Article June 4, 1910 Issue

Reformation does not come from beating on the prisoner's...

John Galsworthy

London (Eng.) Chronicle

Reformation does not come from beating on the prisoner's fiber with the dull mallet of suffering. To reform one must inspire. There is a spark of good in every man's breast; the only chance lies in fanning that spark. But if we are not reforming men in our prisons, how can we be said to be protecting society by sending them there? We are endangering society; we are nurturing the spirit of crime. The fact of the matter is: revenge is still at the back of our thought. Let a man argue on the subject with whomsoever he will, ten minutes will not have passed before he makes this discovery. We still feel that because a man has hurt us, we must hurt him. And this feeling destroys all the economy and science of our law. When a crime is committed, all we should be concerned with is the application of the best possible means to minimize the results of that crime, to ensure that society shall run the least possible risk of a repetition of the crime, and the offender the least possible risk of remaining a criminal.

In doing this we cannot, so far as I can see, avoid the detention of our criminals, but we can, and should, avoid inflicting suffering on those whom we detain, beyond the suffering which is inseparable from detention; for by extra suffering we do not deter others from committing offenses, and we do foster in those whom we are detaining the disposition to commit fresh offenses when they are released. The diminution of crime in the bulk depends hardly at all on deterrent punishment, but on wide and impalpable influences, growth of social feeling, spread of education, betterment of manners, decrease of intemperance, improvement in housing, a hundred other reasons.

Crime is disease. It is either the disease of weakness or the disease of inherited taint. We have fought against this conclusion because we still harbor the spirit of revenge; but as knowledge advances, we shall, we must accept it. And the sooner we do accept it the less money shall we waste, the less harmful and unnecessary suffering shall we inflict. For a man with any sympathy in his composition it is impossible not to feel for those who, administering justice, earnestly desire to do their best, and are often, I am sure, sick at heart from the feeling that what they are doing is not the best. It rests with public opinion in this country to reanimate our attitude toward crime; to shake itself free of our muddled conceptions of the object of punishment; to scotch once for all the evil spirit of revenge; to rise to a higher, more generous, more scientific and decent conception of our duty to our neighbor, even when his conception of his duty to ourselves has been deficient.

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