Tlfe CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY HV9469 .Tie"' """'"'""' "*'""^ Wall shadows: olln 3 1924 030 385 060 DATE DUE ^Hfi20 W5f^-^ MAR t^ fl«.1i«fflW^ /v ■«*' •"^ w •«? « y ^^V,„.vl^ 8fe^^#?f ' f #Ff^*»» L-i£>AwaM^^ mmmm •LtU ^ "IfWI i^ CAYLORD PRINTED IN U S A BY FRANK TANNENBAUM THE LABOR MOVEMENT WALL SHADOWS Wall Shadows A Study in American Prisons By Frank Tannenbaum Author of "The Labor Movement" With an Introduction by Thomas Mott Osborne G. P. Putnam's Sons New York and London Zbe 'Rnicftetbocftet pcees 1922 Copyright, 1922 by Frank Tannenbaum Made in the United States of America X ^^ GRACE H. CHILDS The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030385060 INTRODUCTION Many books have been written on "Penology" or "Criminology"; most of them worthless or worse. Sometimes a writer, hav- ing previously framed some more or less plausi- ble theory, proceeds to develop it; paying little or no attention to any facts which would distiorb his theory. Another writer, having endeavored to learn the truth and accumulated a certain amovint of material, writes a book as bad as the first; for his facts are incomplete or unimportant. In both cases the conclu- sions drawn are bound to be hopelessly inac- curate and misleading; for \mtil a more scien- tific and exhaustive examination of the facts has been made, it is imsafe to theorize. In one or the other category fall most of the books dealing with prisons. The writers do not get to the heart of their subject; for INTRODUCTION they know little of the reaction of prison life and methods upon the minds and hearts of the prisoners — ^these very human beings who con- stitute the real prison problem. On the other hand, there are a few books by gentiine men of science which are accurate and valuable; although these are less con- cerned, usually, with the details of prisons than with the psychology of the men before they are confined. But such a volume as William Healy's The Individual Delinquent is of permanent value. For the general student the best books are these few, like Donald Lowrie's My Life in Prison, Al Jenning's Through the Shadows with 0. Henry and this book of my friend, Frank Tannenbaum ; books which combine a sane and healthy social point of view with an intimate knowledge of prison life. This book differs from the others mentioned in one very important particular: it not only describes vividly the evils of existing condi- tions but shows the way out; it gives a con- structive programme. It is well for us to vi INTRODUCTION leam the facts; but if that is all, we get no- where. In Galsworthy's powerful play, Jus- tice, a certain picture of prison life is presented with vinflinching realism ; but we are left with- out a ray of hope; no solution of the terrible problem is even hinted at. "Cease to lament that which thou canst not help, But study help for that which thou lament'st." It is good advice, always; and particularly so about prisons. For the past eight years some new prison methods have been tried, based upon a prin- ciple — old in itself but never before, so far as we know, appUed to prisons. Tannenbaum calls it "prison democracy." He has been a careful and thorough student of the three prisons where this principle has been utilized; he has observed its workings, realizing the great difficulties against which it has had to contend; difficulties so great as to have brought its development, at the present time, vu INTRODUCTION practically to a standstill. Nevertheless, what has been done once can be done again; light has been let into the dark places; so far as prison democracy has been allowed to work, it has been an unqualified success. Of course, the word "success" must be understood in a relative sense, as perfection is hardly to be ex- pected in any human affairs. A new and "successful" system, in a manufacturing con- cern, is not one that is perfect, but one that turns out more and better product at the same cost or the same product at a less cost. It is exactly the same with prisons. In connection with the operation of this new principle in prisons, much nonsense has been uttered, by thoughtless or ignorant per- sons, as to the danger of "coddling prisoners." No one, so far as I know, has ever advocated anything so vindesirable ; although the special privileges usually granted to "trusties" under the old system or under what is rather htimor- ously called the "Honor System" {Lucus a non lucendo), come perilously near it. As a matter of fact, prison democracy is directly viii INTRODUCTION opposed to any system of "coddling," for one of its chief objects is to do away with special privileges for the iindeserving. It is highly desirable that there shovild be a broader realization of the fact that, for the protection of Societ^^ a prison shovild be a place of piinishment, but not a torture cham- ber; a healing hospital, but not a madhouse; an institution for education, where breakers of the law can be encouraged to become honest and useful members of society and trained toward that end. The object of the prison discipline shotild be to produce not good prisoners but good citizens. A man is punished when he is branded by the condemnation of Society; he is punished when he is exiled and deprived of liberty. Such punishment it is wise to enforce, when a man has committed crime. But to give un- intelligent wardens and guards, calloused and brutalized by the very system they are en- forcing, the power to inflict daily torture upon their helpless victims is to defeat the very end for which prisons exist ; it is to send the prison- ix INTRODUCTION ers back into the world, at the end of their terms, seething with hatred and prepared to renew their warfare against Society, at what- ever cost to themselves. Men are constantly being returned to prison, not because they like prison, but because they are trying to "get even" with the community which has tortured them and driven out of their hearts all thoughts except those of revenge. Could there possibly be devised a more preposterous paradox? It may be urged that all prisons do not base their discipline upon torture; that many wardens are kindly and intend to be humane; that all guards are not brutal; and in many institutions