The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (New Series, No. 50) November 1911Pennsylvania Prison Society
History
The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (New Series, No. 50) November 1911
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
The hope is that the farming and the making of its equipment, and
incidentally the care of the prisoners and their quarters, will
profitably occupy practically all the available labor in such manner
as to make a man not only fit but anxious to work. It is hoped that
a large majority will be improved and many rehabilitated in an
environment which favors giving every man all the chance he will use
to reform. Moreover, it will thereby be apparent that the government
is not only strong, but so merciful and so genuine in its fatherly
desire to help each man that in turn he will cease to be “agin” the
government; that he will turn from being a consumer to become a
producer of taxes, turn from being his own and other’s enemy to become
a friend to men.
PRISONERS AFIELD.
WARDEN J. T. GILMOUR, CENTRAL PRISON, ONTARIO, CANADA.
[Stenographic report of Dr. Gilmour’s address at the annual meeting
of the New Jersey State Charities Aid and Prison Reform Association,
April 1, 1911.]
When we speak of criminals we are very apt to picture in our mind’s eye
the great criminals, those who commit atrocious crimes. But that class
forms but a very small percentage of every prison population, and the
methods of dealing with this class are much more clear and definite
than dealing with the much larger class that are not quite so dangerous
to society. When we speak of criminals we are apt to think of them _en
masse_ as a congregation of a few hundred or a few thousand men walled
within a prison. Carlyle dissipates this view when he says: “Masses?
Yea, masses, every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows--stands
there covered with his own skin; and if you prick him he will bleed.”
In dealing with delinquency there are two basic facts: that the great
majority of criminals are made in their youth and that the great
majority of youthful criminals are handicapped in life’s race either by
physical, mental or moral defects. That prince of sociologists, Victor
Hugo, evidently appreciated these conditions when he gave us that
beautiful injunction to study evil lovingly, and then, later on, he
gave the key when he said: “There are no bad weeds. They are only bad
cultivators.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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