Читать книгу The New York Tombs Inside and Out! - John Josiah Munro - Страница 16

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Since the close of the Civil War, crime of every kind has made enormous strides, not only in our large cities but also in our sparsely populated districts. Various reasons have been assigned for this condition of things but the reasons given are not entirely satisfactory. One thing, however, is certain, the temptations of modern times, which engulf and enslave so many of our young people, were never more numerous or more alluring than they are to-day. And the saddest thing of all is that very little is done to take the temptations out of the way or reduce them to a minimum.

I believe bad homes are largely responsible for many of the moral shipwrecks of our day. A report of the superintendent of Elmira Reformatory states that fifty-two per cent. of all the inmates of that institution came from positively bad homes and only seven per cent. from positively good homes. Without going any further into this discussion, it would be well to find out what makes bad homes and, if possible, furnish a remedy, so as to save our young people from becoming criminals. By all means find out the disease and then apply the remedy. This is the only rational thing to do, and to this method of treatment few persons can object.

The fact that crime increases faster than the ratio of population should come to our statesmen with startling effect and set them thinking to know just what methods should be used to change the evil currents of the times.

As long as fierce temptations are allowed to surge around our young people, especially in large cities, so long may we expect to see them in the police net and afterward filling prison cells. Crime is a menace to our republican institutions and in the end will reduce a free people to anarchy or serfdom.

One of the crime makers of our time, as is evident from everyday facts and figures, is the liquor traffic. From fifty to seventy per cent. of all convicted felons have been ruined by it. Many a man who is behind the bars to-day never would have been there were it not for strong drink that robbed him of his senses in a weak moment, and made him a criminal and a fool. In states where the rum power is under the ban and prohibition strictly or even partially enforced, jails are usually empty except for a few petty offenders.

Some men say that immigration is largely responsible for the criminality of to-day. That there is some truth in this statement we have no doubt whatever. But to hold immigrants responsible for the criminality of this age is unfair and uncharitable. That some parts of Europe send people to this country who are expert criminals and others full of criminal instincts, is true in part. That people without means and employment drift to the United States from every land and when in want naturally attack property under the spur of necessity, coupled, of course, with low ethical standards and lacking a sense of moral obligation, and perhaps possessing weak resistive powers, is also true.

Often persons are driven to crime by motives generated in a vicious nature, and as they are too weak to resist they soon lose their liberty, and society to protect itself simply places them behind the bars. Criminality is simply the darkened side of a reckless, sinful life, showing itself in deeds of wickedness and rebellion against God and man. Any one with such an impulse will dare to commit the most atrocious crime on record and will not think of the consequences!

The small army of boys that are committed to prison in this city every year between the ages of sixteen and twenty, for every crime on the calendar, shows the trend of the rising generation toward delinquency. In these figures we leave out of consideration several thousands of boys and girls who are disposed of by the city magistrates, many of whom are sent to the Reform School, Juvenile Asylum and the House of Refuge, while others are discharged on suspended sentences, with a warning to keep out of bad company.

I believe the first and foremost cause of crime in our large cities, as I have intimated, as well as the degradation of the poor man’s home, is the American saloon. Nor will there be any material decrease in the volume of crime till the power of the saloon has been crushed. Our stupid, thick-skulled, short-sighted reformers and state legislators forget that the soul-dishonoring and God-defying gin mill is the great crime generator of the twentieth century. The one primary cause of crime to-day is alcohol, and as a well-known authority says: “The decrease in the use of alcoholic drink must ever remain the great aim of anti-criminal legislation as well as of future moral and social reform.” A mass of absolutely correct statistics could be given in support of this statement, if necessary.

In many of the crimes committed by young men which we have personally investigated, it has been a question with us who has been the greatest criminal, the state, the parents or the boy. Many a young man would never have reached prison had his parents placed around him any reasonable moral safeguards. When I remember that hundreds of boys who get into the Tombs every year come from homes of poverty, misery, drunkenness, profanity and vice of every name, I do not wonder when I see crime written on their pale faces.

If Gladstone’s dictum were to actuate our state legislature, laws would be forthwith passed, making it a crime to sell to minors the blood-curdling novel, tobacco or cigarettes, or intoxicating liquor in any form. Boys should be prohibited from going to prize fights, the race course, gambling hells, theatres, billiard halls, or even from staying on the street after nine o’clock at night. This might seem harsh, but if strictly carried out we have no doubt whatever that crime would be reduced thereby.

It was a law in the Commonwealth of Israel, promulgated long before their settlement in Canaan, that when they built a house in the promised land they must put a railing or battlement around the roof to protect their children from injury by accidentally falling off. If the state were to make it difficult for our young people to do wrong by erecting around them moral barriers, there would be less criminality among boys and young men, and fewer human shipwrecks in after life.

When young men are admitted to prison for the first time, efforts should be put forth to save them. The work of isolation, separation and classification should then begin. If the authorities were to sift and separate the good from the bad, the precious from the vile, I am positive there would be fewer recidivists who are now compelled to repeat the same prison experiences several times over.

The new Tombs prison.

The open corridor of the women’s prison of the Tombs.

The old Tombs entrance on Leonard street.

Hundreds of boys who are sent to the Tombs enjoy the novelty immensely. It is a new experience to them, and as such is exciting. In prison they are huddled together as a band of incorrigibles. There seems to be no punishment in such an experience. Some of them are better off there than they would be in their homes. They get enough to eat. In some prisons they can smoke all the cigarettes and read all the dime novels they please. If up till this time they have been ignorant of the ways of pickpockets and sneak thieves, when they come out, after a few weeks’ incarceration, they are expert crooks, and fifty per cent. of them are soon back in prison.

In order to reduce crime among boys we must take away the operating causes. There is no other way to reach the desired end, and the sooner we get our eyes open to these facts, the better for ourselves and everybody else.

The object of all prison discipline should be the moral transformation of young offenders. They should be taught righteousness and purity of life, honesty and industry, self-respect and courteous behaviour to all. Whenever prison reform comes short of this, it is a failure, and society at large is injured thereby.