left him quite wet in his cell, notwithstanding the winter's frost. The intervention of the Press was necessary to bring about the dismissal of the Director. As to the numerous revolts which have broken out during the last two years in almost all French prisons, they seem to show that " the old system " is in full force still.
And now, what are these better relations between warders and prisoners which I saw at Clairvaux? Many chapters could be written about them, but I shall try to be as short as possible, and point out only their leading features. It is obvious that a long life of the warders in common and the very necessities of their service have developed among them a certain brotherhood, or rather esprit de corps, which causes them to act with a remarkable uniformity in their relations with the prisoners. In consequence of that esprit de corps, as soon as a prisoner is brought to the prison, the first question of the warders is whether he 294 In Russian and French Prisons.
is a soumis or an insoumis — a submissive fellow, or an insubordinate. If the answer is favour- able, the prisoner's life may be a tolerable one; if not, he will not soon leave the prison; and if he happens ever to leave it, he will do it with broken health, and so exasperated against society that he will be soon interned in a prison again, and finish his days there, if not in New Caledonia. If the prisoner is described as an insubordinate, he will be punished again and again. If he speaks in the ranks, although not louder than the others, a remonstrance will be made in such terms that he will reply and be punished. And each punishment will be so disproportionate that he will object to it, and the punishment be doubled. " A man who has been once sent to the punishment quarter, is sure to return thither a few days after he has been released from it," say the warders, even the mildest ones. And this punishment is not a light one.
The man is not beaten; he is not knocked down. No, we are civilized people, and the punished man is merely brought to the cellular quarter, and locked up in a cell. The cell is quite empty: it has neither bed nor bench. For the night a mattress is given, and In French Prisons. 295 the prisoner must lay his dress outside his cell, at the door. Bread and water are his food. As soon as the prison-bell rings in the morning, he is taken to a small covered yard, and there he must — walk. Nothing more; but our refined civilization has learned how to make a torture even of this natural exercise. At a formal slow pace, under the cries of un, deux, the patients must walk all the day long, round the building. They walk for twenty minutes; then a rest follows. For ten minutes they must sit down immovable, each of them on his numbered stone, and walk again for twenty minutes; and so on through all the day, as long as the engines of the workshops are run- ning; and the punishment does not last one day, or two; it lasts for whole months. It is so cruel that the prisoner implores but one thing: "Let me return to the workshops." " Well, we shall see that in a fortnight or two," is the usual answer. But the fortnight goes over, and the next one too, and the patient still continues to walk for twelve hours a day. Then he revolts. He begins to cry in his cell, to insult the warders. Then he becomes " a rebel " — a dreadful qualification for any one who is in the hands of the brotherhood of warders — and 296 In Russian and French Prisons.
as such he will rot in the cells, and walk throughout his life. If he assaults a warder, he will not be sent to New Caledonia: he will still remain in his cell, and ever walk and walk in the small building. One man, a peasant, seeing no issue from this horrible situation, preferred to poison himself rather than live such a life — a terrible story which I shall some day tell in full.
As we were walking with my wife in the garden, more than two hundred yards distant from the cellular quarter, we heard sometimes horrible, desperate cries coming from that building. My wife, terrified and trembling, seized my arm, and I told her that it was the man whom they had watered with the fire-pump at Poissy, and now, quite contrary to the law, had brought here, to Clairvaux. Day after day — two, three days without interruption, he cried, " Vaches, gredins, assassins! " (cache is the name of the warders in the prisoner's slang), or loudly called out his story, until he fell, exhausted, on the floor of his cell. He con- sidered as unjust his detention at Clairvaux in the punishment quarter, and he declared loudly that he would kill a warder rather than remain all his life in a cell. For the next two months In French Prisons. 297 lie remained quiet. An inspector had vaguely promised him that he might be sent into the workshops on the 14th of July. But the " Fete Rationale " came, and the man was not released. His exasperation then had no limits; he cried, insulted, and assaulted the warders, destroyed the wooden parts of his cell, and finally was sent to the black-hole, where heavy irons were laid upon his hands and feet. I have riot seen these irons, but when he reappeared again in the cellular quarter, he loudly cried out that he was kept in the black-hole for two months, with irons on his hands and feet so heavy that he could not move. He already is half mad, and he will be kept in the cell until he becomes a complete lunatic, and then...then he will be submitted to all those tortures which lunatics have to endure in prisons and asylums...And the immense problem of suppressing these atrocities rises at its full size before us. The relations between the administration and the prisoners are not imbued at Clairvaux with the brutality which I have spoken of in the preceding chapters. And yet our penitentiary system fatally brings about such horrible results as the above — the more horrible as they must be considered a necessary consequence of 298 In Russian and French Prisons.
the system itself. But why are these sufferings inflicted on human creatures? What are the moral results achieved at the cost of such sufferings? In what direction lies the solution of the immense problem raised by our system of punishments and prisons? Such are the grave questions which necessarily rise before the observer.
