CHAPTER XXIV THE SOUTHERN ILLINOIS PENITENTIARY AT MENARD The Southern Illinois Penitentiary at Menard has an inmate population largely of farmers and miners. The professional and habitual criminals are not as large an element there as at the State Penitentiary at Joliet. Many men are committed from the rural counties to Menard for what would be considered small misdemeanors in metropolitan centers. The prison inmates return to towns and open country. It is not to be assumed, however, that the prison is devoid of the hardened criminal and the gangster from the mining regions and from small industrial cities. A. OCCUPATIONS More than one-half of the prison population is employed in two quarries, each with its own crusher, one inside the wall and one outside the wall. The product of one of the quarries, as at Joliet, cannot be sold but is furnished to counties for road-building purposes, while that of the other is sold on the open market. All new men are assigned to the quarries except those apparently physically unfitted for such heavy labor. The detailed personal history for each man enables the officers who are much better acquainted with the individual inmate than at the other institutions, to select for lighter work those of slighter build; those of intelligence and training for jobs in offices; and skilled farmers who can be trusted for the honor system. When men come in as criminal associates a gang, in other words an effort is made to disperse them by assigning them to different work and cells far apart. One of the quarries is becoming exhausted and the quarry work, even with two quarries, could be conducted efficiently with 350 less men than are at present assigned to the work. The futility of using 1,043 men in the quarry, so many men that they are in each other's way, when rough-breakers, steam shovels, dump cars are available, is obvious to anyone. In the occupations of pick and hammer work and of stone-crushing for convicts lurks a tradition of ancient standing long prior to the invention of quarry machinery or the growth of our present knowledge and attitudes regarding prison labor and the rehabilitation of the criminal. Any work is preferable to the idleness of 1,043 men, but why not introduce industries? Why make men feel that we are creating futile, burdensome, monotonous tasks for them, wasting their days? Our civilization tolerates this only in prison. The present administration of the prison made the following statement for the Committee: "The productivity of the quarry labor could be maintained with twothirds of the present number so employed and labor could be directed into other channels that would probably show better returns and at the same time enable an inmate to pick up the rudiments of a trade which he could put to some advantage when released." IDLENESS There are fewer vain, "busy-work" and soldiering assignments here than in other institutions, but the idle time that could be conserved would amount to one-third of the inmate manpower of the institution. TAILORING Second to the quarries as the leading industry is the clothing manufacturing, which employs seventy-five men. The product is entirely for use in the State institutions; civilian clothing, "dressout" suits are manufactured here and ample opportunity is given the inmate to learn the operations of the clothing trade carried on by factory methods. The overall factory in the same building, on the upper floor, as the clothing manufacturing employs about forty-seven men. Because the sewing of overalls is not a man's occupation by and large in the outside world, there is little or no opportunity here for a young man to learn a trade. This department also employs a younger set of lighter physical build. If an apprenticeship plan were worked out by which inmates were promoted from overall to the "dress-out" clothing in due course, this employment would give the men more incentive, and would have greater learning value. The knitting factory manufactures about one-third of its product for the open market and two-thirds for institutional use, provides a lighter occupation, and employs about fifty-two men. Its learning value is doubtful as most of the operations in this type of knitting are women's work outside. A brick yard with an output of about 2,000,000 bricks a year employs forty-six men and keeps them occupied as laborers. Under a single roof in a shop building all on a single floor are the carpenter, paint, blacksmith and electrical auto-repair shops. There is no lathe work in the machine shop but there is considerable bench work. All of the usual repair work for the institution is carried on in this shop. It is possible to attain considerable manual skill and to do interesting work here. Men without previous training can become very good handy men in the repair of many kinds of machinery and in wood-work. With an outlook toward training for farm labor the handy man with a good deal of manual skill is more adaptable than even the finished mechanic with skill at operating machine tools. In this building about 116 men are employed. The institution, with its large farm machinery and its plant departments, presents a great variety of jobs and repair work. FARM AND GARDEN The farm and garden industry (including truck and the lawns and gardens about the institution) employ about 107 men distributed as follows: "The administration as well as the inmates are proud of their select herd of cattle. Inmates as well as officers boast that it is the best in the State, and are as proud and attached to the hog farm and the chicken ranch. A great deal of the milk, meat and eggs used in the prison is derived from the prison farm." The cattle, hogs, and chickens are all cared for by trusted inmates of the prison, some of whom sleep outside of the prison walls and others who work outside during the day and return to the prison at night. Before a prisoner is allowed to go out on a trust task of this nature he signs an honor pledge. We are told that there is very little disciplinary difficulty with these men. Farm work, especially the work in animal husbandry, when it is done on a systematic basis according to good methods, engenders both an attachment of the men to the animals and a pride in their work and product. Only at Southern Illinois Penitentiary do the inmates boast about their