Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Chapter. On the application of the penitentiary system in Sweden
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those which ever can be used for the teaching of virtue and good principles. Weariness and revenge lead this destructive education, and all competition has but one object: the development of crime. The less hardened strives to overtake the most criminal; the most savage imparts to the others his ferocity, the most false his cunning, and the most immoral his dissoluteness. That which most defiles the heart and the feelings, is considered as the only consolation of despair. United by one common interest, the prisoners assist each other in obliterating every trace of repentance or shame. On the ruins of true honour rises a new kind of reputation, consisting of perjury and dissimulation, of boldness in the exercise of crime, of indifference for the future, and of enmity towards society. It is thus these unhappy beings, who under another treatment might have been led back to virtue and comfort, by degrees reach the greatest possible height in obdurateness, and supposed heroism in crime.”
The consequences of this mutual instruction on a great scale have shown themselves not only in the increasing amount of crime, but also in its intenseness, if we may so call the cunning shown in the formation of their plans and the cruelty in the execution of them. It is within the prisonwalls, where repentance and sorrow ought to prevail, that the prisoner develops his dexterity in
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