💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › alexander-berkman-prisons-and-crime.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 06:30:58. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Title: Prisons and Crime
Author: Alexander Berkman
Date: August 1906
Language: en
Topics: crime, prison
Source: Retrieved on December 22, 2011 from http://libertarian-labyrinth.org/archive/Prisons_and_Crime
Notes: Mother Earth 1, no. 6 (August 1906): 23–29.

Alexander Berkman

Prisons and Crime

Modern philanthropy has added a new role to the repertoire of penal

institutions. While, formerly, the alleged necessity of prisons rested,

solely, upon their penal and protective character, to-day a new

function, claiming primary importance, has become embodied in these

institutions — that of reformation.

Hence, three objects — reformative, penal, and protective — are now

sought to be accomplished by means of enforced physical restraint, by

incarceration of a more or less solitary character, for a specific, or

more or less indefinite period.

Seeking to promote its own safety, society debars certain elements,

called criminals, from participation in social life, by means of

imprisonment. This temporary isolation of the offender exhausts the

protective role of prisons. Entirely negative in character, does this

protection benefit society? Does it protect?

Let us study some of its results.

First, let us investigate the penal and reformative phases of the prison

question.

Punishment, as a social institution, has its origin in two sources;

first, in the assumption that man is a free moral agent and,

consequently, responsible for his demeanor, so far as he is supposed to

be compos mentis; and, second, in the spirit of revenge, the retaliation

of injury. Waiving, for the present, the debatable question as to man’s

free agency, let us analyze the second source.

The spirit of revenge is a purely animal proclivity, primarily

manifesting itself where comparative physical development is combined

with a certain degree of intelligence. Primitive man is compelled, by

the conditions of his environment, to take the law into his own hands,

so to speak, in furtherance of his instinctive desire of self-assertion,

or protection, in coping with the animal or human aggressor, who is wont

to injure or jeopardize his person or his interests. This proclivity,

born of the instinct of self-preservation and developed in the battle

for existence and supremacy, has become, with uncivilized man, a second

instinct, almost as potent in its vitality as the source it primarily

developed from, and occasionally even transcending the same in its

ferocity and conquering, for the moment, the dictates of

self-preservation.

Even animals possess the spirit of revenge. The ingenious methods

frequently adopted by elephants in captivity, in avenging themselves

upon some particularly hectoring spectator, are well known. Dogs and

various other animals also often manifest the spirit of revenge. But it

is with man, at certain stages of his intellectual development, that the

spirit of revenge reaches its most pronounced character. Among barbaric

and semi-civilized races the practice of personally avenging one’s

wrongs — actual or imaginary — plays an all-important role in the life

of the individual. With them, revenge is a most vital matter, often

attaining the character of religious fanaticism, the holy duty of

avenging a particularly flagrant injury descending from father to son,

from generation to generation, until the insult is extirpated with the

blood of the offender or of his progeny. Whole tribes have often

combined in assisting one of their members to avenge the death of a

relative upon a hostile neighbor, and it is always the special privilege

of the wronged to give the death-blow to the offender.

Even in certain European countries the old spirit of blood-revenge is

still very strong. The semi-barbarians of the Caucasus, the ignorant

peasants of Southern Italy, of Corsica and Sicily, still practice this

form of personal vengeance; some of them, as the Tsherkessy, for

instance, quite openly; others, as the Corsicans, seeking safety in

secrecy. Even in our so-called enlightened countries the spirit of

personal revenge, of sworn, eternal enmity, still exists. What are the

secret organizations of the Mafia type, so common in all South European

lands, but the manifestations of this spirit?! And what is the

underlying principle of duelling in its various forms — from the armed

combat to the fistic encounter — but this spirit of direct vengeance,

the desire to personally avenge an insult or an injury, fancied or real;

to wipe out the same, even with the blood of the antagonist. It is this

spirit that actuates the enraged husband in attempting the life of the

“robber of his honor and happiness.” It is this spirit that is at the

bottom of all lynch-law atrocities, the frenzied mob seeking to avenge

the bereaved parent, the young widow or the outraged child.

