and interested in getting all of the labor possible out of his employes. He was given the power to choose his own officers and guards and, in fact, he himself paid for the services of his personal officers and guards. He would be desirous of a steady and a permanent force and would naturally be unwilling that any man be released before the end of his sentence of imprisonment. He would not desire to have his slaves manumitted. EMPLOYMENT IN OUR PENITENTIARIES Of course idleness in our penitentiaries should not be tolerated. There can be no doubt that general lack of employment is one of the greatest defects of our Illinois and of our other American institutions; that work properly done is the surest proof of reformation and of fitness for parole. No reformation can possibly be accomplished when men for months and perhaps years are compelled to remain in idleness. According to a recent report of Mr. Louis N. Robinson to the National Crime Commission, employment is recognized as essential in all European correctional institutions and this is the case in England and in Germany in spite of the fact of the large number of unemployed in the free population. Employment even is furnished when men are waiting for trial. We should, however, in no instance allow our prison wardens or those who are directly entrusted with the care and supervision and reformation of the convicts to make a personal profit from their labor. This was the defect of our earlier experiments. It is not our intention at this time to enter into an elaboration of the prison-labor contract system, but merely to call attention to the fact that the early legislation of Illinois on this point could only be justified on the ground of economy and was inconsistent with and disastrous to any theory of reformation. Being inconsistent with reformation, it would be inconsistent with any rational theory of parole. As will be shown later on in this report, the problem of furnishing prison employment has not even yet been solved in Illinois. On its proper solution much of the future of the system of parole depends. CHAPTER VII THE HUMANITARIAN MOVEMENT, THE CREATION OF A REFORM SCHOOL FOR JUVENILE OFFENDERS, AND THE MODIFIED PAROLE OR TICKET-OF-LEAVE SYSTEM IN RELATION THERETO THE PROGRESS OF REFORM After the year 1847 there was decided evidence in Illinois of the influence of the humanitarian and democratic revival which was world-wide in its origin and of which the movement for the abolition of slavery in America was but a part. Crime came to be looked upon by an increasing number of persons as a symptom of moral disequilibrium and the criminal as a person of limited responsibility. Oliver Wendell Holmes had written "the best way to train a child is to begin with his grandfather." Lacassagne had given expression to the thought "there are no crimes, only criminals." Studies had been made of criminal propensities, a notable later example of which is Dugdale's "Study of the Jukes." In his Utopia, Sir Thomas More had long since uttered the bitter complaint that society "first made criminals and thieves and then punished them." Bulwer had expressed the thought that "society has erected gallows at the end of a lane instead of guide posts and direction boards at the beginning." Studies in heredity and environment had convinced many that the reformatory held the greatest promise of achievement; that no system, however remarkably devised, would ever succeed in totally obliterating criminality, but that at least some possibility existed of inculcating new motives, and, if not reforming the criminal entirely, making him less dangerous to society upon his release. Men, such as Archbishop Whately, had protested against the severe punishments practiced in the British penal colonies. Maconochie, the superintendent of a penal colony in the Norfolk Islands. had established a system which allotted a prescribed number of marks to every convict, depending on the nature and character of his offense, and which he was required to redeem by good behavior before a ticket of leave was granted. Flagellation was gradually coming to be abolished throughout the civilized world. Men and women were beginning again to read the principles of "The Social Contract" and the writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, Turgot and Condorcet, David Hume, Adam Smith, Tom Paine, Jeremy Bentham, and the Italian Beccaria. Montesquieu had written "As freedom advances, the severity of the penal law decreases." Romilly, Beccaria, Howard, and Elizabeth Fry had all spoken and labored. Sir Walter Crofton in his Irish system had inaugurated a grading and classifying system. Whately, Combe, and the two Hills, had advocated the indeterminate sentence, and Marsangy, a parole system. Montesanos and Obermeyer had placed emphasis on productive labor. In America the Philadelphia Reformers and the Society of Friends had laid the foundation for a humaner criminal jurisprudence. In Connecticut and Rhode Island the Christian reformer, Henry Barnard, had pleaded for the criminal children of the poor and had quoted the eloquent protest of W. C. Osborn, the chaplain of a Bath jail, who, in speaking of the whipping of juvenile offenders, said: "They have been cuffed and knocked about their whole life long by drunken and brutal fathers and mothers, so to them it is no new thing. If we look at some of the crimes they are called crimes of which these poor children are guilty, what do we see? They run away from the workhouse-their home, they have no other and what is the penalty? They are sent to jail. Are the children of the middle classes sent to jail when they run away from home or boarding-school? A few months ago some orphan children ran away from a union workhouse and went to see the races; they were caught, brought back, and sent to prison for taking away the union clothes, which they had on them. At the same time the son of a governor of a union house ran away from home for the same purpose. And when he returned was he imprisoned? No! and we do not wish that he should be; but why, then, should we punish by imprisonment in a felon's jail the