the inmates are treated with genuine consideration. That is true; although the number of such institutions is much smaller than most people suppose. Many a kindly warden runs an institution which would s-urprise him if he knew what really goes on behind its walls. The "Honor System," even at its best and when it is not a poisonous fraud, does not INTRODUCTION solve the problem; for a criminal can seldom be turned from evil cotirses merely by kind- ness and the granting of special favors to those who manage to please the prison authori- ties. You cannot cure a thief either by flog- ging him, nor yet by giving him sugar-pltims. Moreover, the spectacle of special favors being given to successful time-servers and hypo- crites is not an edifying one; and unfortu- nately the rewards of the "Honor System" tend inevitably to go to the prison "rats" and "stool-pigeons" — the most hateful creatures known to man. Even the best-intentioned warden wiU be fooled by them. The trouble with all these prisons, brutal or "kindly," is that there is no practical way to bring genuine grievances to the highest authority ; there is no responsibility placed upon the inmates; no initiative — ^no training in the uses of freedom, so that the sense of what is due to the community — a man's civic duty, may be encouraged. We send a man to prison because he is deficient in that sense ; then eventually set him free, after he has xi INTRODUCTION lived a longer or shorter period of time iinder conditions where he has never been allowed to develop or exercise that sense in any way whatever. As well train for a race or practice for a baseball game by lying for months in bed. This paradox is as preposterous as the other. Mr. Tannenbaum sees all sides of the prison question ; and his book gives not only desirable destructive criticism of the old methods but still more valuable constructive suggestions for the new. He sets the facts about prisons clearly before us. He is a keen and intelli- gent observer — one of the few who can visit such institutions and understand what he sees. He can discern matters which an ordi- nary visitor, or even an official investigator, misses entirely. And he dares to tell us the truth, afterwards. It is only by knowing the full truth about the prisons that Society will ever arouse itself and be freed from the body of this death. Thomas Mott Osborne. Auburn, New York, | 25 December, 1921. xii PREFACE This book attempts to describe what hap- pens in prison. It deals with the technique of penal administration, with the mood and the temper that pervade the prison atmos- phere. This study is limited in scope. It is not concerned directly with crime and the criminal, but with the prisoner after conviction. This distinction may be somewhat artificial, but it is one we make in practice. The com- mitted man is given into the custody of in- stitutions that are concerned with his future rather than with his past. Once within the prison gates a new chapter begins in the life- history of the individual — and it is with this chapter that I am concerned. Our generation can do away, for good and all, with the evil done to helpless man and to society by the current penal system. It is ignorance and xiii PREFACE indifference that lie at the root of the present situation and this book is written in the hope that it may help some few to take up the cause of society against ovir medieval prisons. What follows reflects many experiences. It is based upon one year's imprisonment for unlawful assembly during the unemployment agitation in New York City, 191 3- 191 4, on a voluntary confinement in Sing Sing Prison in 1 9 16, on a study of Auburn Prison and Ports- mouth Naval Prison, on a transcontinental trip of prison investigation in 1920, covering about seventy penal institutions, on contacts with prisoners, prison officials, and people interested in prison problems over a period of seven years. Specifically: I am indebted to Dr. Stagg E. Whitin for ever-ready cooper- ation; to Mr. Adolph Lewisohn, President of the National Committee on Prisons and Prison Labor, for contributing towards making possi- ble the trip of prison investigation; to Miss Julia K. Jaffray for cheerfully giving her time in going over the English and for much other help ; to Miss Alma Bloch for helping to get the xiv PREFACE manuscript into shape; to my wife for con- stant helpfulness in the preparation of the book and for reading the proof; to Dr. George W. Kirchwey; to Professor Harry E. Barnes; to the editor of The Atlantic Monthly for per- mission to reprint the material which first appeared in that magazine; and most of all to the friendship of Thomas Mott Osborne, whose work and insight have been the main- spring of my interest in the problems of prison administration. F. T. New York, February, 1922. XV CONTENTS CHAPISK PAGB L — Psychology of Prison Chueltt . . 3 n. — Prison Democracy . . 44 III. — Some Prison Facts . . . 91 TV. — Facing the Prison Problem . . 132 xvu WeJl Shadows A Study in American Prisons Wall Shadows (:iIAl''I^KR T l'SV( H()1.0(.V OK PRISON CRUELTY T^O the uninitiated, prison cruelty seems to l)(" a rare and isolattid plicnonu^non. When on (Hx-asion instanrcs of it bcc-onK^ known and the c.oinnmnity lias its sense of (kx^ency out- raged, there is generally a demand for in- vestij^ation and icinoval of the K^iiHy wank'n and l' officials concerned \\'ith prison administration. The elements that go to the maldng of this attitude may broadly be described in the following terms. The first apparent fact is that we do not ordinarily distinguisla bct\\oon the thing a man has done and the man himself. We tend to translate a single isolated aet into a whole being, forgetting all of the man's past, with its innvjmerable mirecorded emotions and deeds. We make the crime and the man s>-n- onjrmous. In common pai'lance we say that the man who has stolen is a thief, and the man who has committed murder is a mm-derer, summarizing all of the man in terms of the single fact with which we are impressed. We thus seem to transfuse the one act whicli we do not like into all of the man, who may, apart from that one act, be a very lovable person, and we place him in a category distinctly outside the pale of