I do not speak only about those unhappy crea- tures— the boys whom we saw at Lyons. We were told in sober earnestness that day and night the whole atmosphere of their life is permeated throughout with one foul breath of depravity. It is there, in such nests of corruption as the boys' department of the Prison of St. Paul, that we must look for the growth of what the lawyers describe as " the criminal classes," not to the laws of heredity. But the same is true with regard to prisons where fully grown people are kept. The facts which we came across during our prison life surpass all that the most frenzied imagination could invent. One must have been for long years in a prison, secluded from all higher influences and aban- doned to one's own and that of a thousand convicts' imaginations, to come to the incredible state of mind which is witnessed among some prisoners. And I suppose that I shall say only what will be supported by all intelligent and frank governors of prisons, if I say that the 336 In Russian and French Prisons.
prisons are the nurseries for the most revolting category of breaches of moral law.9 I shall not enter into details upon this subject, only too lightly treated now in a certain kind of literature. I only wish to add that those fall into gross error who imagine that the complete seclusion of prisoners and cellular imprisonment can promise any improvement in that special direction. A perverse turn of imagination is the real cause of all like cases, and the cell is the best means for giving to imagination such a turn. As to how far ima- gination can go in that direction, even alienists, I suppose, do not suspect it: to know it one must spend several months in a prisoner's cell, and enjoy a full confidence of his neighbours.
On the whole, cellular imprisonment, which has so many advocates now, would be merely a useless cruelty, and a powerful instrument in weakening still more the bodily and mental energy of the prisoners. Experience all over Europe, and the dreadful proportion of cases of insanity which have been witnessed everywhere that cellular imprisonment has been resorted to 9 Mr. Davitt's remarks in his " Leaves from a Prison Diary," show that the same thing is true with regard to the prisons of this country.
Moral Influence of Prisons on Prisoners. 337 for any length of time, are conclusive in this respect, and one cannot but wonder how little this experience has profited. For a man who has some occupation which may be a source of enjoyment to him, and whose mind is by itself a rich source of impressions; for a person who has nothing outside the prison to worry him, whose family life is happy, and who has no such mental preoccupations as might become a source of continuous pain to the mind, seclusion from human society may not be fatal, if it lasts only for a few months. But for those who cannot live with their own thoughts, and especially for those whose relations with the outer world are not quite smooth, and who are worried by their own thoughts, even a few months of cellular imprisonment may prove a most fatal experiment.
338 In Russian and French Prisons.
CHAPTER X.
ARE PRISONS NECESSARY?
IF we take into consideration all the influences briefly indicated in the above rapid sketch, we are bound to recognize that all of them, separately and combined together, act in the direction of rendering men who have been detained for several years in prisons less and less adapted for life in society; and that none of them, not a single one, acts in the direction of raising the intellectual and moral faculties, of lifting man to a higher conception of life and its duties, of rendering him a better, a more human creature than he was.
Prisons do not moralize their inmates; they do not deter them from crime. And the question arises: What shall we do with those who break, not only the written law — that sad growth of a sad past — but also those very principles of morality which every man feels in Are Prisons necessary? 339 his own heart? That is the question which now preoccupies the best minds of our century.
There was a time when Medicine consisted in administering some empirically-discovered drugs. The patients who fell into the hands of the doctor might be killed by his drugs, or they might rise up notwithstanding them, the doctor had the excuse of doing what all his fellows did; he could not outgrow his con- temporaries.
But our century which has boldly taken up so many questions, but faintly forecast by its predecessors, has taken up this question too, and approached it from the other end. Instead of merely curing diseases, medicine tries now to prevent them; and we all know the immense progress achieved, thanks to the modern view of disease. Hygiene is the best of medi- cines.
The same has to be done with the great social phenomenon which has been called Crime until now, but will be called Social Disease by our children. Prevention of the disease is the best of cures: such is the watch- word of a whole younger school of writers, which grew up of late, especially in Italy, z 2 34-O In Russian and French Prisons.
represented by Poletti,1 Ferri,2 Colajanni,3 and, to some limited extent, by Lombroso; of the great school of psychologists represented by Griesinger, 4 Krafft-Ebbing, 5 Despine 6 on the Continent, and Maudsley7 in this country; of the sociologists like Quetelet and his unhappily too scanty followers; and finally, in the modern schools of Psychology with regard to the in- dividual, and of the social reformers with regard to society. In their works we have already the elements of a new position to be taken with regard to those unhappy people whom we have hanged, or decapitated, or sent to jails until now. Three great causes are at work to produce 1 II Delinquente; Udine, 1875.
