WHAT IMPRISONMENT MEANS

Otago Witness, Issue 2934, 8 June 1910, Page 86

WHAT IMPRISONMENT MEANS

An intensely human document appears in the Hibbert for April under the heading " Concerning Imprisonment," written by "Cme Who Has Suffered It." The editor vouches for the bona fides of the writer, who served four years and a-half in an Australian prison for misappropriating money at a time of financial embarrassment. He pleaded guilty at his trial, and is now well advanced in years. The editor '' offers this article to readers as helping to throw some light on one of the fundamental problems of society." Only one who has experienced imprisonment can know what prison life really is. " The greatest possible ignorance of the subject and collateral callousness among the general public are thus perfectly, natural conditions. How can any be qualified to convey information concerning a world of the dead but those who are, or have been, its citizens." The writer writes of what he personally knows. And " thus dreadfully instructed he affirms that, did men and women realise what imprisonment actually means and is, they would immediately free all prisoners by main force, put the personnel at undepraving work, and make any continuance of the horrible thing impossible." This writer follows the successive principal stages of imprisonment from arrest to the beginning and end of the sentence. Needless barbarities are inflicted on the unfortunates, and some of them are laid very bare. Imprisonment has made a. tremendous impression on his character. "After having foolishly pleaded guilty and received sentence, some of us singletime malefactors asked a fellow-sinner who "; .d been there twice before: 'What is it really that we are going to?' 'Hell!' iij replied. The hopeless misery of his eyes begets a fresh shudder whenever that scene lives again in memory." Each successive stage is pictured in tremendously realistic pictures. The heart-breaking monotony of the days go on. The prisoner "crawls back each night a beaten animal, in a worse plight, relatively, than any animal under the heavens."

The years pass by, " and a day-comes when the' prisoner is discharged. He leaves the prison with every faculty of his intellectual and corporeal organisation seriously weakened." His health has most probably suffered seriously. He is, out of harmony with the whole scheme of things. He is ignorant of the life into which he has stepped. The prison stain clings to him, and he is well adapted to fail. The writer then, makes five points against imprisonment, and these he elaborates at length. The first is that" " Imprisonment is slavery. None of the distinguishing features of slavery are absent. The essence of slavery consists in forcibly depriving human beings of their right to labour as and where it may suit them best, and to receive and enjoy the fruits of that labour." The second is that " Imprisonment is a school' of crime, creating criminals ; creating and increasing a distaste for labour; creating adultery, harlotry, and insanity. It furnishes the means of an education otherwise unattainable to many for the perpetuation of criminality." The third point is that "imprisonment furnishes prisoners of a. low moral grade with an excuse for indulgence in practices which cannot even be named, without offence." The fourth point is that "imprisonment destroys men morally, • physically, and mentally. The state of imprisonment is so unnatural that were a man, thus held, provided with proper food, lodging, and occupation, his normal health could not possibly con-, tinue." The last point is that "imprisonment is wholly evil in its effects. By whatever margin of creational equipment a human being is superior to a beast, by so much is that human being's condition inferior when the key turns and he or she is left locked in the kennel henceforth replacing what has or her home." ■ Lengthy illustrations of terrible evils are given in the article, and it must continually be remembered that they are from the pen of one who has suffered some of the things which he writes. The system of imprisonment hurts all who touch it. " There is no office which a human being is less qualified to fill than that of gaoler. Here he is not descended from the ape, but from the wolf. Once give a man unconditional power over his fellow and the brutalisation of the one becomes complete as the brutalisation of the other." And so, as seen through this sufferer's eyes, imprisonment is all bad. It fails to do what it is supposed to do—prevent crime. As a deterrent against crime it fails, for the records prove that two-thirds of the prisoners in gaol have been previously convicted.