The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. VIII, No. II, April 1853)Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons
Religion
The Pennsylvania Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (Vol. VIII, No. II, April 1853)
Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
4. Whether it will be necessary and desirable, after a certain
period of confinement, to exercise all prisoners in association,
and whether the removal of both the long ranges of exercising-yards
will be sufficient for such purpose.
5. Whether the garden at the back of the prison might not be
advantageously cultivated by prisoners selected from those who may
have been a certain period in confinement.
6. Whether dispensing with the mask would be likely to be attended
with a beneficial effect.
We should have been gratified to know the answers which were returned
to these pertinent and important inquiries. We think the second
question would puzzle the wisest commissioner that could be found,
whether association will be the cause of a more favorable effect of
separate confinement on apparently the same class of prisoners! Or to
vary the phraseology, what is likely to be the effect of association
upon separation! In the absence of any report from the medical officer,
and with the health report of the preceding twelvemonth before us, we
cannot doubt that some misapprehension has arisen from exaggerated and
possibly fictitious representations.
A new chapter of observations and conclusions is opened to us at
Millbank by Dr. Baly, the visiting physician. It will be remembered
that no little discrepancy of opinion occurred a short time since
between the resident and visiting physician of the penitentiary at
Pentonville,[A] and hence we should feel disposed to suspend full
confidence in the present statement, till we know what the other doctor
has to say. But one or two facts may be safely cited, which will serve
to show how entirely irreconcilable some theories on this subject
are with each other, and with the actual phenomena. Of eight insane
convicts transferred during the year 1851 from Millbank to the Lunatic
Hospital, five were decidedly insane when received into the prison. The
aggregate of eight years gives us sixty-five cases of insanity among
7,393 convicts, of whom thirty-five were insane when received, and nine
of the remainder were of very low intellect, and only twenty-one were
of sound mind; of these twenty-one, thirteen recovered in the prison,
leaving only eight all told, or about one in 1,000 as sufferers, in
this form, from their incarceration! What prison or what mode of
discipline can show a better result than this?
[A] See Journal of Prison Discipline for April, 1852.
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