2 Nuovi orizzonti del Diritto e della Procedure penale; Socialismo e Criminalita, and several others.
3 L'Alcoolismo, sue consequenza morali e sue cause; Catania, 1887. A study which I cannot but warmly recommend to those writers on the subject who so often mistake the effects for causes.
4 Gesammelte Abhandlungen, Berlin, 1882. Pathologie der Psychischen Kranlcheiten.
5 Zweifelhafte Geistzustande, Erlangen, 1873; Gmndziige der Criminal-Psychologie, 1872; Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psyclwpatie, Stuttgart, 1875.
6 Psychologic Naturelle, Paris, 1868; Congres Penitentiaire de Stockholm en 1878, vol. ii.
7 " Insanity with Kelation to Crime," London, 1880.
Are Prisons necessary? 341 what is called crime: the social causes, the anthropological, and, to use Fern's expression, the cosmical.
The influence of these last is but insufficiently known, and yet it cannot be denied. We know from the Postmaster-General's Reports that the number of letters containing money which are thrown into the pillar-boxes without any address is very much the same from year to year. If so capricious an element in our life as oblivion of a certain given kind is subject to laws almost as strict as those which govern the motions of the heavenly bodies, it is still more true with regard to breaches of law. We can predict with a great approximation the number of murders which will be committed next year in each country of Europe. And if we should take into account the disturbing influences which will increase, or diminish, next year the number of murders committed, we might ' O predict the figures with a still greater accuracy. There was, some time ago, in Nature, an essay on the number of assaults and suicides com- mitted in India with relation to temperature and the moisture of the air. Everybody knows that an excessively hot and moist temperature renders men more nervous than they are 3 4 2 -^ Russian and French Prisons.
when the temperature is moderate and a dry wind blows over our fields. In India, where the temperature grows sometimes exceedingly hot, and the air at the same time grows exceedingly moist, the enervating influence of the atmosphere is obviously felt still more strongly than in our latitudes. Mr. S. A. Hill, therefore, calculate from figures extend- ing over several years, a formula which enables you, when you know the average tempera- ture and humidity of each month, to say, with an astonishing approximation to exactitude, the number of suicides and wounds due to violence which have been registered during the month.8 Like calculations may seem very strange to minds unaccustomed to treat psychological 8 S. A. Hill, " The Effects of the Weather upon the Death- Kate and Crime in India," Nature, vol. 29, 1884, p. 338. The formula shows that the number of suicides and acts of violence committed each month is equal to the excess of the average monthly temperature over 48° Fahr. multiplied by 7 '2, plus the average moistness, multiplied by 2. The author adds: — " Crimes of violence in India may therefore be said to be proportional in frequency to the tendency to prickly heat, that excruciating condition of the skin induced by a high temperature combined with moisture. Any one •who has suffered from this ailment, and knows how it affected his temper will really understand how the conditions which produce it may sometimes lead to homicide and other crimes." Under cold weather the influence is the reverse.
Are Prisons necessary? 343 phenomena as dependent upon physical causes, but the facts point to this dependence so clearly as to leave no room for doubt. And persons who have experienced the effects of tropical heat accompanied by tropical moisture on their own nervous system, will not wonder that precisely during such days Hindoos are inclined to seize a knife to settle a dispute, or that men disgusted with life are more inclined to put an end to it by suicide.9 The influence of cosmical causes on our actions has not yet been fully analyzed; but several facts are well established. It is known, for instance, that attempts against persons (violence, murders, and so on) are on th? increase during the summer, and that during the winter the number of attempts against property reaches its maximum. We cannot go through the curves drawn by Professor E. Ferri,1 and see on the same sheet the curves of 9 See also Mayr, Gesdzmassigkeit in Gfesellschaftsleben, as also E. Ferri in Archivio di Psychiatria, fasc. 2nd; La Teoria dell' imputabilata e la Negations del libero arbitrio, Bologna, 1881; and many others.
1 Das Verbrechen in seiner Abliangigkeit von Temperatur, Berlin, 1882. Also, Colajanni's Oscillations thermometriques et delits contre les person nes, in Bill, d* Anthropologie minelle, Lyons, 1886.
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temperature and those snowing the number of attempts against persons, without being deeply impressed with their likeness: one easily mistakes them for one another. Unhappily, this kind of research has not been prosecuted with the eagerness it deserves, so that few of the cosmical causes have been analyzed as to their influence on human actions.
