As all things end, prison sentences are generally finished. The prisoner
is given a new suit of clothes that betrays its origin and will be
useless after the first rain, ten dollars in cash, and he goes out. His
heredity and his hard environment have put him in. Now the state is done
with him; he is free. But there is only one place to go. Like any other
released animal, he takes the same heredity back to the old environment.
What else can he do? His old companions are the only ones who will give
him social intercourse, which he needs first of all, and the only ones
who understand him. They are the only ones who will be glad to see him
and help him get a job. There is only one profession for which he is
better fitted after he comes out than he was before he went in, and that
is a life of crime. Of course, he is a marked man and a watched man with
the police. When a crime is committed and the offender is not found, the
ex-convict is rounded up with others of his class to see, perchance, if
he is not the offender that is wanted. He is taken to the lock-up and
shown with others to the witnesses for identification. Before this, the
witness may have been shown his photograph in convict clothes. Perhaps
they identify him, perhaps they do not; if identified, he may be the
man or he may not be. Anyhow, he has been in prison and this is against
him. Whenever he comes out and wherever he goes, his record follows him
as closely as his shadow. Even his friends suspect him. They suspect him
even when they help him.
Such is the daily life of these unfortunates. What can be done? I can
see nothing that the officers of the law can do. Officers represent the
people. They reflect mob psychology. Even though an officer here and
there rises above the crowd, as he sometimes does, it is of no avail.
His place soon is filled by someone else. If only the public would
understand! If only the public were more intelligent, which in this case
at least would mean more human! If only the statement I repeat so often
could be understood! There are no accidents; everything is the result of
law. All phenomena are a succession of causes and effects. The criminal
is the result of all that went before him and all that surrounds him.
Like every other mortal, he is a subject for pity and not for hatred. If
society is not safe while he is at large, he must be confined and kept
under guard and observation. He must be kept until he is safe and a
favorable environment found for him. If he will never be safe for
society, he should never be released. He must not be humiliated, made to
suffer unduly, despised or harried. He must be helped if he can be
helped. This should be the second, if not the first object of his
confinement.
Assuming that the scientific attitude toward crime should be accepted by
those who make public opinion, and that this should become crystallized
into written law, the problem would be easy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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