People's Pilot, Volume 5, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 April 1896 — How lo Deal With Criminals [ARTICLE]

How lo Deal With Criminals

“Despite all that has been done for the reformation of the world, in spite of all the forces of nature that are now the tireless slaves of man, in spite of all improvements in agriculture, in mechanics, in every department of human labor, the world is still cursed with poverty and with crime. Men steal. They are sent to the penitentiary for a certain number of years, treated like wild beasts, frequently tortured. At the end of the term they are discharged, having only enough money to return to the place from which they were sent. They are thrown upon the world without means—without friends—they are convicts. They are shunned, suspected and despised. “All this is infamous. Men should not be sent to the penitentiary as a punishment, because we must remember that men do as they must. Nature does not frequently produce the perfect. In the human race there is a large percentage of failures. Under certain conditions, with certain appetites and passions, and with certain quality, quantity and shape of brain, men will become thieves, forgers and counterfeiters. The criminal is dangerous, and society has the right to protect itself. The criminal should be confined, and if possible, should be reformed. “A penitentiary should be a school; the convicts should be educated. So prisoners should work, and they should be paid a reasonable sum for their labor. “As it is now, there is but little reform. The same faces appear again and again at the bar; the same men hear again and again the verdict of guilty and the sentence of the court and the same men return again and again to the prison cell. “Murderers, those belonging to dangerous classes, those who are so formed by nature that they rush to the crimes of desperation, should be imprisoned for life, or they should be put upon some island, some place where they can be guarded, where it may be that by proper effort they could support themselves, the men on one island, the women on another. And to these islands should be sent professional criminals, those who have deliberately adopted a life of crime for the purpose of supporting themselves, the women upon one island, the men upon another. Such people should not populate the earth n “Neither tfee diseases nor the deformities of the mind or body should be perpetuated; life at the fountain should not be pol-luted.-Robert G. Ingersoll.