The warden cleverly seized the opportunity to take
credit to himself for all the improvements, and to circulate
industriously in the local papers the praise of the model penitentiary.
But neither did he fail to take advantage of the new situation to
tighten his grasp upon the reins of control. The majority of jails, in
addition to the ordinary spy system operated by officials, organize a
supplementary one composed of convicts themselves--stool
pigeons--certain carefully selected prisoners, who are rewarded for
treachery to their fellows by various indulgences and secret liberties.
The principle is detestable, and has evil effects. The stool pigeons
themselves are of course the basest members of the community, and the
other prisoners, soon learning to suspect them, come at last to a
miserable distrust of one another--for the comrade apparently most
sincere may be at heart only a more artful traitor. In this, they play
into the officials' hands, whose theory of government is fear, and who
find aid to themselves in the mutual misgivings and hatreds of their
charges.
Evidently, the relaxations of the baseball afternoons afforded a capital
opportunity to the stool pigeons, and the results were soon apparent.
The spies, in order to curry favor with their employers, reported not
actual infringements of discipline only, but guessed at what might be,
and even invented what was not, often by way of retaliation against
personal enemies.
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