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 299 CHAPTER IX.
OX THE MORAL INFLUENCE OF PRISONS ON PRISONERS.
THE central prison of Clairvaux, described in the preceding chapter, may be considered as a fair representative of modern prisons. In France, it is decidedly one of the best — I should say the best if I were not aware that the military prison at Brest is not inferior to the Maison Centrale of Clairvaux. In fact, the recent discussion about prisons in the French Chamber of Deputies, and the outbreaks of prisoners which have been witnessed last year in nearly ail the chief penal establishments of France, have disclosed such a state of affairs in most French prisons that we must recognize them as much worse than the central prison with which I was enabled to make some acquaintance.
If we compare the prison discipline at 300 In Russian and French Prisons.
Clairvaux with that of English prisons— as it appears from the Reports of the Commission on Prisons of 1863, as well as from the works of Michael Davitt,1 John Campbell,2 the lady who signs herself " A Prison Matron," 3 and Sir Edmund Du Cane,4 from " Five Years' Penal Servitude," 5 and the letters published last year in the Daily Neivs, by " Late B 24," — we must recognize that, national pride apart, prison discipline in the French Central prisons is not worse, and in some respects is more humane, than in this country. As to German prisons, it may be inferred from what we see in litera- ture, and what I know from my Socialist friends, that the treatment to which prisoners are submitted in Germany is, without com- parison, more brutal than in the Clairvaux prison. And, with regard to Austrian prisons, they may be said to be now in the same con- 1 " Leaves from a Prison Diary." London, 1885.
s " Thirty Years' Experiences of a Medical Officer in the English Convict Service." London, 1884.
s "Prison Characters," by a Prison Matron. London, 1866.
4 "The Punishment and Prevention of Crime." " English Citizen" series. London, 1885.
5 « Five Years' Penal Servitude," by One who has, endured it. (George Eoutledge and Sons.)
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 30 1 dition as they were in this country before the reform of 1863. We may thus safely conclude that the prison described in the preceding chapter is certainly not worse than thousands of like institutions spread all over Europe, but rather ranks among the best.
If I were asked, what could be reformed in this and like prisons, provided they remain prisons, I could really only suggest improvements in detail, which certainly would not substantially ameliorate them; and, at the same time, I should perfectly recognize the immense diffi- culties standing in the way of every ameliora- tion, however insignificant, in institutions based on a false principle.
I might suggest, for instance, that the prisoners be more equitably remunerated for their labour — to which proposal the prison administration probably would reply by show- ing the difficulty of finding private employers ready to erect expensive workshops in prisons, and the consequent necessity of hiring out the convicts to them at very low prices. And I could not advocate that the State should undertake to supply prisoners with labour, because I know perfectly well that the State would pay the prisoners as badly, and even 302 In Russian and French Prisons.
worse, than do some of the private employers at Clairvaux. The State would never risk sinking millions in workshops and steam engines, and without the use of a perfected machinery it would be unable to remunerate the prisoners' labour better; it would continue to pay from seven to ten pence a day. Besides, State enterprise could hardly introduce the variety of trades which I have mentioned in the above chapter, and this variety is one of the first conditions for supplying the prisoners with a regular occupation. In this country, where private employers are not admitted within the prisons as they are in France, the average production of each prisoner in 1877 did not exceed £3, and the maximum it had reached was only £22. 6 I certainly should suggest that the system of prohibiting talk between prisoners should be frankly given up, because the prohibition remains in France, in England,7 and in America, a dead letter and a useless vexation. And I should suggest also that the use of 6 It rose to 70?. at the Lusk prison-farm, where forty-two convicts only were kept. See Edmund Du Cane's " Punish- ment and Prevention of Crime."
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 303 tobacco be permitted, because it is the only means to put an end to the disgraceful trade in this prohibited article which is carried on by the warders both in France and in England,8 and sometimes also by the employers of labour. This measure has already been taken in Germany, where tobacco is, or shortly will be, sold at the canteen; and it obviously will be the most adequate means for reducing the number of smokers. It is, however, but a minor detail, which would not much improve our penal institutions.