It must be acknowledged also that the inquiry offers many difficulties, because most cosmical causes exercise their influence only in an in- direct way; thus, for instance, when we see that the number of breaches of law fluctuates with the crops of cereals, or with the wine-crops, the influence of cosmical agents appears only through the medium of a series of influences of a social character. Still, nobody will deny that when weather is fine, the crops good, and the villagers cheerful, they are far less inclined to settle their small disputes by violence than during stormy or gloomy weather, when a spoiled crop spreads moreover general dis- content. I suppose that women who have constant opportunities of closely watching the good and bad temper of their husbands could tell us plenty about the influence of weather on peace in their homes.
Are Prisons necessary? 345 The so-called * anthropological causes ' to which much attention has faeen given of late, are certainly much more important than the preceding. The influence of inherited faculties and of the bodily organization on the inclination towards crime has been illustrated of late by so many highly interesting investigations, that we surely can form a nearly complete idea about this category of causes which bring men and women within our penal jurisdiction. Of course, we cannot endorse in full the conclusions of one of the most prominent representatives of this school, Dr. Lombroso,2 especially those he arrives at in one of his writings.3 When he shows us that so many inmates of our prisons have some defect in the organization of their brains, we must accept this statement as a mere fact. We may even admit with him that the majority of convicts and prisoners have longer arms than people at liberty. Again, when he shows us that the most brutal murders have been committed by men who had some serious defect in their bodily structure, we have only to incline before this statement and recognize its accuracy. It is a statement — not more.
2 L' Uomo delinquente, 3rd edition, Torino, 1884.
3 Sull' Jncremento del Delitto, Boma, 1879.
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But we cannot follow Mr. Lombroso when he infers too much from this and like facts, and considers society entitled to take any measures against people who have like defects of organi- zation. We cannot consider society as entitled to exterminate all people having defective structure of brain, and still less to imprison those who have long arms. We may admit that most of the perpetrators of the cruel deeds which from time to time stir public indignation have not fallen very far short of being sad idiots. The head of Frey, for instance, an engraving of which has made of late the tour of the Press, is an instance in point. But all idiots do not become assassins, and still less all feeble-minded men and women; so that the most impetuous criminalist of the anthropo- logical school would recoil before a wholesale assassination of all idiots if he only remembered how many of them are free — some of them under care, and very many of them having other people under their care — the difference between these last and those who are handed over to the hangman being only a difference of the circumstances under which they were born and have grown up. In how many otherwise respectable homes, and palaces, too, not to speak Are Prisons necessary? 347 of lunatic asylums, shall we not find the very same features which Dr. Lombroso considers characteristic of " criminal madness "? Brain diseases may favour the growth of criminal propensities; but they may not, when under proper care. The good sense, and still more the good heart of Charles Dickens have per- fectly well understood this plain truth.
Certainly we cannot follow Dr. Lombroso in all his conclusions, still less those of his followers; but we must be grateful to the Italian writer for having devoted his attention to, and popularized his researches into, the medical aspects of the question. Because, for an unprejudiced mind, the only conclusion that can be drawn from his varied and most inte- resting researches is, that most of those whom we treat as criminals are people affected by bodily diseases, and that their illness ought to be submitted to some treatment, instead of being aggravated by imprisonment.
Mr. Maudsley's researches into insanity with relation to crime are well known in this country.4 But none of those who have seriously read his works can leave them without 4 " Kesponsibility in Mental Disease," London, 1872; "Body and Will," London, 1883.