institution. A large farm is worked by inmates, where garden products and grain are raised. Among the crops planted are: corn, timothy, strawberries, peas, oats, wheat, melons, potatoes, onions, alfalfa, beans, and other vegetables; also, cherries, raspberries, rhubarb, tomatoes; cabbage is also grown. The scale and method of the farm work, the use of farm machinery, the quality of animals and products, are a store of practical training useful to anyone returning to the home farm. For the man who will return to a town the work is instructive, healthful, and interesting. If an inmate is fortunate and is transferred to work outside the wall the combination of ample occupation with the honor system provides a good basis for judgment on a man's character. PLANT AND MAINTENANCE The power plant, steam laundry, ice plant, pork house, all furnish additional occupation with more or less value as instruction. Some of this work, supplemented by school instruction applied to the work can be made a form of vocational training. The usual opportunities in supplying the daily needs, barber, the officers' kitchen, hospital and dispensary, library work, clerical work, auto truck driving and the business and administrative offices, all have some value as experience provided the proper selection of man and job is made and the work is arranged with a view to learning and progress. B. THE SCHOOL Especial thought and analysis have been given to the problem of the organization of the school for academic and cultural education at Southern Illinois Penitentiary. A schoolmaster has been engaged who has analyzed the school problem after classifying the prison population for the purpose of instruction. A recent special report from him to the Committee has the following headings: This analysis of the feasibility of schooling for adult prisoners eliminates any lurking impression that prisoners lack the intelligence to profit by education. His observations with regard to education as a factor of treatment are enlightened and to the point. "During the period of his incarceration the prisoner may by study become interested in leading a normal life, and since his mind is occupied he is more easily managed and leaves the prison with better attitudes toward society than he would under antiquated methods of prison management. "At present, due to the overcrowded conditions of penal institutions, all the energies of penal officials are directed along the lines of guarding and disciplining. Whatever he may acquire along the line of self-improvement through his own efforts and any help that the institution may give him consistent with good discipline, reacts favorably toward that institution and is in keeping with the aims and ideals of all progressive criminologists. The purpose of the prison school can easily be seen and as such it should be the aim and duty of a penal institution to change if possible the attitude of the offender toward society and assist him to a normal mode of living. "In relation to discipline within the prison, not being able to read and reason for himself, he becomes dependent upon others for advice and information. He consorts with the worst types and becomes worse instead of better in his attitude toward society." He finds that the teaching problem in school is not difficult; that discipline in the schoolroom is neglible as a problem. Some of the illiterates in the institution, who number 33 per cent of the whites and 53 per cent of the colored, show some resistance to going to school; but in the process of analyzing their school problem the schoolmaster discovers that this resistance is due to lack of progress, which is in turn due to defective eyesight, defective hearing, poor home conditions during childhood and lack of compulsory-educationlaw enforcement in the home community. Such physical defects as have a bearing on this resistance to schooling can be adjusted and immediately selected for treatment; resistive attitudes, socially caused, wear away as soon as the pupil enjoys progress. The school is organized at present to take care of the most urgent needs, those of the illiterate and near-illiterate. The fact that these are adults is taken into consideration in the approach and method; a great deal of the system is entirely individualized, the texts when used are such as have been written for adults and other supplementary material is furnished by the schoolmaster. Having surveyed his problem he selected from the inmate population his material for his teacher-staff; these are men with considerable high school education, full high school education or more. Much of the work is cell instruction. To the schoolmaster who has had first-class teaching staff equipment and building, it would seem that at present the new schoolmaster at Southern Illinois Penitentiary is making bricks without straw. However, in his recommendations and plan for the future, which have grown out of his practical approach, analysis and experimentation, he has an outlook for a proper school building, for a proper teaching staff, textbooks especially written for this kind of school, for a specific time schedule, for compulsory attendance of the illiterates and near-illiterates and more especially "the fostering of a spirit of cooperation between the school and other officials of the institution to the end that it will be recognized that anyone who attends school is paying his best to society as well as he who performs other duties." LIBRARY Into the process of arranging his school the library has entered as a factor, and with the creation and stimulation of cultural needs, he is constrained to vitalize the library. Since all school attendance, except for illiterates, is voluntary, he has advertised the school among the inmates by a direct letter entitled "Educational Activities." In this letter it appears that he has at once had to reach out to other sources than the present prison library for books. "You have the privilege of books from the library. Deliveries will be made at regular intervals to the cells. The men who deliver the books and collect the books will explain the methods and times for securing the books. If you want some special book not in the library you can get it from the State Library at Springfield by paying the postage charge. Read books for your own development." |