In order to improve them substantially, I might suggest, of course, that each prison should be provided with a Pestalozzi for governor and sixty Pestalozzis more as warders. But I am afraid the prison adminis- tration would answer me as Alexander II. answered once on an administrative report: " Where shall I find the men?" Because really, as long as our prisons remain prisons, Pestalozzis will be exceptionally rare among the governors and warders, while retired soldiers will furnish the greater number.
And the more one reflects about the partial improvements which might be made; the more 8 " Five Years' Penal Servitude," p. 61.
304 In Russian and French Prisons.
one considers them under their real, practical aspect, the more one is convinced that the few which can be made will be of no moment, while serious improvements are impossible under the present system. Some thoroughly new de- parture is unavoidable. The system is wrong from the very foundation.
One fact — the most striking in our penal institutions — is, that as soon as a man has been in prison, there are three chances to one that he will return thither very soon after his release. Of course, there are a few exceptions to the rule. In each prison there are persons who have got into trouble quite by chance. There has been, in their life, some succession of fatal circumstances which has resulted in an act of violence or weakness, and this has brought them within the prison walls. Nobody will contend, with regard to these persons, that if they had not been imprisoned at all, the results for society would not have been the same. They are tortured in prisons — none can say why? They themselves feel the wrongfulness of their acts, and would feel it more strongly if they had never been imprisoned. Their numbers are not so small as is often thought, and the injustice of their imprisonment is so obvious Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 305 that authorized voices have been raised of late, asking that the judges be empowered to liberate them without any punishment.
But writers on criminal law will say that there is another numerous class of inmates of our prisons, for whom our penal institutions have been properly devised, and the question necessarily arises: How far do our prisons answer their purpose with regard to these in- mates; how far do they moralize them, and how far do they deter them from further breaches of the law?
There cannot be two answers to this ques- tion. Figures tell us loudly enough that the supposed double influence of prisons — the deter- ring and the moralizing — exist only in the imagination of lawyers. Nearly one-half of all people condemned by the Courts are regularly released prisoners. In France, two-fifths to one-half of all brought before the assizes, and two-fifths of all brought before the Police Cor- rectionnelle Courts, are released prisoners. ISTo less than seventy to seventy-two thousand reci- divistes are arrested every year; forty-two to forty-five per cent, of all assassins, seventy to seventy-two per cent, of all thieves condemned every year are recidivistes. In great towns the x x 306 In Riissian and French Prisons.
proportion is still more dreadful. Of all ar- rested at Paris in 1880, more than one-fourth had been condemned more than four times during the last ten years.9 As to central pri- sons, twenty to forty per cent, of all prisoners released from them are retaken during the first year after their release, chiefly during the very first months which they spend at liberty; and the number of recidivistes would be still larger if so many liberated prisoners did not disappear, change their names and profession, emigrate, or die shortly after their liberation.1 In the French Central Prisons the return of liberated prisoners is so customary, that yon may hear the warders saying: " Is it not strange that ~N. is not yet back? Has he had time, perchance, to go to another judicial dis- trict?" Several prisoners, when leaving the prison where they have succeeded, by their conduct, in obtaining some privileged occupa- 9 Compte Rendu general de I' Administration de la Jus- tice Criminelle en France en 1878 et 1879; Eeinach, Les Recidivistes. Paris, 1882.
1 " If those who die after liberation and those whose recidive crimes are not discovered be taken into account, it remains an open question whether the number of recidivistes is not equal to that of the liberated prisoners." — Lombroso, L' Uomo delinquente.
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 307 tion, used to ask that the post they occupied be kept open for them until their next return! The poor men are sure beforehand that they will not be able to resist the temptations they will meet with on release, and they are sure to return very soon, to end their life in prison.
In this country, as far as my knowledge goes, things do not stand much better, notwithstand- ing the recent development and endeavours of sixty-three Discharged Prisoners' Aid Societies. About forty per cent, of all condemned persons are still released prisoners, and we are told by Mr. Davitt that as much as ninety-five per cent, of all those who are kept in penal servi- tude have formerly received, on one or two occasions, a prison education.
More than that. It has been remarked throughout Europe that if a man has been kept in prison for some minor offence, his return to a prison will be under a graver charge. His theft will be more refined; and if he has been condemned, first for an assault, he has a serious chance of returning to the Court as a murderer. The recidive has grown to be an immense pro- blem for European writers oil criminal law, and we see that, in France, under the impression of the gravity of this problem, they are now devisx 2 3,08 In Russian and French Prisons.
ing schemes which surely do not fall very short of proposals for the wholesale extermination of recondemned people in the most unhealthy colony of the French Eepublic.
