Convicts and Ex-Convicts
Williams, Michael
CONVICTS AND EX-CONVICTS THE day after the last riot at Auburn, every reader of the newspapers knew that the blame was not all on the shoulders of the prisoners; that some of it was on the state,...
...And so long as the application of the law is automatic on a fourth offense, judges will be passing life sentences, often against their will, on persons who are obviously not to be classed with thugs or murderers...
...A full-time parole board would be able to seek out these cases, and to lend assistance...
...that some of it was on the state, and that some of it was on himself...
...The deficiencies of our prison system had long been known to the authorities...
...This program looks to us neither like romancing, nor like a product of the temper which regards a prisoner as a brute who should be stuck away to rot, conveniently out of the sight and smell of society...
...With this board should be connected an employment bureau, the value of which should be understood by anyone who realizes how difficult it is for the ex-convict to find a job which will permit him to "go straight...
...It is no one's duty to help deserving prisoners who, lacking friends and money, are powerless to start themselves on the way to liberty...
...And it ought to arouse a general interest, although it has been specially devised for New York state where the Baumes Law has sometimes acted against persons of criminal habit who are much more in need of psychiatry than of punishment...
...That report, which is humane without being in the least wishy-washy, reflects an attitude toward the prison problem which seems to us perfectly sound...
...And so, in a way, the rebels ought to be regarded as public benefactors...
...George W. Alger calls "the baseless assumption that all convicts are alike, all are desperate, all are dangerous, and all must be incarcerated under the same conditions...
...We wish we knew of some scheme, less wasteful and dangerous than a riot, but equally disturbing to the general complacency, whereby we might concentrate attention on the report of Governor Roosevelt's special committee on paroles...
...He knew that modern prison science demands the maintenance of many small prisons, permitting the segregation of prisoners according to a precise classification...
...It is no one's duty to determine whether any fourth offender deserves another chance at freedom...
...Our machinery for getting men into prison may he full of holes...
...Give them a chance to hope...
...The committee believes that prisoners who never will be able to fill acceptable roles in the outer world, because of degraded or perverted natures, should remain in the care of the state even beyond the period of their maximum sentence, and that the parole board should have authority to find ways in which this might be done...
...But nowadays we sometimes wonder whether the story of last year's prison riots will have its just sequel in a readjustment of prison conditions soon enough to prevent another mutiny...
...And there should be a department for post-parole supervision, adequately staffed so that its work will not be done superficially...
...by dramatizing them the riots brought them to the attention of the man in the street...
...But it also believes that the prisoner who is worthy of parole should be advised and actually assisted to find his way in the world, for while the case-hardened criminal is a burden to society, the ex-prisoner who is doing a good day's work, as a mechanic, let us say, is as important and valuable to the rest of us as any other mechanic...
...Public interest, which was not awakened by the warnings of penologists several years ago, and which can be kept alert only by excitements, is going back to sleep...
...He was told that large prisons are bound to be troublesome because a system created to accommodate the average cannot successfully extend itself over a thousand men...
...At present it is no one's duty to distinguish between these and other cases...
...The committee recommends first of all the appointment of a full-time parole board so that the parole system will not be in the hands of men who have other connections, and to them more important ones...
...The trouble is that action has been slow to follow the discussion which they evoked...
...He realized that prison walls cannot be built high enough and stout enough to prevent men who have been deprived of hope from attempting to escape...
...But so is our machinery for letting them out...
...And above all get rid of what Mr...
Vol. 11 • February 1930 • No. 17
