854 THE CRIMINAL GROUP 



There were, too, it must be remembered, in colonial times, no 

 state prisons. The settlement of America, in the seventeenth 

 century, antedated the European movement for penal law reform. 

 From the middle of the sixteenth century, it is true, workhouses and 

 houses of correction had begun to spring up, here and there, in Eng- 

 land and on the Continent, but the modern penitentiary dates from 

 the war of the American Revolution, when a forcible stop was put to 

 the English practice of shipping felons to this country and disposing 

 of them by sale to the highest bidder. The prisons inspected and 

 described by John Howard were county and local prisons. Before 

 the Revolution there were no penitentiaries, even in England. 



We had a virgin field in which to experiment, and we have experi- 

 mented to some purpose. In other countries, the state or central 

 prisons are the property of the nation. In the United States, on the 

 contrary, in consequence of the partition of political sovereignty 

 between the states and the nation, under which the punishment of 

 crime is almost wholly relegated to the states, there have been, until 

 within a few years past, with the exception of naval and military 

 prisons, no prisons established and maintained by the Federal Govern- 

 ment. We have, accordingly, as many distinct criminal codes as 

 there are states and territories in the Union, with even a greater 

 number of central piisons. Our opportunities for experimentation 

 and for the comparative study of results would, therefore, have been 

 unequaled in the history of the world, were it not for the lack of 

 uniform and adequate criminal statistics, so desirable for scientific 

 and other reasons, which the federal authorities do not yet feel it 

 incumbent upon them to collect and publish. 



From this hasty and superficial sketch it clearly appears, I think, 

 that, while the prison reform movement in America has been in one 

 of its aspects, a phase of a larger movement, in which all civilized 

 nations have had a share, some of its features have been more or less 

 local and peculiar. It has been accelerated and intensified by the 

 unprecedented growth of the New World, its originality and inde- 

 pendence, its intellectual activity and fertility of invention; and the 

 peculiar bent of our national life has impressed itself upon the prison, 

 as upon all other distinctively American institutions. 



Let us cast a preliminary glance at the general trend of progress 

 throughout the world. There was a period, in the remote past, when 

 there was not a criminal code in existence, none having been yet 

 formulated. The establishment of the first code in which punishable 

 offenses were defined and listed was a tremendous step in the direc- 

 tion of criminal justice and of civil liberty, since it was a limitation 

 upon the cruel caprice of tyrants; though it may well be questioned 

 whether it has ever or anywhere constituted in practice a complete 

 check to their anger and oppression. The earlier codes were short 