Just now, when I am writing these lines, I see in the Paris papers the tale of a murder committed by a man on the very second day after his release from a prison. Before being arrested and condemned to thirteen months' imprisonment (for some minor offence) he had been acquainted with a woman who kept a small shop. He knew her mode of life, and as soon as released — the second day after his release — he went to her in the evening, as she was shutting up the shop, stabbed her, and tried to take possession of the cash-box. The scheme had been devised down to the minutest detail whilst the man was kept in prison; he had worked it out during his thirteen months of incarceration.
JSTow, like cases are met with in considerable numbers in criminal practice, although they are not always as striking as that just mentioned. The most terrible schemes of brutal murder are mostly devised in prisons; and when public indignation is stirred by some exceptionally brutal deed, in most cases its origin may be Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 309 traced, either directly or indirectly, to prison- education: the deed has been committed by a released prisoner, or at the instigation of such a man.
Whatever the schemes hitherto introduced either for the seclusion of prisoners, or for the prevention of conversation, prisons have re- mained nurseries of criminal education. The schemes of well-meaning philanthropists who fancied they could make so many reformatories out of our convict establishments, have proved a complete failure; and while official literature tries to make light of this charac- teristic feature of our penal institutions, those governors of prisons who see and tell the things as they are — not as it is desired they should be represented — frankly avow that prisons have not moralized anybody, but have more or less demoralized all those who have spent a number of years there.
It cannot be otherwise; and we cannot but acknowledge that it must be so, as soon as we analyse the effect the prison exercises on the prisoner.
First of all, none of the condemned people — a few exceptions apart — recognize that their condemnation is just. It is a secret to nobody; 3io In R^lssian and French Prisons.
but we are inclined to accept it too lightly, while in reality this circumstance is a condem- nation of the very first principles of what we now call justice. The Chinese who is con- demned by his " compound family " Court to expatriate himself;2 the Tchuktchi who is boycotted by his fellow-men; the man who is condemned to a fine by a Water Court of Valencia or of Turkestan, almost always re- cognizes the justice of the verdict pronounced by his judges. But no such sense is awakened in the inmate of our modern prison.
Here is a man of the " Upper Prison Ten " condemned for having " run a long firm," that is, for having started some business to exploit " the cupidity and ignorance of the public," as one of the heroes of the admirable prison- sketches by Michael Davitt used to say. Try to convince him that he was not right in starting his "business." His answer probably will be: " Sir, the small thieves are here, but the big ones are free, and they enjoy the respect of those very same judges who con- demned me." And he will mention to you one of those companies which were started for robbing the naive people who thought to enrich themselves with gold-mines in Devon- 2 Compare Eugene Simon's La Cite Chlnoise..
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 3 1 1 shire, with lead- mines under the Thames, or with electric lighting. We all know these companies; we know their pompous circulars; we know how they rob the poorest classes of their savings...What shall we reply to the representative of the Upper Ten?
Or, take this other person who has been condemned for what the French argot describes as having mange la grenouille, that is, for having spent public money. He would answer you: " I was not sufficiently cunning, sir, that is all." What will you, what can you reply when you know perfectly well, and he knows much better than yourself, how many small and still more big "frogs " are "eaten" ©very year without ever bringing the eaters before a judge? "I was not cunning enough," that is the sentence he will repeat to himself as long as he wears the prisoner's coat; and let him lie in a cell, or clear the Dartmoor moors, his brain will work in the direction of meditating the injustice of a society which pardons the most cunning and punishes those who were not cunning enough. As soon as he is out, he will necessarily try to occupy the highest steps in the ladder; he will try to be cunning; he will conceal the " swag " better.
I do not. affirm that each prisoner considers 312 In Russian and French Prisons.
his deeds as a quite honourable pursuit; but it is undoubtedly true that he does not consider himself as less honourable than those who sell turnips instead of orange marmalade, and fuchsine-coloured, alcoholized water instead of wine, who rob shareholders, who also traffic by a thousand means " on the cupidity and ignorance of the public," and who, nevertheless, enjoy the esteem of society. " Steal, but do not be caught! " is a common saying in prisons all over the world; and it is useless to try to combat this watchword as long as in the wide world of " business " transactions the border- land between honourable and dishonourable remains as wide as it is now.