Ways of Convicts

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 121, 24 May 1937, Page 8

Ways of Convicts

MENTAL OCCUPATION Self-expression is a word we meet frequently these days. Many people regard it, and what it stands for, as one of those new-fangled words for 1 things respectable people used not to have, like complexes, says a writer in ‘ the Adelaide Chronicle. Actually self-expression -was one of 1 the first urges felt by man. The consciousness of it probably marked the ’ first stage in our development from a biped animal not far superior to the ape, to what we are now pleased to call civilised man. And homo sapiens heralded the dawn of his intelligence by scratching hieroglyphs on tho walls of his cave. I think every mother will agree when I say that babies, too, mark the dawn of their intelligence by scribbling on everything that lends itself for that purpose. Not far removed from the cave man and the young child are the inattentive schoolboys who scribble all over their textbooks or surreptitiously carve their desks; the young lovers who cut arrow-pierced hearts on trees in the parks. Lacking the intellectual resources which are the food of the mind, they cannot remain physically inactive without satisfying the unconscious, atavistic urge to express tho meagre crumbs of thought floating aimlessly in their vacuous minds; the infant by meaningless scribble, the boy with names, reflections, and crude sketches of his masters and schoolfellows. The old proverb about idle hands, like so many proverbs, is only a halftruth. It is idle minds, not hands, that keep the devil busy allocating jobs. This simple truth, obvious though it Is, has been overlooked by prison authorities all over the world for centuries. Even in this co-called enlightened age it has not been fully comprehended; unless it is that the authorities deliberately disregard the dictates of common sense and persist in treating self-expression and mental occupation as luxuries to be doled out sparingly to erring men, merely from fear lest the public accuse them of pampering criminals. Thus for centuries past the walls of prison cells have resembled the caves of primitive man; they have been covered with graffiti and hieroglyphs. And not only the walls. “Drinking vessels, bed planks, margins of books, and even the unstable sands of. the exercise grounds supply him with a surface on which to imprint his thoughts and feelings,” wrote Lombroso some 50 years ago. And what thoughts they werel Terse, unprintable opinions on the turnkeys and prison life in general; bitter recriminations on an ill-spent life; despairing clamours against the injustice of a lenience. Some of the inscriptions noted by Lombroso ought to be carved in stone over tho doors of the Home Office and framed over every magistrate’s desk. “I am 18 years old,” writes one prisoner on the walls of his cell. “Misfortune has made me guilty several times, and each time I have been shut up in prison. But how have I been reformed in prison? What have 1 learned? I have perfected myself in wickedness here.” And this:—“We are kept shut up liko so many white bears under pretence of reforming us. In prison a man learns to hate society, but not to make an honest man out of a thief.*’ Despite recent reforms those words scratched by an Italian criminal on a cell wall more than half a century ago are still true to-day. But systematically destroying individuality and deliberately making the prisoner (irrespective of the nature of his offence) into au anti-social creature, and then casting him morally, physically, and financially unprepared into a hostile world, the prison system aggravates the sore it is designed to heal. Penal methods aro probably a more potent cause of criminality than drink or bad environment. High Literary Merit. It is scarcely credible that the use of books is still regarded as a concession to prisoners, and that in the punishment cells a convict is not allowed books at all, being obliged to spend hours and hours in complete idleness and solitude. In the days before the condemned criminal was closely watched night and day, the walls of the condemned cell bore some truly remarkable inscription. As on the threshold of life so soon the brink of death, the urge for self-expres-sion becomes intense. Poems of great beauty have been found scratched laboriously on the whitewash of the condemned cell, and some of the most cynical brutes have saluted society with grimly witty verse of no slight merit. Some men, incapable of expressing themselves verbally, have resorted like their primitive ancestors to pictography. In the Museum of Criminal Anthropology created by Lombroso, there are numerous specimens of criminal art; stones shaped to resemblo human figures, pottery covered with designs that recall Egyptian hiero glyphs, and scenes fashioned in breadcrumbs or clay that resemble the grotesque creation of children and savages. A certain Cavaglia, who had robbed and murdered an accomplice, decided when in prison to commit suicide ono hundred days after the date of his crime. Unable to unburden himself of this project, he adorned his water jug with a pictorial account of his crime, his imprisonment, and his suicide. Owing to tho fact that the condemned man in an English prison is never left alone, and that convicts now have many opportunities for surreptitious conversation, inscriptions on cell walls in Great Britain have become rare—tho more so because derange (which has a most comprehensive meaning in Standing Orders) to His Majesty’s prisons represents a term on bread and water in the punishment cells. But in many French prisons the practice still flourishes, and the type and tone of most of the inscriptions are a lurid reflection of tho mentality of the prisoners. “The walls of a prison,” wrote a French ex-convict in 1888, “offer a world of information and are marvellous instruments of correspandance. When I found myself at photon-on-the*

Saone, in the most secret cells, I learned of arrests made in Lyons, Paris, and Vienna on my account.” Writing of the methods by which nows is circulated, he went on: — “There is first the little cord, stretched by the- weight of a ball made of breadcrumbs, and so thrown from one window to another. There aro books in tho library which circulate covered with cryptograms. Then the pipes for" water and hot air mako excellent speaking tubes. Another dodge is knocking on the wall. It is not necessary that the persons communicating by this method be in contiguous cells. I once got valuable news in this way from a com rade 40 or 50 yards away.” The manner in which the news is re ceived and circulated in prisons is still a source of amazement to prison governors. The governor of one of tho biggest convict prisons in England relates that he heard from one of his prisoners that he was to bo transferred to the governorship of another prison three days before he received official iu timation of the fact. Everyone in the prison had known of it before he, tho person concerned, was informed. Lombroso recounts an almost identical case. Granted that the convicts now have many opportunities for exchanging information—on the'landings and in the workshops—thero is no explanation of the manner in which the. news enters prison. But it is a fact recognised by all prison officials that the world holds no secrets from prisons. Though outside news is strictly censored, convicts know everything of importance occurring outside. The inmates of every prison in England knew, for example, all about the Dartmoor mutiny, though all news of it was suppressed. Love Affairs. Hard-headed and least imaginative officials have come to admit that there is some kind of telepathy among convicts that is beyond their power to control. Though it by no means explains fully how xmsons S p ea or h ow a diversity of goods, from tobacco to hacksaws, manage to get into prison, officials know that prison visitors are often an innocent source of contraband nows and goods. One visitor was caught smuggling tubes of paint to a prisoner, believing they were for his innocent recreation. He learned afterwards that the prisoner was using the paint to fake documents. It is as true in prison as elsewhere that love laughs at locksmiths. Lombroso describes the passionate correspondence that used to be carried on between male and female prisoners in adjoining prisons. It might be imagined that such things are impossible in tho modern prisons. But Colonel Rich, who lias been governor of nearly every prison, of importance in England, states that there is a great deal of clandestine philandering in prisons where a female section is attached. women inmates especially show amazing ingenuity in making contact with convicts. In his reminiscences Colonel Rich cites a case that occurred during his governorship of Walton Prison, Liverpool. A woman prisoner who had obtained leave to practise on a piano in a recreation room had caught a glimpse of a convict doing some decorating in tho room. From this meeting a violent love affair developed, its uneven course being pursued by means of notes secreted in the piano. Unfortunately for the lovers the secret of their musical pillar box was surprised, and the idyll came to an abrupt end.