ART. XV.-Prison Discipline*. T has now become a matter of some difficulty to say upon this already been successfully called. This we consider a ground of sincere congratulation. When we reflect how small a number of years has elapsed since Howard began to meditate his important career; when the prisoner was allowed to rot in his dungeon, without exciting, in any quarter, a thought respecting the air which he breathed, the food which he ate, the usage which he endured, or the temperature in which his deplorable nights and days were consumed; we feel at our hearts the encouragement which benevolence may thence derive for perseverance in every judicious design; since, already, there is not a light in which the subject can be viewed, in which it may not be said to be familiar to the public mind. The secrets of the prison house have been revealed. The state of the oppressor and of the oppressed has been disclosed. The evils, both moral and physical, which flow from ill regulated prisons, and thickly spread themselves over the land, have fixed the attention of the wise and good in every part of the civilized world. And in some places considerable efforts have been made to dry up that copious source of human suffering and crime. Our attention has been attracted to this subject, the more particularly on the present occasion, by the recent publication of the "Third Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, and for the Reformation of juvenile Offenders;" a society whose object ranks among the most important which can occupy the human mind; a society to which the world already owes no small part of the elucidation which the subject has happily received; and by whose future and continued exertions, we trust that every part of this important concern to which consideration may still be required, will be so repeatedly pressed upon the public attention, that the practical proceedings which naturally follow conviction, will not long be deferred. The blessings to be derived from an improved state of prison discipline may be considered under two heads. 1st. As they relate to the prisoner himself. 2dly. As they relate to the community at large. As respects the prisoner himself, the object of prison discipline is twofold: 1st, to prevent all violation towards him of the prin Vid. The Third Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improve ment of Prison Discipline, &c. P 2 ciples ciples of humanity; and 2dly, to effect his reformation, and final return to usefulness and happiness. That these are objects of first-rate importance no one will deny. We hold it an indubitable maxim, flowing immediately from the first principles of justice, that all injury done to a prisoner, every evil inflicted upon him, not necessary to the righteous ends for which he has been deprived of his liberty, is as much a violation of morality, as much a crime, as if it had been inflicted upon any individual in the land. A man, by being placed in a prison, does not cease to be a man ; nor has he lost a single right belonging to him as a man, except those which the law has expressly taken away. He is still a moral agent, bound by duties towards others, as they are bound by duties towards him. If every violation of humanity towards a prisoner ought to be accounted criminal, and ought to be prevented, it is of first-rate importance to determine what in his case should be considered a violation of humanity. We may begin with a particular which is not liable to dispute. The health of the prisoner ought not to be injured. Every thing which has a tendency wholly or partially to destroy his health is inhumanity. This implies a good deal. It implies the use of a wholesome apartment, a place free from bad air and filth, free from damp, and from injurious extremes of either heat or cold. It implies also a sufficiency of wholesome food, and of clothing. While a man has the exercise of his natural powers, to provide himself with the means of preserving health, he is with propriety left to his own resources. If you deprive him of these resources, and do not provide him with what is necessary to the preservation of his health, you inflict an injury which the law did not intend; you deprive a human being of one of the best of all earthly possessions; and for such an injury leave him wholly without reparation. A more heinous violation of those sacred ties by which men are bound to one another, and society itself exists, can hardly be conceived. Not only ought the health of the prisoner to be thus respected, it is also to be considered how far any evil, any the smallest suffering, not assigned by the law in express and unambiguous terms, will not fall under the same condemnation. How Some of the most fatal prejudices which obstruct the improvenient of prison discipline here occur to be considered. completely they are void of foundation will clearly and decisively be scen. A very slight analysis will throw sufficient light upon the case. Some Some persons are in prison solely for the purpose of safe custody; to prevent from escaping those who are supposed to have a motive to escape, when their presence is necessary to some important legal end. It is very evident that the least distressful of all modes in which their presence can be secured, with a due attention to the principle of economy, is in this case the only mode which is reconcileable to the principles of humanity and justice; it is undeni→ able that if they are made, by their situation, to sustain any inconvenience not required for the end, for which they are placed in custody, it is a crime equal in guilt to a similar inconvenience inflicted upon any other individual whatsoever. This is a proposition which we are persuaded we may leave to the clearness and force of its own evidence. It is only necessary further, in relation to this point, to consider who are the parties who ought to be considered as in prison solely for the purpose of safe custody, and to be subject to no inconve nience which is inseparable from the attainment of that end. In the first place, it is certain that all persons before trial ought to be considered as in that situation. The idea of punishment before trial, includes in it every thing which is odious and revolting to the moral sense. After sentence, also, those persons, of whose punishment imprisonment is not by the Judge declared to form any part, ought to be considered as in prison to wait merely the time appointed for their punishment. All those criminals, to whose offences another punishment than imprisonment is assigned, ought, if imprisoned between the time of passing and executing their sentence, to be considered as in safe custody merely. Those who are sentenced even to be hanged, are sentenced to that punishment, and to no other. They are not sentenced to be tortured in prison before they are executed. If they are tortured in prison beforehand, this is a punishment to which they are not condemned by the law. It is a punishment not authorized by the law. It is a punishment therefore contrary to law. It is a crime.