common association and consideration. He is different. Not only different, but he is worse. Any treatment 8 PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON CRUELTY which would seem tinfair and unjust for people "like ourselves" seems, even to the best of us, less unfair, less unjust, for him whom we have classified as different from and worse than ourselves. To this may be added three other and closely related influences which tend to strengthen the feeling of difference, and to justify methods of approach which are not in common use for people not so classified. The first of these three influences is undoubtedly the feeling that the man who is in himself bad is socially undesirable. A criminal is not only a bad man in moral evaluation, but he is a bad man socially. He is not fit, to put it in col- loqmal terms, to associate with other people bet- ter than himself, because he may make them bad ; or, in other words, he is felt to be imsocial and deserving of some method of exclusion from the community of "good" people who may suffer from contamination if he is let loose. The second, and, to some people, a very important consideration is the fact that a man who is a criminal is not only bad, not only 9 WALL SHADOWS unsocial but also a man who has broken the law. This may not only involve a very strong emotional reaction for people to whom the law generally is a rather vague and sacred sum- mary of all things forbidden, but it is tm- doubtedly a forceful fact in the life and the emotional reactions of officials, whose habitual business is centered about the enforcement of the law. A crime to them may, in fact, primarily be a violation of the law. In other words, apart from any "badness" or "unsociability" in the official immediately concerned, the breaking of the law may in itself create an emotional bias sufficient to carry a condemnation which, to ordinary people, is carried by "badness" and "social undesirability." There is yet a third element, which, in a measiire differing in different groups, contrib- utes materially to the general conviction that the criminal is a sinful and vicious person. I refer to the general confusion in the minds of religious people between crime and sin. While not all crimes are considered sins, and 10 PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON CRUELTY not all sins are recognized as crinies, yet for most purposes there is a sufficient overlapping to add the flavor of sin and its consequences to the act of the criminal. A criminal, to the ordinary person, is thus bad, unsocial, a violator of law, and a sinner as well. Provision is made in these four categories for the possibility of condemnation by almost every member of the community. I have placed these considerations first, not because they are first in importance, but because they tend to define the approach toward the criminal, on the part of the officials who are to care for him during the period of ptmishment, expiation, or reform, or whatever you choose to consider the purpose of confine- ment. I say the purpose of confinement, ' because in ordinary criminal procedure con- finement comes first and is the basis for punishment or reform. Ill The function of the prison is to keep the men confined. The function of the warden is II WALL SHADOWS to make sure that the purpose of the prison is fulfilled. He is primarily a jailer. That is his business. , Reform, pimishment, expiation for sin — ^these are social policies determined by- social motives of which he, as jailer, becomes the agent. He is a jailer first; a reformer, a guardian, a disciplinarian, or anything else, second. Anyone who has been in prison, or who knows the prison regime, through per- sonal contact, will corroborate this fact. The whole administrative organization of the jail is centered on keeping the men inside the walls. Men in prison are always cotuited. They are counted morning, noon, and night. They are counted when they rise, when they eat, when they work, and when they sleep. Like a miser hovering over his jingling coins, the warden and the keepers are constantly on edge about the safety of their charges — a safety of numbers first, of well-being afterwards. This leads to some very important con- sequences. It is the core of the development of prison brutality. It is the feeding basis upon which a number of other important 12 PSYCHOLOGY OF PRISON CRUELTY elements tending in the direction of brutality depend. The warden is hviman. Being human, he is strongly inclined to follow the path of least resistance. And the path of least resistance, in the light of the ordinary under- standing of a prison warden, is to make jail- breaking hard by making the individual pris- oner helpless. One of the ways of making it easy for the warden to keep the prisoner safely, is to pie- vent all possibilities of collusion among the criminals. He loiows them to be dangerous and bad men, whose interests are diametrically opposed to his. They are interested in free- dom. He is interested in keeping them confined. Collusion is the greatest danger to the warden's programme. Collusion may be the means toward escape — this is the great fear of the warden. So he does what administrative interests direct under the cir- cumstances. He attempts to isolate the individual from the group. It is easier to deal with one individual criminal than with a whole prison of criminals. And so the warden tries 13 WALL SHADOWS to adiieve all the benefits of isolation, of soli- tary confinement, in fact, if not in form. That this is the warden's purpose is made evident by a consideration of the facts. At Blackwdl's Island, for instance, we were not allowed to have pencils or paper or thread in our cells because these nugjit become the instruments of communication with othra* prisoners. The rule of silence is another iQustration of the general insist^ice upon isolation for the individual prisoner. I am not forgetting that isolation was at one time conddered a reform; that the good Quakers who introduced it were convinced of the baae- fits of silrait communion with one's self and of meditation tqxm one's place and fortunes in the world. Be the cause that brou^it iso- lation into inison what it may, to the wardai it is a method