fatherless child, while his destitute condition pleads for mercy and forgiveness at our hands?" Sympathy was in the atmosphere the New Testament had overcome the Old. What was true in the world at large was true in the State of Illinois. THE FIRST STATE REFORM SCHOOL AND THE BEGINNING OF PAROLE In an Act of March 5, 1867, we find a provision for the creation of a reform school "for the discipline, education, employment, and reformation of juvenile offenders and vagrants in the State of Illinois (Cook County excepted, there being a reformatory already established here) between the ages of eight and eighteen years." And in Section 17 of this Act, we find perhaps the beginning of the parole system in the State of Illinois, in the provision that "When any person is committed by any court of competent jurisdiction to the reform school, or growing up in mendicancy, ignorance, idleness, or vice, the reform school board shall be constituted the guardian of his person, and said board may detain him until his reformation is deemed complete, or he shall have arrived at the age of 18 years; and they shall have power to bind out, under the most favorable conditions, with consent of said minor, if over 14 years of age, to any inhabitant of this state, and the said board master or mistress, apprentice or servant shall respectively have all the rights, and be subject to all the duties set forth by the statute laws of this state, relative to apprentices, guardians and wards. "Said board shall also have power to permit such persons in their guardianship as they shall judge fit subjects for such treatment, to be placed out under the care of any proper person or persons in this state, on 'ticket of leave'; and such person so placed out, may be kept and retained by such person or persons during the pleasure of the board, and subject at all times to their regulation and control. A MORE COMPLETE SYSTEM OF PAROLE FOR JUVENILE OFFENDERS The Act of 1867 was followed a number of years later by an Act of June 18, 1891, which provided that "Sec. 16. The said board of managers shall have power to establish rules and regulations under which prisoners within the reformatory may be allowed to go upon parole outside of the reformatory building and enclosure, but to remain while on parole in the legal custody and under control of the board of managers and subject at any time to be taken back within the enclosure of said reformatory; and full power to enforce such rules and regulations to re-take and re-imprison any inmate so upon parole, is hereby conferred upon said board, whose order, certified by its secretary and signed by its president with the seal of the reformatory attached thereto, shall be a sufficient warrant for the officer named in it to authorize such officer to return to actual custody any conditionally released or paroled prisoner, and it is hereby made the duty of all officers to execute said order the same as ordinary criminal process: Provided, that no prisoner shall be released on parole until the said board of managers shall have satisfactory evidence that arrangements have been made for his honorable and useful employment, for at least six months while upon parole, in some suitable occupation." As far as juvenile offenders are concerned, the Act of June 18, 1891, is our most important Act. It may be questioned whether the prior Act of March 5, 1867, was a Parole Act at all, but merely a provision for an enforced indenture or apprenticeship under the form of a "ticket of leave." There can be no doubt, however, of the nature of the Act of 1891. It definitely established a parole system as far as male juvenile offenders were concerned. CHAPTER VIII THE ABOLITION OF THE LASH AND THE PUNISHMENT OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT THE ABOLITION OF THE USE OF THE LASH AND THE SUBSTITUTION OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT We have seen that in the year 1838 and during the incumbency of Governor Reynolds the use of the lash as an instrument of punishment for the original crime was abolished. It was not until 1867 that its use as a means of prison discipline was discontinued. Prior to 1867 the punishment was frequently and mercilessly inflicted, but we have serious doubts as to the authority of the warden, since, although in the Act of 1833 nothing was said concerning flagellation as a means of prison discipline, in the prior Act of January 6, 1827, the powers of the warden were defined and those powers did not include the use of the punishment mentioned. This Act provided: "Sec. 13. The said warden and other officers, agents, and servants, shall each of them have power to order any convict to solitary confinement, for misbehavior, refractory conduct, idleness, negligence in performing their daily task, impertinent or improper language, or breach of any of the rules and regulations; and shall immediately report the same to the said warden, and the warden shall punish such convict therefor, by solitary imprisonment, for any term not exceeding thirty days, or may discharge the said convict from the imprisonment ordered by the said warden, officer, agents, or servants." After 1867 there could be no doubt of the invalidity of the practice, and on page 30 of the Session Laws of that year and in Section 37 of Chapter 81 of the Statutes of 1868, we find the following provision : "It shall not be lawful in said penitentiary to punish any convict by whipping in any case whatever. If, in the opinion of the Warden, it shall be deemed necessary in that case to inflict unusual punishment, in order to produce the entire obedience or submission of any convict, said Warden shall have power to punish said convict by solitary confinement in a dark cell and by deprivation of food except bread and water until such convict shall be reduced to submission and obedience." In an Act of July 1, 1871, this section was amended so as to strike out every reference to solitary confinement and merely to provide : "Section 37: It shall not be lawful in said penitentiary to use any cruel or unusual mode of punishment or to punish any convict by whipping whatever." |