Social pathology / by Samuel George Smith.

  • Samuel George Smith
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Social pathology / by Samuel George Smith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    206/408 page 192
    Some writers have urged that the labor of prisoners should be used in support of their families where the men are married. The supposition that the prisoner would be able to support his family were his earnings so applied is an economic error, as the man in prison does not earn, as a rule, more than half what is earned by the man outside, while the expense of maintaining him on account of the confinement and the expense of supervision costs fully twice as much as it did in a state of freedom. One incentive for work within the prison is the hope of special privileges as the result of successful labor. In some prisons what is called a can- teen is maintained, where food in addition to the prison fare may be purchased by the prisoners with part of the wages from their work. In some prisons it has been arranged that 10 per cent of the earnings of the prisoner should be placed at his disposal. It might be wise economically to place a certain amount of the earnings of the prisoner at the disposal of an officer of the court for the benefit of the prisoner’s family if he has one dependent upon him. The state cannot undertake to care for the prisoner’s family and to supply his place during his enforced absence. To many men one of the effective sources of remorse is the love they still bear for their families while they are in prison, and the shame they have that their dependents are deprived of the comforts which their labor used to produce. On the other hand, there is nothing that will so sustain a prisoner during the period of his confinement as the belief that his home is unbroken, and that when his term of confinement is ended, he will be received back again to his old place in the domestic life. Conviction of crime is, in some countries, made the ground for divorce, and it is often pleaded by the outraged wife; but the woman who can bear with him the disgrace of his misdeeds and undertake to help him to make a place for himself once more in the free world, is often more effi- cient in the task of reformation than all the prison regulations. Keeping in view the end of reformation in the treatment of prisoners, more important than the economic results are the ad- vantages for discipline found in prison labor. The statement does not mean that the work helps in the management of the prison, though this is true. One great temptation) in the management of every institution is to have some standard to be maintained,
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