But can we afford to trust ex-convicts? Must we not keep a strict eye on
them? If the strict eye were also a friendly one, it might be of some
avail. But our hand is against them, and we need not wonder that theirs
is against us. Not only are we their enemies when they emerge from jail,
but (as has been repeated interminably by every investigator who has
been qualified to speak on the subject) jails are the best and only
schools of crime. In other words, we first educate men to be criminals
by putting them in places where they can learn nothing else, and then we
keep them criminals by shutting against them, when freed, every
opportunity to earn food and lodging in legitimate ways. And then we
complain that they are not to be trusted.
Neither can men fed on poisons be trusted to be well. Jail life is
poisonous; I think it was Judge McLeland who said, last summer, "Our
million dollar reformatories offer university courses in bestiality and
crime; it is as logical to send a man to jail to make him better as to
shut him up in a garbage-can to improve his digestion. Forty per cent.
of those who go to jail, go back again," he added; "one man went back
one hundred and seventy-six times. Others are sent because they are poor
and cannot pay a fine, and they are there made real criminals."
An instance of this occurred in a Georgia chain-gang while I was in
Atlanta.
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