E. C. Wines, D.D., Cor. Sec. N. Y. Prison Association, No. 38 
Bible House, New York : 
Dear Sir, — I regret to be obliged to decline your invitation to 
participate in the proceedings of a “ National Congress on Peni- 
tentiary and Reformatory Discipline,” to be held in Cincinnati in 
October, by reason of the pressure of official duties at this time. 
The order of the papers to be read, and the proposed discussions 
concerning the prison systems in monarchical countries, as indi- 
cated by the “programme of proceedings,” incline me to express 
some of my own views. 
Never having been in Europe, I have no personal knowledge of 
the workings of the several European systems. But I am of the 
decided opinion that prisons should be used to deter others from the 
commission of crime, rather than to reform the prisoner. Inasmuch 
as such systems proceed on the plan of reforming the prisoner, I 
have more faith in the goodness of their purpose than in its wis- 
dom or practicability. While the prisoner should be morally, 
mentally and physically well cared for, the time for his reform is, 
in my opinion, before or after his imprisonment. 
With proper rules for the government, moral and mental train- 
ing, and development of industrious habits, the only “ mark- 2 
system ” I should recommend the adoption of, is that by which a 
gradual reduction would be made in the term of imprisonment for. 
special merit or general good behavior. 
In this State, and especially in this city, the “ probation plan,” 
so called, has been commonly practised by the criminal courts for 
many years. By it, an offender arraigned for a first offence, upon 
pleading guilty, and upon evidence of previous good character, is 
permitted to depart on probation, first giving bonds for future good 
behavior. The complaint against him is placed on file, there to 
remain, unless he is again arraigned upon some equally grave com- 
plaint. If he be poor and unable to procure a surety, the chaplain 
of our jail is allowed to become such, and in such case the govern- 
ment practically obtains control of the offender. If the condition 
of probation be violated, the surety can of course surrender his 
principal at any time. I believe this system to be judicious and 
salutary. It is within my own knowledge, that many boys and 
young men and women have been reformed by its application, and 
consequently without the ineradicable stigma of prison punishment. 
Offences should be elaborately classified, and every crime pun- 
ishable by the laws should have a fixed, equal penalty, not variable 
at the discretion of Judges, who, being human, naturally entertain 
different views of crime and punishment, and impose sentences 
according to their own ideas; the result of which is that at one 
term of court the punishment for a certain crime is fixed at eight 
or nine months imprisonment, and at the next term, for a like 
offence under similar conditions, at eighteen or twenty-four months. 
In longer sentences imposed for the heavier grades of crime, the 
disparity is much greater. 
The administration of criminal justice should be speedy, certain 
and equal. The lack of these essential conditions in our country 3 
tends to increase crime and give prisoners just and lamentable 
reasons to complain; and the great delay in the trial of notorious 
criminal cases brings the administration of criminal justice into 
contempt. 
Crime generates and grows largely in cities, and the grosser 
crimes are found most frequently where the victims of poverty and 
ignorance are obliged to dwell,, in thickly populated lanes and 
alleys, where the light of the sun never enters, where disease and 
death reign, and whence pour the streams that fill the jails and 
prisons. 
Reform the evil before it manifests itself to the public detri- 
ment ; do not wait for reform until crime is committed and prison 
life or death begun. Find remunerative employment for the poor, 
better and cheaper food, better and more healthful homes ; let in 
the light and sun where the shades of death now hide wretched- 
ness and crime ; give pure water for the poor freely to “ wash and 
be clean” ; free lectures ; free churches. We have plenty of courses 
of lectures for the fashionable and well-dressed, who can pay, but 
none for the poor; few or no churches for them, and, if any, so 
ornamented aud arranged that the poor are made ashamed of their 
poverty, and therefore refuse to attend them. By this I do not 
mean to be understood that the poor and wretched are the only 
criminals, but the poor and forsaken can be reached by proper 
measures, and others may be deterred or punished by a better en- 
forcement and more equal execution of the laws. 
I believe ninety per cent of all prisoners are susceptible to kind- 
ness, and would reform if they could. Many find the first words 
of sympathy and encouragement to reformation in prison ; poverty 
and intemperance debar them from all other sources of human 
sympathy, and lead them to crime and prison. 4 
The greater proportion of women who appear the most vicious 
and degraded while in their haunts of vice, become gentle, penitent 
and desirous to reform after they have been committed to prison, 
and become freed in body and mind from the effects of dissipation ; 
but when their term of imprisonment has ended, where shall they 
go for support in their good resolutions ? Who will receive them 
into their homes? There is but one place to which they can 
go — back into the dens of vice, where they find the only friends 
they have outside the prison. To them they go, only to come 
and go again until death. While in prison they have numer- 
ous friends, and I have heard many prisoners say they were never 
so happy before; but who are their friends out of prison ? 
Men who out of prison are idle and dissipated, and do not or 
will not work except as necessity compels them to, for existence, 
are willing, industrious and faithful workers in prison; they are 
well behaved, and give promise of reform. Where shall these go 
when discharged? They have no friends, no money, society offers 
them neither encouragement nor sympathy ; and they come back to 
go out again in the same way. The poor, the wretched, the for- 
saken, have plenty of friends after they have committed crime and 
while they are in prison; but who takes them by the hand, who 
furnishes food and clothing, education and employment for them 
before they come to prison, or after they are discharged? 
