Thursday, May 10, 1928.
CRIME INCREASE
IS DUE TO LAXITY
HOME DISCIPLINE
So Says Prison Supt. Geo. Ross
Pou in Article By Well
Known Writer
PUNISHMENT IS CHANGING
BION H. BUTLER
One day when Abraham Lincoln
was a practicing lawyer in Spring
field, 111., he went into the jail to
see a prisoner who had been a client.
In their talk the'man remarked that
the two of them had ;r.'o’;aV.y een
in every jail in the country Lincoln
protested that except for this jail
and one down in Sangamon he had
never been in jail in his life. ‘‘Well,
I have been in all the rest, said the
prisoner, “which makes the state
ment correct.” Possibly I have been
in more jails and penitentiaries than
any other man I know. The range
runs from California to the Atlantic
states, with a pretty fair smattering
in between. So when I dropped in
to Raleigh prison the other day it
was no new thing. It was merely
another page in that great problem
story that commenced the day Cain
slew’ his brother Abel and went forth
among men with a brand on h:s brow
that all who saw him might be made
aware that he had sinned.
The prison is perhaps the most
tragic manifestation of the relations
between man and man. It is the au
thority that law assumes over indi
vidual privilege. It goes so far as
to take life, or to segregate men
from their fellows and to deal with
them as harshly as occasion seems
to justify. It is the evolution, af
ter long years and ages of war on
that thing we call crime, of a scheme
to punish men for crime. Formerly
individual dealt with individual. Mo
ses laid down the law. an eye for an
eye and a tooth for a tooth. Modern
practice has fixed different penal
ties, detention and punishment, but
detention is a more modern consid
eration than punishment. Punish
ment is losing- some of its empha
sis as the idea of salvaging is becom
ing- more pronounced. Today it is
the aim of the penal institutions to
help the prisoners to gain a new
slant on life, and to be more obser
vant of the law that defines how
far one man may encroach on what
another regards as his rights. A
modern prison is a penal institution.
It is a school, a training station, a
red flag to warn men that they may
not walk along certain paths with
out encountering a penalty that laws
have fixed. Yet it is a problem, and
men are divided as to the methods
that should be followed in carrying
on the penal institutions.
In May, 1921, the State Prison had
but 729 inmates. George Ross Pou
says that by May 1928, the popula
tion will be about 1,900. It was 1,-
872 at the first of April and increas
ing daily. Four years ago the prison
population was i,240. Two years
ago 1,486. It is increasing now at
the rate of more than 200 a year.
This big increase is presenting to the
State a complex proposition, for con
stantly more facilities are required
for caring for this large number of
people who must be cared for under
peculiar conditions. Offenses against
the law are increasing with shocking
swiftness, yet not as swiftly as new
laws are made by legislation to be
broken. Nobody knows the laws any
more, and not many persons are in
terested any longer in caring what
all the laws are. Yet Mr. Pou says
that he ascribes much of the increase
in prison population to the break
ing down of home relation and dis
cipline and attachments. About 67
per cent of the prisoners received
are under 30 years of age. One
fourth of all are under 20 years.
About 10 per cent are over 40. It
is the young people who are filling
the prison. Laborers constitute the
large majority—about 65 per cent.
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| Pittsboro, North Carolina
Farmers offer 15 per cent. The
other 20 per cent comes from 54
different callings. Only three per
cent had finished the third year in
high school. One-third cannot read
and write. Eighty per cent used
whiskey. Nearly 80 per cent arriv
ing were convicted for the first time
and 14 per cent for the second time.
This shows again that the prison is
a young man’s game. Half were
married. Two thirds had never at
tended school or never finished as
fas second grade. Two-thirds had
attended church and Sunday school
before coming- to prison.
Farmers offer 15 per cent of the
arrivals. That is emphatically low
in a state as largely agricultural as
this. Laborers more than four times
as many. Five white to three neg
roes is about the way the proportions
are running now. It was formerly
one white to three negroes. And the
figures get us to this conclusion. The
sons of white men, boys with little
home restraint, boys not in school,
boys with little instruction in trades,
or skill in work, boys who are given
to liquor and to little contact with
the uplifting influences, afford the
recruits for Mr. Pou’s training
school.
