FORMER CONVICTS AS EMPLOYEES

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 131, 19 June 1937, Page 15

FORMER CONVICTS AS EMPLOYEES

Bad Human Prospect %

"J EMPLOY over 1100 men," says Christopher Rollinan in the February Forum and Century, "and there isn't an ex-convict among them. There isn't going to be an ex-convict among them. I will not hire a man who has served time in an American pendtentiary, has been either justly or unjustly imprisoned, and proven .bo. Whatever his story, I do not want him." "My ' hard-boiled ' stand its, I hope, constructive. When an American penitentiary gets through with a nlan he ds unflt for American industry. Even if he entered prison innocent, he will still be a very bad human' prospect for an employer in my position after a few years of prison life. The man whose application I pidze most is one who knpws how to cultivate rootn in a decent communty; become a solid, respectable citizen, whose presence among a small army of employees will be a stabilising inffuence. "I have done what few of a prisoner's sponsors, clergymen and •social workers, have done: I have visited penifentiaries. I have seen human lives timed to a grinding routine, seen the brutalising discipline which must be employed to keep so many erowded, desperate men in subjection. I have seen men living together, two or three in a single cell, , on a jammed cellblock. I have smelt the same smells they have, hayo seen unbekevably crude sanitary systems in operation. I have seen them work to pass tinie at joba to which no man can bring a spark of interest. "The penitentiary strips a man first of pride, makes him a nurober, not a name, reduces him to a common uniform. He has forfeited the right of free diiscussion and free association with friends of his own; his mind in-. evitably thinks in terms of preying rather than of producing. 3^or the duration of his sentence, a man mraet forget the standards I seek on the application blanks of men who work in my plant. I owe too much to my workmen to allow at large dn my plant a man who has had the inltiative . ground out of him, who has been trained to intrigue for the simple things that other men take for granted: tobacco, reading matter, a few extra minutes of conversation. Apart from this, the

odds are heavily in favour of his becoming a social problem in a big plant. So I address my challenge to my State and my nation: "Keep your convicta or make citizens out of them." "If the end of prieon is punishment, the deliberate breaking and brutalising of a man who is ultimately going to be turned back into the eommunity, then let the State find a use for the human husk that is left. Don't ask industry to do it. "No man should serve his sentence and then step out into the world. There should be a twilight-zone for a yeir before release, where the dull, demoralising routine of penitentiary life can be put bel.ind a man. For thie year I would lct a man become accuetomeq to we&r the clothes of a free world again. I would let him work, earn money, free him from his prison companione, teach him to save and pay his weekly bills for board, lodging, and incidenfahs. I would put books at Ms disposal, lectures and entertainment. There might even be a varlatlon of the CCC scheme where these last-year men could be given a taste of healthy outdoor life . to drive the prison poison from their bodies. The man who serves the flrst year in prison, mark you, is thfh convdct that the authorities must deal with dnring the course of his term — ^but the man who serves the last year is - the man who is thrown on the eommunity. "I hear too often that I drive men back to crime by not employi&g them. It puts the responsibility on me, where it does not belong, and shifts it from the State, where it doee belong. I know he may be driven back to crime, but if the State has prepared him fox> notMng else the problem is too big for me to handle. As "a taxpayer I support eonvicts. I should like to pay a little more to provide- each of them with a year of training not in broom-making or beadwork, but in the art of being * good eitizen. Convicts have lost their citiaenship — let us make citizens of them.'* • "Until then, I stand pat against every intercessor who visits my office with the cause of a convict to plead. I don't want the produet of the American penitentiary in my plant."