348 In Russian and French Prisons.
being struck by the circumstance that most of those inmates of our jails who have been im- prisoned for attempts against persons are people affected with some disease of the mind; that the " ideal madman whom the law creates," and the only one whom the law is ready to recognize as irresponsible for his acts, is as rare as the ideal " criminal " whom the law insists upon punishing. Surely there is, as Mr. Maudsley says, a wide " borderland be- tween crime and insanity, near one boundary of which we meet with something of madness but more of sin (of conscious desire of doing some harm, we prefer to say), and near the other boundary of which something of sin but more of madness." But " a just estimate of the moral responsibility of the unhappy people inhabiting this borderland " will never be made as long as the idea of " sin," or of " bad will," is not got rid of.5 5 Maudsley's " Eesponsibility in Mental Disease." On page 27, Mr. Maudsley says: " In like manner, though a criminal might be compassionated it would still be necessary to deprive him of the power of doing further mischief; society has clearly the right to insist on that being done; and though he might be kindly cared for, the truest kindness to him and others would still be the enforcement of that kind of discipline which is best fitted to ~bring him, if possible, to a Are Prisons necessary? 349 Unhappily, hitherto our penal institutions have been nothing but a compromise between the old ideas of revenge, of punishment of the "bad will" and "sin," and the modern ideas of " deterring from crime," both softened to a very slight extent by some notions of philan- thropy. But the time, we hope, is not far dis- tant when the noble ideas which have inspired Griesinger, Krafft-Ebbing, Despine, and some of the modern Italian criminalists, like Colajanni and Ferri, will become the property of the general public, and make us ashamed of having continued so long to hand over those whom we call criminals to hangmen and jailers. If the conscientious and extensive labours of the writers just named were more widely known, we should all easily understand that most of those who are kept now in jails, or put to death, are merely people in need of the most careful fraternal treatment. • I do not healthy state of mind, even if it were hard labour within the measure of his strength." Leaving aside the " right " of society to enforce hard labour, which might be doubted upon, because Mr. Maudsley recognizes himself that society has ' manufactured its criminals," we wonder that so open a mind admits, even for a moment, that imprisonment with hard labour may be best fitted to bring anybody to a healthy state of mind.
350 In Russian and French Prisons.
mean, of course, that we ought to substitute lunatic asylums for prisons. Far be it from me to entertain this abhorrent idea. Lunatic asylums are nothing else but prisons; and those whom we keep in prisons are not lunatics, nor even people approaching the sad boundary of the borderland where man loses control over his actions. Far be from me the idea which is sometimes brought forward as to maintaining prisons by placing them under pedagogists and medical men. What most of those who are now sent to jail are in need of is merely a fraternal help from those who surround them, to aid them in developing more and more the higher instincts of human nature which have been checked in their growth either by some bodily disease — anemia of the brain, disease of the heart, the liver, or the stomach — or, still more, by the abominable conditions under which thousands and thousands of children grow up, and millions of adults are living, in what we call our centres of civilization. But these higher faculties cannot be exer- cised when man is deprived of liberty, of the free guidance of his actions, of the multifarious influences of the human world. Let us carefully analyze each breach of the Are Prisons necessary? 351 moral unwritten law, and we shall always find — as good old Griesinger said — that it is not due to something which has suddenly sprung up in the man who accomplished it: it is the result of effects which, for years past, have deeply stirred within him.6 Take, for instance, a man who has committed an act of violence. The blind judge of our days comes forward and sends him to prison. But the human being who is not overpowered by the kind of mania which is inculcated by the study of Roman jurisprudence — who analyzes instead of merely sentencing — would say, with Griesinger, that although in this case the man has not suppressed his affections, but has left them to betray themselves by an act of violence, this act has been prepared long since. Before this time, probably throughout his life, the same person has often manifested some anomaly of mind by noisy expression of his feelings, by crying loudly after some trifling disagreeable circumstance, by easily venting his bad temper on those who stood by him; and, unhappily, he has not from his childhood found anybody who was able to give a better direction to his 6 Vierteljalirsschrift fur gerichtliche und 6/entliche Mcdicin, 1867.
352 In Russian and French Prisons.
nervous impressibility. Tli3 causes of the violence which has brought him into the prisoners' dock must be sought long years before. And if we push our analysis still deeper, we discover that this state of mind is itself a consequence of some physical disease either inherited or developed by an abnormal life; some disease of the heart, the brain, or the digestive system. For many years these causes have been at work before resulting in some deed which falls within the reach of the law.
More than that. If we analyze ourselves, if everybody would frankly acknowledge the thoughts which have sometimes passed through his mind, we should see that all of us have had — be it as an imperceptible wave traversing the brain, like a flash of light — some feelings and thoughts such as constitute the motive of all acts considered as criminal. We have re- pudiated them at once; but if they had had the opportunity of recurring again and again; if they were nurtured by circumstances, or by a want of exercise of the best passions — love, compassion, and all those which result from living in the joys and sufferings of those who surround us; then these passing influences, Are Prisons necessary? 353 so brief that we hardly noticed them, would have degenerated into some morbid element in our character.
That is what we ought to teach our children from the earliest childhood, while now we imbue them from their tenderest years with ideas of justice identified with revenge, of judges and tribunals. And if we did this, in- stead of doing as we do now, we should no longer have the shame of avowing that we hire assassins to execute our sentences, and pay warders for performing a function for which no educated man would like to prepare his own children. Functions which we consider so de- grading cannot be an element of moralization.
