THE prison is a makeshift and an escape. It is not a solution. We would hide our sins behind its walled towers and barred windows - conceal them from ourselves. But the prison is an open grave. It returns what we would bury behind its gray walls. Its darkness and isolation only make the sins we would forget fester and grow, and return to stalk in our midst and plague us more painfully than ever. We would cover up our sins of omission - - for that is what crime and criminals largely mean in the world by adding sins of commission. That is imprisonment. Having failed to straighten the lives of criminals in childhood- to bring sweetness and light, understanding, comfort and good-will when it was needed, we justify our negligence by scorning the spirits we have thwarted, by breaking the bodies we have bent.

It is our attempt to escape accountability for the crimes we have committed against the men and women we call criminals. The prison is a reflex. It mirrors our hardness, our weakness, our stupidity, our selfishness, our vengeance, our brutality, our hate everything but love and forgiveness; everything but our understanding and sympathy, everything but our intelligence and scientific knowledge.

Properly conceived, the prison should be our special means of redemption. It should be a healing ground for both the spirit and the body, where the unsocial should be socialized, the weak strength

ened, the ignorant educated, the thwarted made to grow; where a kind of resetting takes place for the tasks of life, and where the strength to meet responsibility is returned to those who have lost it and awakened in those in whom it has remained dormant; a place where the joy of living and laboring is born anew. Crime is a consequence. It is not a cause. We are responsible for its existence.

II

"The first thing is politic, - just politic, that is it, just politic. You get a Republican and maybe he is a good sucker, and then in a year or two you get a Democrat, and he is a bad one, or the other way around.'

One of the others interposed: 'Jimmy is right. He knows what he is talking about. Why not make the prison like a business, where you pick the right man and let him stay as long as he makes good.'

Here Jimmy broke in: 'Let him stay -I tell you it's all politic.'

We were sitting around the large stove in the yard of Auburn Prison, talking about prison problems. The stove, a large field range, was surrounded by about thirty prisoners, who were busily cooking extras. Some were frying pancakes, some broiling steaks, some were cooking tomato soup, and a group of Italians was preparing spaghetti. While this was going on, others were feasting on the food already prepared,

mostly seated on the ground in groups of three or four, with boxes as improvised tables. There was chattering and good-humor the circle round. It was Saturday afternoon, and the men were out in the yard - eleven hundred men. While the group I was with busied itself about the stove, others were playing handball or checkers; still others were walking about the yard, talking. Some were sitting in the shade, reading; some, congregated in groups, were throwing horse-shoes. It was a busy, quiet, cheerful crowd.

I had been let loose in the yard to visit with the men and had found many friends. I was told by the sergeant, a tall, broad-shouldered, redheaded, round-faced fellow, with large blue eyes and a quiet voice, a man possessed of enormous reserve powers, that this stove was one of the campaign pledges which this administration had promised to the men- the prisoners' administration chosen at the last election. 'We carried this pledge out, but the others have been more difficult. Our campaign pledges included the organization of an automobile class, a drawing class, and the stove. So far we have only one thing - the stove; and I say the boys enjoy it.' That was quite obvious to me who had shared a large plate of spaghetti.

I had asked what, in their opinion, was the first need in prison and they had agreed: 'Take politics out.'

That is a good place at which to begin. Professionalize penal administration. The ordinary warden is chosen for his political allegiance; a good political reason, that, but socially no reason at all. The prison problem looked at from the administrators' point of view is a problem of education and health, complex and many-sided. It involves deep knowledge of human nature, insight into the complexities of social life, appreciation of the possibilities of per

sonal growth and of human motives, willingness to face questions of sanitation, personal habits, hygiene, workmanship, and coöperation, in a careful, scientific, and deliberate fashion. It is not merely a job to hold down, but a problem-or, rather, a thousand problems, requiring analysis, examination, and experiment. A man, to be fitted for the job, - and ideally there is no such person, - approximately fitted, in spite of all the shortcomings of human weakness, must be the best-trained and bestprepared person in the field, and must have a broad basis of human sympathy and understanding.

The small henchman, from which class the average warden is recruited, is not an expert in anything, least of all in education and health, nor does he usually possess an imagination active enough to embrace the thousand opportunities in a prison field. He is usually ignorant. There is hardly a college man among the wardens of our penal institutions. I do not insist that a college education is in itself a full requisite; but it is, by and large, better than no education at all.

Let me illustrate by describing a typical warden. I first saw him in the death-house. He was standing near the electric chair, explaining its details to two old ladies-small and wrinkled, gray-haired, and both over sixty. He is a tall, broad-shouldered man, with a long head, large nose, big mouth, and large gorilla hands. He was explaining in great detail how the electric chair operates. With his sagging stomach and huge bulk, he stood, a giant, beside two white-faced, whitehaired pigmies. He talked in broad drawling tones and he said, "The man's head is fitted in here and strapped, the middle of it is shaved, the arms are strapped this way, and the feet here with the trousers torn open for the current. The witnesses stand here, the re

porters here, and the electrician stands here, with his hand on the switch. When all is ready and in good shape, I step forward and raise my hand,' pointing a long finger to his breast with an expansive gesture; 'the electrician pulls the switch, and bump goes the man. And if he does not go bump, we do it over again.'

