"Coddling criminals"--the alliteration makes it roll
pleasantly off the tongue!
But do I forget the many indulgences given to prisoners--and so
profusely celebrated in every mention publicly made of Atlanta
Penitentiary? Let me name them once more. Saturday being a non-working
day, it used to be the custom to lock the prisoners in their cells from
Saturday morning till Monday morning--a custom still followed at many
penitentiaries; for how could they be controlled if not split up into
working gangs, and thus prevented from conspiring to mutiny? It is one
of the obsessions of prison authorities that the prisoners are severally
and collectively a sort of wild beast, always straining at the leash,
and ready at the least opportunity to break forth in wild and deadly
disorder. It is obviously expedient, too, to impress the public with
this conviction, and therefore, in part, we have the clubs, rifles, and
general parade of watchfulness. As a matter of fact, meanwhile, nothing
is more easy to handle than a prisonful of convicts, if the most
elementary tact be used; and they are eagerly grateful for the smallest
unforced and spontaneous act of kindness.
Until about eighteen months ago, however, severe restrictions were in
vogue, and the warden declared that it was his belief and policy that
men in prison should be taught by precept and illustration to regard
themselves as dead to the world; that they should be held practically
incommunicado, no visitors, letters at most but once a month, no
conversation between prisoners--silence, solitude, suffocation in this
terrible quicksand of jail for months, years, or a lifetime, at the
mercy of men to whom mercy is a jest.
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