Social progress, however, tends to check and eliminate the practice of

direct, personal revenge. In so-called civilized communities the

individual does not, as a rule, personally avenge his wrongs. He has

delegated his “rights” in that direction to the State, the government;

and it is one of the “duties” of the latter to avenge the wrongs of its

citizens by punishing the guilty parties. Thus we see that punishment,

as a social institution, is but another form of revenge, with the State

in the role of the sole legal avenger of the collective citizen — the

same well-defined spirit of barbarism in disguise. The penal powers of

the State rest, theoretically, on the principle that, in organized

society, “an injury to one is the concern of all”; in the wronged

citizen society as a whole is attacked. The culprit must be punished in

order to avenge outraged society, that “the majesty of the Law be

vindicated.” The principle that the punishment must be adequate to the

crime still further proves the real character of the institution of

punishment: it reveals the Old-Testamental spirit of “an eye for an eye,

a tooth for a tooth,” — a spirit still alive in almost all so-called

civilized countries, as witness capital punishment: a life for a life.

The “criminal” is not punished for his offence, as such, but rather

according to the nature, circumstances and character of the same, as

viewed by society; in other words, the penalty is of a nature calculated

to balance the intensity of the local spirit of revenge, aroused by the

particular offence.

This, then, is the nature of punishment. Yet, strange to say — or

naturally, perhaps — the results attained by penal institutions are the

very opposite of the ends sought. The modern form of “civilized” revenge

kills, figuratively speaking, the enemy of the individual citizen, but

breeds in his place the enemy of society. The prisoner of the State no

longer regards the person he injured as his particular enemy, as the

barbarian does, fearing the wrath and revenge of the wronged one.

Instead, he looks upon the State as his direct punisher; in the

representatives of the law he sees his personal enemies. He nurtures his

wrath, and wild thoughts of revenge fill his mind. His hate toward the

persons, directly responsible, in his estimation, for his misfortune —

the arresting officer, the jailer, the prosecuting attorney, judge and

jury — gradually widens in scope, and the poor unfortunate becomes an

enemy of society as a whole. Thus, while the penal institutions on the

one hand protect society from the prisoner so long as he remains one,

they cultivate, on the other hand, the germs of social hatred and

enmity.

Deprived of his liberty, his rights, and the enjoyment of life; all his

natural impulses, good and bad alike, suppressed; subjected to

indignities and disciplined by harsh and often inhumanely severe

methods, and generally maltreated and abused by official brutes whom he

despises and hates, the young prisoner, utterly miserable, comes to

curse the fact of his birth, the woman that bore him, and all those

responsible, in his eyes, for his misery. He is brutalized by the

treatment he receives and by the revolting sights he is forced to

witness in prison. What manhood he may have possessed is soon eradicated

by the “discipline.” His impotent rage and bitterness are turned into

hatred toward everything and everybody, growing in intensity as the

years of misery come and go. He broods over his troubles and the desire

to revenge himself grows in intensity, his until then perhaps undefined

inclinations are turned into strong anti-social desires, which gradually

become a fixed determination. Society had made him an outcast; it is his

natural enemy. Nobody had shown him either kindness or mercy; he will be

merciless to the world.

Then he is released. His former friends spurn him; he is no more

recognized by his acquaintances; society points its finger at the

ex-convict; he is looked upon with scorn, derision, and disgust; he is

distrusted and abused. He has no money, and there is no charity for the

“moral leper.” He finds himself a social Ishmael, with everybody’s hand

turned against him — and he turns his hand against everybody else.

The penal and protective functions of prisons thus defeat their own

ends. Their work is not merely unprofitable, it is worse than useless;

it is positively and absolutely detrimental to the best interests of

society.