-The word torture is, commonly, applied to those cases only in which extreme suffering is endured. But it is evident that any degree of suffering wantonly applied is a degree of torture; and, when applied in a prison, without utility, without the express command of the law, ought to be stigmatized by the appellation of torture, or even a worse if it were afforded by the language. It is very evident, therefore, that none of these cases come under the complaint of those persons who object to the humanity which is recommended in prison discipline, because it is not sufficiently calculated to intimidate offenders and to deter them from crime. This objection is sometimes heard in places of great dignity and influence, influence, and therefore requires the more to be duly considered; and, if unfounded and mischievous, to be exposed. If this objection cannot possibly refer to any class of persons of whose punishment incarceration does not form a constituent part, it can only refer to those whose punishment is declared either wholly or partially to consist of imprisonment. We also are of opinion that imprisonment is a proper instrument of punishment; perhaps the most important of all instruments. The question is, by what means it can be rendered most conducive to its end; by the ordinary barbarous modes of prison misery, bad air, bad food, nastiness, tyrannical treatment, excessive cold, and excessive heat; or by other means, exclusive of these instruments of torture? In the pain which, as punishment, is inflicted upon a criminal, one rule, the obvious dictate of common sense and common humanity, is invariably to be pursued. The pain which is inflicted upon the criminal ought to produce as great an impression as possible upon the minds of the other members of the community. The grand object of punishment is example; to deter others from the perpetration of similar crimes. If there be two modes of inflicting the same degree of pain upon a criminal, one in which little or no impression is made upon the minds of others, another in which a great impression is made; the first ought by all means to be rejected, the latter to be employed. If it is not, human misery, which surely ought not to be produced in greater quantity than is absolutely necessary, is expended in waste. The evil which is inflicted upon a prisoner by the loathsomeness of a dungeon, by the cruelty or even by the neglect of a gaoler subject to no adequate superintendence and controul, can make but a very feeble impression upon the minds of men in general; because it is unseen and unthought of. The prisoner enters the gate of his prison and is forgotten. The whole conception of his case is confounded in the mere general idea of incarceration. Beyond that general idea there is nothing which takes hold of the ima gination. To inflict evil upon a human being, evil thus unknown and unregarded, in the way of punishment, as a means of deterring others from the punishment of crime, is one of the most preposterous applications of power into which ignorance or wrong feeling ever was betrayed. The evil by which others are to be deterred must be a conspicuous evil. It must be an evil which fixes their attention, and which is frequently recalled to their thoughts. Surely the evil which is to produce these effects ought not to be an evil hidden from view in the recesses of a dungeon; evil dependent upon the accidental temper of a gaoler, the accidental goodness or badness of the accommodations of a gaol. The point, we conceive, is perfectly clear and incontrovertible, that that to inflict pain in prisons, artificially or negligently, as a punishment for crime, is a violation of the sound principles of legislation, and ought never to be endured: that if any evil beyond that of simple confinement, be supposed necessary to complete the due punishment of the crime, it ought to be evil of another sort than the secret miseries of a bad and ill conducted prison; it ought to be an evil selected by the Judge, proportioned to the case, and applied in such a manner as to operate the most forcibly upon the minds of others. If this be certain, (and we should like to hear the argument by which it is to be controverted,) the consequence is inevitable;-That all misery in prisons, not inseparable from the confinement, instead of being cherished and preserved, as some men would have it to be, should on the other hand be carefully and studiously removed. If the reformation of the criminal be regarded as a great and important end, another reason presents itself against the infliction of misery in prisons. A being under all the exasperated feelings which perpetual misery creates, the sort of misery engendered in bad and ill conducted prisons, is not in a situation favourable to reformation, but the very reverse. This sort of misery hardens the mind, and ends either in stupefaction, or a determined spirit of opposition full of hatred and the desire of revenge. It is ascer tained by the most incontrovertible experience, that the most potent of all the instruments of reformation is gentleness and sympathy. The noble experiment of Mrs. Fry, the value of which can never be sufficiently prized, has afforded a new and signal proof of this important fact. It is not by inflicting misery upon a prisoner which hardly any body sees, and which nobody is the better for, that his heart is to be softened and his ear opened to the voice of the instructor. It is rather by removing all evil from him, but that which can be shown to answer an important end. He can be led to see that the pain which he endures is really the fruit of his own actions, where it is well calculated to prevent the repetition of such actions, and where it is evident that without the prevention of such actions the happiness of other men cannot be secured. He can there see that it is not out of malignity to him, (a thought which hardens and depraves,) but out of regard for others, that he is made to suffer, and that such suffering is not more than is required for the end. If it be asked what is the limit to the accommodations which, under this notion of humanity, are to be allowed to the prisoner, the rule of economy sufficiently answers that question. Whatever is to be done at the public expense should be done in the cheapest possible manner. Nothing should be provided beyond what is absolutely necessary: as a fence against physical ills, the apartment should |