I doubt if any man of an inquiring
turn of mind can go to the correc
tional institutions of the State as I
have been doing the last few weeks
and not be impressed with the tre
mendous work the institutions are
doing. My visit to the Morrison
school for colored boys gives me a
big insight into the problems of the
penitentiary. The Morrison school is
taking boys who might have been
graduates for the Raleigh higher-up
institution had not the Morrison
school grabbed them out of their in
different habits and their undesirable
surroundings and set them on a
more profitable road. I anticipate
the same conclusions, when I get
around to Concord and Rocky Mount,
and I am thoroughly impressed with’
the training school, and satisfied
that these lower institutions are
taking care of a vast amount of work
that without them would have been
left for Mr. Pou’s school, for the
truth is that he is trying to take
up the work of training those who
come to his hands, although at a
time in the lives of many of them
when their habits for more rigidly
fixed than is desirable.
It is not to be imagined that the
prison has merely a corrective work
on its hands. It is only lately that
North Carolina, along, with other
states, has begun the sociological
studies that are resultnig in a chang
ing attitude toward all delinquents
and perversions. A number of the
prisoners brought to the State Pris
on in the past were mentally defec
tive, and now under wise legislation
they are classified as criminal insane.
They are in a class that requires
much different handling than the
sane offenders. So provision is made
for them in separate quarters. They
are insane, and must be handled with
regard for their mental affliction.
Another limited number is of the
type that might be called criminal
perverts, or persons with criminal
instincts. These are not many. They
are about as helpless as the insane
as far as salvaging them is concern
ed, and they constitute a serious
problem of the problem. One man
place or another some 45 years. He
confesses that he does not know' why
he proceeds to offend and get in jail
again after he has served one sent
ence, but he comes back after a brief
duration outside. I knew a similar
case in Pennsylvania. I heard the
story of a man of 70 there as I was
locked in the cell wdth him, and he
told me that over 50 years of his life
had been spent in jails and peni
tentiaries from Michigan to West
Virginia and New' York for the one
offense of stealing horses. “Yet I
never had any more use for a horse
than for a locomotive, and never got
away with one for more than a few
days or weeks,” he told me, “and al
ways got back into jail. And I am
going to be convicted for stealing
the horse that got me in here now,
for it is as plain as the lock on the
door there that I stole it, and if I
live to serve the sentence I will prob-
ably steal another one. And why,
I have wondered many a time.”
But the prison problem is not these
in the prison has been in custody one
peculiar few. It is the large propor
tion of the men who are fairly nor
mal who come for the first time, and
most of theip come for one class of
offenses —stealing. The March com
mitments show that of 87 persons ar
riving at the prison 59 came because
of a mistake in the ownership of
property, that distinction between
whether it is mine or thine. Larceny,
robbery, housebreaking, receiving
stolen goods, stealing cars, burglary,
highway robbery, breakino- and en
tering, and the other forms which
larceny can take. Our prisons seem
to be crowded largely because of a
disregard by our young people for
the property rights of others. And
it is decidedly a grave situation.
Mr. Pou classifies his people in
three grades, A, B, and C. Cis the
bottom grade, and includes those who
are not very hopeful of making- into
good citizens. It includes those who
are not of the highest type mental
ly, and more inclined to infractions
of the law. The grade includes prob
ably 15 per cent of the prison popu
lation. Grade B is the largest in
numbers. More than half the pris
oners are in B. This is the type
that is content to drag along with
the crowd, showing little ambition
to rise, and slight tendency to fall.
Nearly a third of the whole number
is in Grade A, and these are the
hope of the movement. They have
shown inclination to walk straight,
and have been given priviliges that
show approval of their efforts.
Stripes are taken off of them, they
are not kept behind locked doors,
and are treated more as employes
than as men detained unwillingly.
One-third of the white males are
trusties, and one-fifth of the colored
males. They work with very little
supervision except as to the charac
ter of their work, just as freeman
have the oversight of their foremen.
Mr. Pou says the policy of the
prison is to impress on the prisoners
that they can find a better course in
life, and serve themselves to more
profitable end by taking a helpful
place in society when they go out
into the world again. He undertakes
*to make the institution more or
less of a training school for those
who by accident, intent or environ
ment have come under his care. He
makes it plain that they come to
him through no desire of his, but
through their own contact with the
law, that they owe a debt to society
for their infraction, and are here to
pay it. He tries to show them that
the State xvants to help them to be
useful citizens, and that while the
State temporarily takes their liberty
it is not taking anything else from
them. The new arrival is treated
like a man, and an effort is made
to establish the man’s confidence in
his ability to mix with other men
again, and to make a place for him
self by proper action. “We don’t
want a man to go away from here
with the idea in his head that he is
going back to get even with society
for sending- him to prison,” said Mr.
