CHAPTER XIII. MANUAL TRAINING AND TRADE INSTRUCTION IN REFORMATORIES. As progress is made in the study of criminology the causes of criminal action become more clearly understood and the criminal appears more and more in the light of an undeveloped being; and he is undeveloped in all his faculties, whether he is considered as a worker or as a moral and intellectual being. Not only are those faculties which enable a man to labor honestly and faithfully for the care and support of himself and family undeveloped, but all the others. If this position be the correct one penology should find ways and means of developing the criminal in all his faculties. The corrigible criminals, or those amenable to reformatory efforts, represent probably from one-eighth to onesixth of all long term convicts. Under modern penological views there is a revolt from the old, cruel, and barbarous system of setting prisoners at work at what is known as purely penal labor, that is, running a tread-mill or turning a crank; and the assumption now is that men in prison should be set at work in the same industries and in the same way and under the same methods which exist outside of prisons. This plausible position is taken by most penologists; but when the matter of reformation is considered, then the question of development along those lines on which a boy can best be developed becomes important. The criminal must be kept in honorable and skilful employment; his intellectual and moral powers, if susceptible of development, must be trained in various directions. The treatment of this subject, appealing broadly to philanthropic interests, as well as to all who desire to secure the safety of society, must be illustrated by one grand example only, that drawn from the experience of the New York State Reformatory at Elmira; for the experience of this institution can be the experience of all institutions wherever conditions are similar. The information relating to this celebrated reformatory is taken from the writings of the editor of The Summary, a periodical published at the Elmira reformatory, the editor always being an inmate of the institution, and the Sixteenth Year Book of the institution; and many of the statements herein made are in the actual language taken from these works and adapted to the methods of an official report. The Elmira reformatory of today is to the reformatory of 1876, to put the proposition mathematically, as sixteen is to one. From a mere modernized penitentiary, as it was essential it should be in the first few months of its existence, when its population was recruited with more or less discrimination from the state prisons at Auburn and Sing Sing, and with accommodations for less than 500, the institution has been developed into a great compulsory educational establishment for improvable felons and corrigibles; and there were, at the close of 1891, about 1,300 men undergoing a systematic process of reintegration and preparation for again commingling with society. Moral, mental, and manual training have been systematically coördinated, with the end in view of turning out practical, self-helping, self-controlling citizens. As is well known the system in practice at Elmira is that of indeterminate sentence, the reformable convict being sent there by the courts under a sentence to last until the proper authorities consider the inmate competent to mingle again with his fellows outside the institution, and even then the institution has its hold upon the discharged or partially discharged convict. In the treatment of the inmates convalescence was construed to be moral, intellectual, and physical capability to earn a livelihood, and a disposition to live in consonance with the self-protective requirements of society. Under this consideration of what criminal convalescence is it is obvious that the course of treatment essential to secure it would be cultivation of mind and body to a point that would render the subject fit to take an honorable stand in the honest vocation which seemed best adapted to his conditions. The reformatory prescription, then, as stated by the editor referred to, consists of a trinity of m's— mental, moral, and manual training-and these ingredients have been used in varying proportions during the past sixteen or seventeen years, their relations in the remedy being invariably controlled by the needs of the patient as developed in diagnosis, and oftentimes by the invention of better methods and the intervention of new laws. The success of the application of this prescription has been such that at the end of a decade the reformatory had firmly established itself as something more than an experiment, although it has continued to rank as an experimental station, inasmuch as opportunity is constantly afforded for the test of plans that offer promise of aid in accomplishing the ends aimed at. While the cardinal features of the reformatory plan have remained unaltered, from the first there have been numerous changes in the details of the curriculum, and during the past few years there have been many innovations resulting from the variable statutes, the immense increase in intermural population, and a more widespread understanding of the reformatory's system and its object by the general public. Both design and chance have conspired to give prominence to the educational factor, until now the term "technological university" is often applied to the institution; and the term can hardly be regarded as a misnomer. The apparent chief pursuit at present of a large majority of the inmates is education, and from sunrise until considerably after sunset their minds, their wills, and their muscles are exercised, now in acquiring a service able trade and learning to apply it, now in bridging the chasm between illiteracy and a comprehension of language, mathematics, and the sciences, and again in debating and deciding theoretical and practical moral points which had been entirely unconsidered by the inmates, and always in practising self-control and subordination to constituted authority, which is the concomitant of a strict disciplinary régime. Systematic trades instruction was first undertaken in 1886, and then only in a small way, owing to lack of space and absence of suitable appliances. In that year three connected one story pavilions, Greek cross shaped and affording 27,000 square feet floor room, were con. structed and fitted with paraphernalia for teaching the rudiments of half a dozen trades, including plastering, bricklaying, stone cutting, blacksmithing, carpentry, and frescoing, to about 150 men. Only an hour and a half of two evenings each week were set apart for instruction and practice, and yet most gratifying results were noted. It was just about this time that the labor system was being changed from the contract to the state account, in conformity with the will of the people expressed by their ballots, and it was planned to take advantage of the opportunity thus provided to reinforce the trades instruction by the establishment of diversified industries in which a fair amount of skill would be required, whereby inmates could in their daily labor prepare themselves to earn sufficiently when relieved of restraint. Much progress had been made in this direction, and the scope of the evening trades school had been greatly widened when the legislature, in the summer of 1888, passed a bill which substantially prohibited all convict labor, except for the making of articles to be used by the state in its various institutions. This measure, in its application to the reformatory, seemed to demand the substitution of the trades school for productive labor, and it was not many weeks before all the inmates of the institution, excepting those required for the conduct of its clerical and domestic affairs, had been organized in trades classes and were devoting half of every day in fitting themselves for engaging as jour. neymen or advanced apprentices in some one of twenty-five trades taught. Disciplinary officers were engaged with special reference to their competence to impart technological instruction, and courses were prepared with the utmost care. For those whom it would benefit classes in mechanical drawing were formed under expert draughtsmen. Capacity to earn a living at some recognized trade became, under the rules, indispensable to conditional release. The effects upon the men were most salutary. In this method of reformation, at least, there was nothing too occult for them to understand. Many of them who had hitherto had very meagre conceptions of the value of industry were promptly brought to a realization of the fact that their criminality and its consequences were largely due to S. Ex. 65-40 |