856 THE CRIMINAL GROUP 



conviction that if the perpetrator of a criminal act is an object of 

 blame, he is also an object of pity, and that, if his crime merits 

 reprobation, he himself may nevertheless be capable of reformation. 

 This is not a new idea. The inefficacy of punishment has in all ages 

 impressed the consciousness of those by whom it has been inflicted. 

 Pope Clement XI declared it to be absolutely inefficacious, unless 

 accompanied, in its administration, by a reformatory regime. The 

 moral motive of the penitentiary system in the minds of philan- 

 thropists and statesmen like Howard, Blackstone, and Bentham was 

 the hope of saving men. The very word " penitentiary " means a 

 place for repentance and amendment. What is noteworthy is the 

 rapid rate at which of late this conviction, this sense of moral obliga- 

 tion has gained ground in the world and modified penal law and its 

 enforcement. 



In this country prison reform began, as has been said, with the 

 establishment of state prisons, organized and governed on rival 

 methods, known as the Pennsylvania and Auburn systems. The 

 former, also called the solitary system, 1 provided for the isolation of all 

 prisoners both by day and by night; the latter for their isolation by 

 night only. By day they were employed, at Auburn, in association 

 in large prison workshops; but to prevent mutual contamination, all 

 conversation between them was strictly prohibited. The well-meant 

 purpose of each of these systems was the same. Their authors and 

 advocates argued that crime is contagious, and that the remedy is 

 quarantine. The result hoped for by them was reformation; and 

 the road to reformation was believed to be by the way of discipline. 

 At Philadelphia the prisoner was left to his own reflections; inter- 

 rupted by occasional brief visits from volunteer prison visitors. At 

 Auburn he was flogged for talking contrary to the rules. Odd 

 impressions of the criminal were then generally current. Captain 

 Elam Lynds, the warden in charge at Auburn, held that no large 

 prison can be governed without the aid of the lash. The directors of 

 the Massachusetts state prison exhorted all its employees to think 

 of it as " a volcano filled with burning lava," and laid down the rule 

 that the discipline " must be as severe as the law of humanity would 

 tolerate, in order to conquer the mind of the convict and reduce it to 

 a state of humiliation." In Connecticut prisoners slept at night with 

 their feet fast to iron bars and their bodies attached by chains around 

 the neck to a great wooden beam. On the occasion of the first 

 religious service held in the Walnut Street Jail, in Philadelphia, the 

 jailer, by way of precaution against riot, and to insure the personal 

 safety of the officiating clergyman, had a cannon placed in the yard, 

 and stationed a guard beside it, holding in his hand a lighted 

 match. 



1 But more lately, first the " separate " and then the " individual " system. 