Pou. “We try to show' him that
what he got he earned for himself,
and that he must forget the past,
and live for a better future.”
That is the basis for the large
number of 700 men in the four hon
or camps, two for whites and two
for blacks, where one employe to
see that the men check in at night
is the sole force of guards, and
where escapes are far lower than
among the men who still wear the
stripes. “That seven hundred is a
good salvage,” Mr. Pou thinks, “and
if we could not send back to their
homes more than half a dozen men
to follow right courses it would be
worth the effort,” said the Super
intendent. And there is the thing
that impressed me with the work the
State Prison is doing. George Ross
Pou is seeing the problem that con
fronts in State of North Carolina in
the attitude men are taking toward
law', and he is making a good record
in putting the men in his charge on
a better understanding as to what
laws mean in the relation of man to
man. So he tries to teach men to
do useful things. He attempts to fa
miliarize them with efficient work,
and with sound ideas of accomplish
ment, and of the worth of applied ef
fort, of production of things that
have value, of the use of their time,
and of the solid things that enter
int-o fa’ v contracts of men with men
and of the processes that bring jus
tified successes. He aims to secure
the benefits of that discipline which
permits a man to govern himself, of
work which breeds dependable habits
and of that self-respect which enables
a man to believe in himself. It may
sound somewhat sentimental,' but his
honor roll of 700 men is evidence
that his plans are working. Flogging
men is no longer a method of im
provement in the prison, Mr. Pou
tells me. He has found other ways
of correcting insubordination. He
has his problem. That C grade is
DR. J. C. MANN
the well-known
EYESIGHT SPECIALIST
will be at Dr. Farrell’s
office, Pittsboro, Tuesday
May 22, and at Dr.
Thomas’ Office, Siler City
Thursday, May 24, from
10 a. m. to 3 p. m.
THE CHATHAM RECORD
almost hopeless. But the B grade is
hopeful if neutral, while the A grade
i s salvation.
Two big farms, one for whites and
one for blacks, afford employment
and occupation for many of the pris
oners. Camps at a dozen or so points
employ others. The prison shops, in
cluding printery, mattress works,
culvert factory, tailor shop, etc, oc
cupy others. In all about 80 per
cent of the population are at work
in revenue producing occupations,
and the prison is self-supporting, and
more. Yet to keep the men em
ployed is a part of the problem.
Much opposition is felt from various
sources toward nearly anything the
men are engaged in. But if a man
is to be brought back to safe foot
ing in society he must be permitted
to be a worker and not a parasitic
loafer denied the right to share in
the world’s daily tas|cs, and he must
be allowed to learn how to work ef
ficiently and with profit.
The prisons are not a charge on
the tax payers. They constitute a
wholly different problem than that
of supporting them from the public
purse. They are paying their own
way, and to my notion the State
Penitentiary is one of the most valu
able training schools in the State.
It works with a peculiar clientele,
not necessarily a bad type, although
a proportion of its population is
delinquent and some of it degener
ate, but when we remember that of
the total number received only 20
per cent have come the second time
the work is evidently succeeding.
When four out of five go back home
and walk straight the test is pretty
high. Our prison is a problem, a
grave one, or represents the out
come of a grave problem, but it
seems to be doing what it is designed
for, and to me it deserves much more
help from the people than it gets —
not in money for it is self-support
ing, but in understanding and in cor
dial moral support that is uplifting
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influence may be much more posi
tive and emphatic.
The femaie population in the pris
on is insignificantly small, about one
in 25, and nearly ail are in the
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My judgment is that our State
has a far better type of prisoners
t-han the industrial states with big
cities, for the character of their
crimes does not have the finger
marks of the studied and confirmed
criminal. We are not in the Chicago
or New York class by any means. I
imagine that the majority of Mr.
Pou’s graduates will make good
citizens, and that they are entitled
to the backing of the home folks
when they return to their old com
munities. Only one out of five
comes again to the prison. The
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