I watched his pantomime and listened to his recitation with amazement. A boy saying his prize piece before an admiring audience of elders could not have been more self-conscious, and better satisfied with himself. The little, old ladies were captivated by the show, and beamed. We walked into the prison proper, and while sauntering through the corridors, the warden spied a retreating figure in gray. Stretching out his long gorilla hand, he bellowed: 'Hey, Willie, come back here.'

Willie was a half-witted prisoner. He was small, round and squatty, with a partly bald head, and a foolish grin, which stretched to his ears. He approached bashfully, with his eyes cast down.

"Sing a song,' bellowed the warden. 'I don't want to sing,' appealed Willie.

'Sing I tell you.' The warden's voice was louder still, and more authoritative. Willie opened his mouth, and in a cracked voice began the song, Sweetie, my sweetie.'

The warden towered over him in all of his satisfied bulk. Willie had hardly begun, when a keeper in the next hall shouted, 'Goddamn you, shut up in there!'

Willie hesitated a minute, glanced at the towering figure in front of him, and continued. The keeper, club in hand, rushed out of the next corridor, noticed the warden and the visitors, and scuttled off hastily. Later, in his office, the warden leaned back in his chair, his stomach protruding over the desk, lit a

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big black stogie, and said with a satisfied smile, 'I treat my boys right.' He does, according to his lights. He gives them moving pictures once a week.

Such a situation must be made impossible. A centre for the training of prison officials should be established. This school might best be situated near, or in conjunction with, some large penal institution, itself a model of modern administration, and no one should be appointed to a position of responsibility in prison unless he has a good collegiate education. In addition, a prison official should have taken special post-graduate courses in penal problems. No man should be a warden unless he is a certified and trained professional; just as no man is placed in charge of a hospital unless he is a graduate of a recognized medical school.

III

We must destroy the existing prison, root and branch. That will not solve our problem, but it will be a good beginning.

When I speak of the prison, I mean the mechanical structure, the instrument, the technique, the method which the prison involves. These must go by the board - go the way of the public stocks, the gibbet, and the rack. Obviously the penal problem will remain. That is here anyway. The prison does not solve the penal problem - it does not even contribute to the solution. It is only an aggravation. It is a complication of the disease. It is a nuisance and a sin against our own intelligence. Let us substitute something. Almost anything will be an improvement. It cannot be worse. It cannot be more brutal and more useless. A farm, a school, a hospital, a factory, a playground almost anything different will be better.

The suggestion for the destruction of

the prison building is not revolutionary. It is not even novel. It is a practice of old standing, to keep prisoners outside of prisons; a practice not universal, but sufficiently widespread to justify the suggestion that it could be made universal without prejudice. In many prisons a number of the men are kept outside of the prison proper. Men building roads, men working on prison farms, trusties around the place, are often allowed to remain outside the walls in some cases, hundreds of miles away from the prison, with only a guard or two. In the United States Naval Prison at Portsmouth, during the war, more than half the prison population lived in wooden barracks, surrounded by a small wire fence, and with only prison inmates for guards. In the South-Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana - the men live so much outside the prison that the old structure is useless and an anomaly. In Arkansas, for instance, I found that the prison, built to hold six hundred men, contained thirty most of them condemned to death; the rest were away on a farm. Prison farms are not ideal, but they are an improvement on the old cell-block! Those who argue that the old prison, with its isolated cells, its narrow windows, its high walls, its constant dampness and semi-darkness, is essential to the proper handling of the prison population are simply revealing their own incompetence, fear, lack of insight into the technique of association. The old prison is a relic of a dead past. It is a hang-over; a weight, and a hindrance against the development of new methods and new ways.

An old prejudice dies hard, and the old prison building is an ingrained prejudice carved out of stone. It is saturated with the assumption that criminals are desperate, vicious, sin-ridden, and brutal beings, who needs must be confined in buildings founded on despair

and made strong against the craving for freedom; that man is incorrigible and hard, and that hardness and pain are his proper due. But all of this is mainly prejudice. The men in prison are unfortunate rather than vicious, weak rather than bad. They need attention rather than neglect, understanding rather than abuse, friendship rather than isolation. Those who would redeem the community from constantly sinning against the prisoner must achieve this new attitude toward the man behind the bars. The buildings are by-products of our prejudice. That is the first thing that must be battled against.

This hang-over is still so strong, that there are at present two prison buildings being constructed out of newly chiseled stone. The stone is new and white, the plans are penciled upon paper still unspoiled; but the spirit, the idea, the belief, the ideology, in which these buildings are being reared, are old, wormridden, petrified. But they are being constructed. Two of the largest states in the union - Pennsylvania and Illinois - are constructing them, spending millions of dollars upon a useless and condemned type of institution.

The Pennsylvania structure is simply a modern adaptation of the old cellblock type; essentially the same thing, but with new trappings. The building in Illinois is of greater pretensions. It is reputed to be escape-proof, and is hailed as a model of modern ingenuity. As a matter of fact, it is not new at all. It is an old idea. Jeremy Bentham, in 1792, suggested it under the entertaining title of 'Panopticon,' and described it as a 'mill for grinding rogues honest, and idle men industrious.' In its modern form, it is a circular structure containing some five hundred cells. It is built so that there is air and sunshine in every one of them. Its unique feature is that one prison guard can watch the