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Show A SENSIBLE PRISON REFORMER.<br><br> We do not take much stock in "Prison Reform," not because we doubt the necessity of reform, but because we lack faith in the methods of most of the "reformers." But Mr. A. S. Meyrick writes in the International Review on "Improvements in Prison Discipline" like a man of sense and sound principle. He admits to the full the justice of the punitive principle of the criminal law, and has no sympathy with the milk-and-water theory of crime -- that the criminal is diseased, not guilty, and should be imprisoned only in order to be reformed by a course of moral hygiene. But he also insists that society cannot afford to stop at the mere punishment of crime; if possible, crime must be eradicated, and not merely restrained. The only effectual way to eradicate crime is to reform the criminal; or, if that cannot be done, to confine him permanently.<br><br> It is agreed that our prisons are now little more than schools of vice. One who has once been incarcerated in them comes out worse than he went in, a more acute and desperate criminal than before. More than this, he has been infuriated by the severity of the punishment, and sent out hardened and reckless to wage an unrelenting war against society. Every criminal is capable of being reformed or he is not. In the former case he ought to be given a fair chance to redeem himself; in the latter he ought to be held fast. As Mr. Meyrick says:<br><br> "We do not turn loose the savage beast because we have failed to tame him; we do not release the victim of acute mania whose paroxysms have become chronic - and we owe it to ourselves at all hazards and at any cost to make the bonds of the confirmed criminal sure and strong. It were better a thousand times to kill him, as our fathers did, than to allow him to go forth not only himself to prey upon society, but to inoculate the young, the weak and the viciously inclined with his abominable distemper. So long as we let him live, we are worse than weak if we fail to make him live where he cannot practice the evil that is in him.<br><br> The practical step proposed is, such a reform in our criminal law as to make the sentences of criminals indeterminate or partially so. A certain absolute period of imprisonment should be prescribed as a punishment for the crime; but the convict should remain in prison beyond that time if necessary, and until he has given as good evidence as is possible of reform. A Board of Examiners appointed for the purpose should alone have the power to release a criminal, on being satisfied that he has shown a real disposition to reform. Then our prisons should be so re-organized [reorganized] as to keep separate different classes of criminals, in order that old and hardened offenders might not be able to corrupt those younger and better disposed than themselves. Beyond a certain task, necessary for his own support, prisoners should be encouraged to earn money by extra labor, which should be paid over to them on their release.<br><br> There can be little doubt that some such system would do much to dry up the sources of crime and empty our prisons. There can be as little doubt that society will be obliged, sooner or later, to strike at the root of crime, instead of applying surface remedies which only aggravate the trouble. - New York Examiner. |