The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58) — John Shaqi
The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58)Pennsylvania Prison Society
History
The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58)
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
Other instances of the persistence of the traditional attitude toward
the offender are the almost complete lack throughout our penal system
of a scientific, balanced ration, such as has in the experience of
prison administrators in other States, as notably at Sing Sing Prison
in 1916, and more recently in our army camps, demonstrated the value
both for health and efficiency and from the point of view of economy
of a scientific management of the problem of food supply for large
masses of men; the general indifference to outdoor recreation and
exercise, so essential to the health and morale of the inmate body;
the meagre provision for any education worthy of the name; the all but
complete lack of comprehensive and well rounded systems of vocational
or industrial training, on which the efficiency of prison labor and the
ability of the inmates to “make good” in the world of industry after
their release so largely depends; the demoralizing idleness which is
still after three decades of effort the most marked characteristic of
our prison system; and, finally, the insufficient care for the physical
and mental health of the inmates of our correctional institutions,
which still for the most part mingle indiscriminately together the
tuberculous and syphilitic with those who are sound in body and the
insane, psychopathic and defective with those who are sound in mind.
Many of these conditions which continue to put the brand of the prison
on the inmates of our correctional institutions are doubtless due to
the survival of the Bastille type of prison architecture, which is
exemplified in the Eastern and Western Penitentiaries and in such
structures as Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia, the Convict Prison at
Holmesburg, the Philadelphia House of Correction and many others. It is
scarcely too much to say that no human being is vile enough to deserve
confinement in such a place or dangerous enough to need it. Even the
most unbending of the old type of prison official will concede that
80 per cent. of the inmates neither need nor deserve to be confined
behind triple bars of steel or in cells like catacombs or within walls
like those of Egyptian tombs. Keepers and inmates alike lose half their
humanity by confinement in these grim and forbidding structures. No
reforming influence however humane and generous, can long survive in
their atmosphere.
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