A man arrested for larceny pleaded guilty, saying he could not 
get work, and stole to get food for his wife and six children, and 
asked for mercy. The Judge said, “ How many, children must a 
man have to excuse him from punishment for larceny! ” and sent 
him to prison. The great Commonwealth, by its officers, commit- 
ted him to prison, furnished him with profitable employment, 5 
kept his earnings, that the institution might be a paying or self- 
supporting one, and left his wife and six children to the cold 
mercies of the world, or the alms-house. I believe it was a greater 
larceny for the Commonwealth to compel" this man to work, and 
deprive his family of his earnings, or a portion of them, than 
the one he committed to buy them food. 
The rich, the strong, the fortunate and the pure are bound by 
t 
the ties of a common humanity, to aid and assist the poor, the 
weak, the unfortunate and the debased; and the latter are, or 
should be, the wards of the former. 
If you would encourage a prisoner to be honest and industrious 
after his discharge, give him or his family while he is a prisoner, 
or secure to him upon his discharge, if he has no family, a just 
proportion, or all of his earnings in prison. Liberty is sweet— 
’tis that the prisoner most often sighs for. The ignominy of sen- 
tence and imprisonment for crime is degrading, and punishment 
enough, without the additional torture of depriving him or his 
suffering family of his earnings. It is a question worthy of grave 
consideration, whether one man or one corporation shall aggre- 
gate the profits of the labor of hundreds of other men; but it is 
no question “ it is a shame to our Christianity and civilization,” for 
a commonwealth to appropriate all the earnings of a prisoner. 
Everything now tends towards centralization. Railroads con- 
solidate into great lines of monopoly, and control legislation. 
Capital is consolidated into vast monopolies in various forms. 
Families aggregate in monstrous hotels or tenement houses; 
being either too rich, or too proud, or too poor to work in separate 
households; and the nation and the commonwealth appear to be 
following their bad example. 
All power emanates from the people ; but when the people have 6 
yielded up all their power, and it is consolidated and centralized 
in the hands of a few, it will be very difficult to regain it. 
The barriers set up by the Fathers were for protection to the 
people against despotism. Consolidated alms-houses and consoli- 
dated prisons, with centralized governments, will, in time, lead to 
tyranny and despotism. Each town should support its own 
poor, — not send them to a great pauper establishment of a State, 
which makes too public an exhibition of poverty and destitution, 
and increases both. If it is right for a State to centralize its 
prisoners and consolidate its prisons, why not go further, and have 
the nation centralize, classify and consolidate, and thus exile the 
prisoner from father, mother, husband, wife or children? 
The Justices of the United States Courts now wisely allow the 
proper friends of a prisoner to suggest to which of the jails in this 
commonwealth he shall be sent, that they may be near to him to 
visit and console him, or find melancholy comfort from time to 
in time beholding his face. 
Have the poor and the ignorant no feelings that the rich and 
influential are bound to respect? Must everything be given up to 
“system”? Must they wait until the prison gates have closed 
upon them before they can have the benefits of “ sanitary science,” 
“ sunlight, air and water,” “ wholesome rations,” “ comfortable 
clothing,” etc. ? What if a committee on prison discipline in the 
British Parliament declared that “ it is desirable that the legisla- 
ture should intrust increased power to some central authority ” ; 
does that make it desirable? Because a monarchy centralizes, 
should we follow its example? The argument of your forty-first 
“ Principle of Prison Discipline,” to be consistent, should also 
recommend that the governments of towns, cities and states be 
abolished, and “ some central and supreme authority sit at the 
helm, guiding, controlling the whole.” 7 
The fact is, we are being governed to a dangerous extent. 
More personal, practical humanity — more interest in the poor and 
debased out of jail and before they enter it, and less of bureaus, 
centralizations and consolidations, and there would be less crime 
and fewer prisoners. 
The declarations in the twelfth “ Principle ” are at variance with 
my opinions and experience. Within my knowledge and observa- 
tion, there is on the part of prison officers a hearty desire and in- 
tention to aid in the reformation of prisoners. If your assertions 
are true, they are terrible reflections upon the people of our Chris- 
tian commonwealths, that men capable of being, or now permitted 
to be, prison officers, could be so heartless. 
Undoubtedly there are individual cases of unfitness, — there 
may be unfitness elsewhere, — but this sweeping charge against 
prison officers is unjust and untrue. 
I know that there are officers of prisons who think of, work for, 
and aid in, the reformation of prisoners. I do not know of any 
with whom “ doubt is the prelude to failure.” 
There is a general disposition to find fault with every system 
and everything that exists, and a continual craving for some new 
thing. A restless desire to invent something; if it cannot bo a 
machine, it must be a new system of governing. 
If a good law which is unpopular in a certain locality is not 
thoroughly executed by the local officers, instead of aiding the 
officers, who would cheerfully execute the law if obliged to, a new 
centralized system is established ; and yet the law is little better 
executed, simply because the officers, under the new system are 
men like the former, and are no more obliged than they to enforce 
it, except as policy or politics demand. 
I have written desultorily, yet conscientiously. Trusting that 8 
the “National Congress” will be largely attended by men who 
have had practical experience in superintending and governing 
prisons, with all classes of prisoners, and that the discussions may 
result in good for the reformation of the criminal classes, I close, 
with the conviction in my mind, from long personal observation 
and experience, that reform, to be effective, must begin before the 
criminal enters prison. 
Very respectfully, 
JOHN M. CLARK. 
Boston, September 25,1870.