DESIGN OF PENITENTIARIES IN RESPECT TO THE TREATMENT OF CONVICTS, ACCORDING TO THE VIEWS OF THE DIRECTORS OF THE CONNECTICUT STATE PRISON, WITH REMARKS.
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"Upon the subject of the general treatment of the convicts, and the discipline of the institution, we would remark that the State Prison is designed to be, and emphatically is, a place of PUNISHMENT. The feelings of humanity and mistaken mercy should not be suffered to interpose, to disarm its punishment of that rigor due to justice and the violated laws of the land. While a proper regard is had to the health of its inmates, their comfort should not be so far studied as to render it a desirable residence, even to those whose condition in society is attended with the severest privations. When this becomes the case, our criminal code becomes a bounty law for crime."—Sixth Report, page 94.
This is throwing off the mask completely, and boldly declaring that "punishment," SEVERE punishment, a punishment in which there is no tincture of "humanity," is the design, and emphatically, the discipline, of that prison. The comfort of the prisoner is not to be sought in any way inconsistent with punishment without humanity. His reformation is not to be sought at all. A more unsound and disgraceful principle of penitentiary discipline, was never avowed by any similar committee in this country before; but it is the very one on which all American penitentiaries are governed. "That rigor due to Justice and the violated laws of the land!" Yes; "Justice and the violated laws," demand "rigor." It is not enough to have the sinner securely confined—he must be uncomfortable. His health must be attended to; let him live; but his cup of gall must be full and overflowing. Let him live—not for comfort, but to groan in the ear of heaven the "rigor" of "Justice" and of the "violated laws." Punishment is God's "strange work," his "strange act," but it is the common work of his creatures.
According to my views of a penitentiary, it is not unqualifiedly, a place of punishment, but a place of reformation, to be effected by the mildest means, and to be under the constant direction of humanity. Cruelty never should enter its walls. Satan was no more out of his place in Eden, than is cruelty in a place of reformation.
As to a criminal code's becoming "a bounty law for crime," when its discipline for prisons is such as to render them a desirable residence, to those who are suffering even the "severest privations" in society, that Committee need have no fears. There is no danger of any prisons ever becoming so mild as to be a desirable residence for any one. Take the purest apartment in heaven, and confine a seraph there, and the simple fact that he was a prisoner would make his home a hell. The Devil himself would prefer liberty in the world of woe, to imprisonment even in Paradise—freedom with damnation, to salvation with restraint.