THE PRISON SYSTEM

White Ribbon, Volume 18, Issue 5, 1 June 1946, Page 7

THE PRISON SYSTEM

“RECIDIVISM”

One of the most difficult things to understand is how and why people, even after great suffering as the result of certain actions, come to repeat them, thus incurring, or at any rate inviting, a repetition of the suffering. One sees it in all sorts of places. One of the most common examples is that of the girl who, after all the trouble and suffering caused by having a child while still unmarried, before very long goes through >t all again. poor drunkard, who may come beiore the bench for his hundredth conviction, is vet another.

Once I had a nice cat, who found herself the delighted mother of a family of kittens. She was quite happy with them in a shed outside for some days; and then, one morning, she staidly walked past me in the kitchen carrying one of her infants in her mouth. Without any hesitation she went into a room w-here a large cupboard was. The door of this was never quite closed, the catch being defective. IV s poked it wide open, and laid her baby down on the floor among some rag bags kept there. I picked up the kitten and carried it out again. Within three minutes the performance was repeated. I shut the door of the kitchen. Like magic, puss was in at the window of a room on the other side of the house, again steadfastly making her way to the cupboard. Exasperated, 1 scolded her; and taking the baby out again, helped puss out with a lift of my slipper to emphasise my irritation. Relieve me, that cat spent the whole morning doing the same thing. I smacked her, scolded, stamped and stormed, even threw- water over her and her infant; but nothing could stop her weary, constant return to the attack. I forget just what happened in the end, hut the incident made me think. Something in the mind, or the instinct of the animal, was responsible for the blind, unremitting determination to put her offspring inside the house; and nothing I could do made any difference. She was completely the slave of the impulse to ensure safety for her child. Some criminals arc just like that. Reading some of the literature on American prisons, one is completely horrified by the severity of the punishments meted out for some offences. Horrors are not quite a thing of the. past in the States, although great efforts are being made to eliminate them, and to bring the prison system into line with the most enlightened ideas; hut in some of the separate State prisons there is much to deplore. The question is asked, “Do those who undergo such terrible misery, and even agony, ever risk a repetition of it : ” And the answer is, “There i« a fiftyfive per cent, recidivism What are w-e to make of that? A good deal suggests itself. One is almost forced to the conclusion that

the poor wretches are driven by some force within themselves which is bevond their ability tc deal with. It is just like my cat; who really could not help herself. It is worth while to try to find out, if we can, what causes this oblivion to consequences, dreadful though experience has shown them to he.

Science, medical and psychological, has gone into the problem very deeply. In many instances some pressure on a part of the brain, some purely physical cause, has been at work, perhaps all through the man’s life. If this can he located, and perhaps, as is sometimes, mercifully, the case, dealt with effectively, the man becomes normal, readjusts himself to ordinary life, and his strange tendency is gone. In other cases, the trorble is one to he investigated by the psychiatrist. Deep waters, these; hut justice demands that everything possible should be done for the man w-ho “keeps on keeping on,” even against his own w-ish and will.

Recently I heard of a man who said that he would advocate that all men guilty of offences against little girls and women should he flogged, and told that in about six week> the dose would be repeated, after they had got over the first one. “That would stop them,” lie declared. How easy! The facts are all opposed to this course, or any similar one, being a remedy. As a matter of fact, it is stated, by those who know, that such treatment is exactly the kind to produce such reactions in the culprit as will infallibly end in the Repetition of the crime. We speak of wanting our system to he a protection for the community. Let us then make up our minds to one fact. This is that the mere infliction of suffering and misery is not enough to ensure tha* a man who has done a terrible thing in the community will not do it again. Some would say, “Then let (hem he kept in jail so that they will not he able to do the same thing again.” Common sense shows that in ?. few- years there would not he room in the country to build jails large enough to accommodate the numbers. Xor would there he money enough to provide for their safe keeping. Surely some better way suggests itself. The way of understanding, and of removing the cause of the criminal impulse if this can he ascertained to he capable of elimination. In one state in the U.S.A., a hoard of no less than eleven specialists investigates the circumstances, physical, mental, hereditary, economic, spiritual, educational, environmental, etc., of each person who is to undergo trial for crime. Each specialist makes his report, and everything learned is at the disposal of those who are to pronounce sentence.

It is worth thinking’about, is it not?