Fraternal treatment to check the develop- ment of the anti-social feelings which grow up in some of us — not imprisonment — is the only means that we are authorized in applying, and can apply, with some effect to those in whom these feelings have developed in consequence of bodily disease or social influences. And that is not a Utopia; while to fancy that punishment is able to check the growth of anti- social feelings is a Utopia — a wicked Utopia; the Utopia of " leave me in peace, and let the world go on as it likes."
A a 354?n Russian and French Prisons.
Many of the anti-social feelings, we are told by Dr. J. Bruce Thompson 7 and many others, are inherited; and facts amply support this conclusion. But what is inherited? Is it a certain bump of criminality, or something else? What is inherited is insufficient self-control, or a want of firm will, or a desire for risk and excitement,8 or disproportionate vanity. Vanity, for instance, coupled with a desire for risk and excitement, is one of the most striking features amidst the population of our prisons. But vanity finds many fields for its exercise. It may produce a maniac like Napoleon the First, or a Frey; but it produces also, under some circumstances — especially when instigated and guided by a sound intellect — men who pierce tunnels and isthmuses, or devote all their energies towards pushing through some great 7 Journal of Mental Science, January, 1870, p. 488 sq.
8 The importance of this factor, well pointed out by Ed. •Du Cane, is proved by the circumstance that what they call " the criminal age " is the age between twenty-five and thirty-four. After that age, a desire for a quieter life makes the breaches of law suddenly decrease. The proposal of Ed. Du Cane (' fif those persons whose career evidences in them marked criminal tendencies could either be locked up or kept under supervision until they had passed, say, the age of forty") is typical • of the peculiar logics developed in those people who have been for some time superintendents of prisons.
Are Prisons necessary? 355 scheme for what they consider the benefit of humanity; and then it may be checked, and even reduced almost to nothingness, by the parallel growth of intelligence. If it is a want of firmness of will which has been inherited, we know also that this feature of character may lead to the most varied consequences according to the circumstances of life. How many of our "good fellows" suffer precisely from this defect? Is it a sufficient reason for sending them to prison?
Humanity has seldom ventured to treat its prisoners like human beings; but each time it has done so it has been rewarded for its boldness. I was sometimes struck at Clair- vaux with the kindness bestowed on sick people by several assistants in the hospital; I was touched by several manifestations of a refined feeling of delicacy. Dr. Campbell, who has had much more opportunity of learning this trait of human nature during his thirty years' experience as prison-surgeon, goes much farther. By mild treatment, he says, " with as much consideration as if they had been delicate ladies [I quote his own words], the greatest order was generally maintained in the hos- pital." He was struck with that " esteemable A a 2 356 In Russian and French Prisons.
trait in the character of prisoners — observable even among the roughest criminals; I mean the great attention they bestow on the sick." " The most hardened criminals," he adds, " are not exempt from this feeling." And he says elsewhere: " Although many of these men, from their former reckless life and habits of depredation might be supposed to be hardened and indifferent, they have a keen sense of what is right or wrong." All honest men who have had to do with prisoners, can but confirm the experience of Dr. Campbell.
What is the secret of this feature, which surely cannot fail to strike people accustomed to consider the convict as very little short of a wild beast? The assistants in hospitals have an opportunity of exercising their good feelings. They have opportunities of feeling compassion for somebody, and of acting accordingly. Moreover, they enjoy within the hospital much more freedom than the other convicts; and those of whom Dr. Campbell speaks were under the direct moral influence of a doctor like himself — not of a soldier.
In short, anthropological causes — that is, defects of organization — play a most important part in bringing men to jail; but these causes Are Prisons necessary? 357 are not causes of " criminality," properly speaking. The same causes are at work amidst millions and millions of our modern psycho- pathic generation; but they lead to anti-social deeds only under certain unfavourable circum- stances. Prisons do not cure these patho- logical deformities, they only reinforce them; and when a psychopate leaves a prison, after having been subjected for several years to its deteriorating influence, he is without com- parison less fit for life in society than he was before. If he is prevented from committing fresh anti-social deeds, that can only be attained by undoing the work of the prison, by oblite- rating the features with which it inculcates those who have passed through its ordeal — a task which certainly is performed by some friends of humanity, but a task utterly hopeless in so many cases.