It is no better with the reformative phase of penal institutions. The

penal character of all prisons — workhouses, penitentiaries, state

prisons — excludes all possibility of a reformative nature. The

promiscuous mingling of prisoners in the same institution, without

regard to the relative criminality of the inmates, converts prisons into

veritable schools of crime and immorality.

The same is true of reformatories. These institutions, specifically

designed to reform, do as a rule produce the vilest degeneration. The

reason is obvious. Reformatories, the same as ordinary prisons, use

physical restraint and are purely penal institutions — the very idea of

punishment precludes true reformation. Reformation that does not emanate

from the voluntary impulse of the inmate, one which is the result of

fear — the fear of consequences and of probable punishment — is no real

reformation; it lacks the very essentials of the latter, and so soon as

the fear has been conquered, or temporarily emancipated from, the

influence of the pseudo-reformation will vanish like smoke. Kindness

alone is truly reformative, but this quality is an unknown quantity in

the treatment of prisoners, both young and old.

Some time ago I read the account of a boy, thirteen years old, who had

been confined in chains, night and day for three consecutive weeks, his

particular offence being the terrible crime of an attempted escape from

the Westchester, N. Y., Home for Indigent Children (Weeks case,

Superintendent Pierce, Christmas, 1895). That was by no means an

exceptional instance in that institution. Nor is the penal character of

the latter exceptional. There is not a single prison or reformatory in

the United States where either flogging and clubbing, or the

straight-jacket, solitary confinement, and “reduced” diet

(semi-starvation) are not practiced upon the unfortunate inmates. And

though reformatories do not, as a rule, use the “means of persuasion” of

the notorious Brockway, of Elmira, N. Y., yet flogging is practiced in

some, and starvation and the dungeon are a permanent institution in all

of them.

Aside from the penal character of reformatories and the derogatory

influence the deprivation of liberty and enjoyment exercise on the

youthful mind, the associations in those institutions preclude, in the

majority of cases, all reformation. Even in the reformatories no attempt

is made to classify the inmates according to the comparative gravity of

their offenses, necessitating different modes of treatment and suitable

companionship. In the so-called reform schools and reformatories

children of all ages — from 5 to 25 — are kept in the same institution,

congregated for the several purposes of labor, learning and religious

service, and allowed to mingle on the playing grounds and associate in

the dormitories. The inmates are often classified according to age or

stature, but no attention is paid to their relative depravity. The

absurdity of such methods is simply astounding. Pause and consider. The

youthful culprit who is such probably chiefly in consequence of bad

associations, is put among the choicest assortment of viciousness and is

expected to reform! And the fathers and mothers of the nation calmly

look on, and either directly further this species of insanity or by

their silence approve and encourage the State’s work of breeding

criminals. But such is human nature — we swear it is day-time, though it

be pitch-dark; the old spirit of credo quia absurdum est.

It is unnecessary, however, to enlarge further upon the debasing

influence those steeped in crime exert over their more innocent

companions. Nor is it necessary to discuss further the reformative

claims of reformatories. The fact that fully 60 per cent of the male

prison population of the United States are graduates of “Reformatories”

conclusively proves the reformative pretentions of the latter absolutely

groundless. The rare cases of youthful prisoners having really reformed

are in no sense due to the “beneficial” influence of imprisonment and of

penal restraint, but rather to the innate powers of the individual

himself.

Doubtless there exists no other institution among the diversified

“achievements” of modern society, which, while assuming a most important

role in the destinies of mankind, has proven a more reprehensible

failure in point of attainment than the penal institutions. Millions of

dollars are annually expended throughout the “civilized” world for the

maintenance of these institutions, and notwithstanding each successive

year witnesses additional appropriations for their improvement, yet the

results tend to retrogade rather than advance the purports of their

founding.

The money annually expended for the maintenance of prisons could be

invested, with as much profit and less injury, in government bonds of

the planet Mars, or sunk in the Atlantic. No amount of punishment can

obviate crime, so long as prevailing conditions, in and out of prison,

drive men to it.