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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - VI. Justice - 26. Courts, Sentences and Prisons - 3. Sentences and Prisons - 4. Trends and Outlook
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Chapter 26. Courts, Sentences and Prisons 555
and brutality, where there is not the slightest attempt to reform but only
to punish and get work out of the prisoners. Some of the Northern prisons
are not good either, and there has been a long, hard struggle to improve
very bad prisons in the North, but with the few exceptions noted. Southern
prisons do not approximate Northern penal standards. There is no doubt
that the average Southern prison is likely to make hardened criminals of
all who fall into its clutches.^® This inexpensive penal system in the South
—from the point of view of budgetary income and outgo—is tremendously
expensive from the point of view of real social costs.
Conditions are generally so bad in Southern prisons that it would be
difficult to say whether Negro prisoners received poorer treatment than
white prisoners. The penal institutions in the South are usually segregated
for whites and Negroes. There is some opportunity, therefore, for state
officials to purchase less food and equipment for Negroes than for whites
and to discriminate in other ways. The wardens and guards are, in all cases,
Southern poor whites. Probably the most harmful form of discrimination
arises out of the fact that several states do not provide separate reforma-
tories for Negro juvenile offenders as they do for white juvenile offenders,
and the Negro youth must live with the hardened older criminal.
4. Trends and Outlook
This whole judicial system of courts, sentences and prisons in the South
is overripe for fundamental reforms. It represents a tremendous cultural
lag in progressive twentieth century America. Reform in this field—espe-
cially in the courts—would be strategic in the efforts to improve the Negro
people and their living conditions and, consequently, to improve race
relations.
There are signs of change. The Supreme Court is increasingly active in
censoring the state courts when they transgress the principles of legal
procedure: it is pressing the courts to include Negroes on the jury lists, to
curb appeals to race prejudice on the part of public prosecutors and private
attorneys, to reject evidence obtained by third degree methods, and so on.
The attorneys of the federal government and the federal courts in the
states have become more diligent in pursuing such offenses against civil
liberties of Negroes as fall under their jurisdiction, thereby setting a pat-
tern for the state courts also. Under these two sets of influences, the higher
courts of the Southern states are tending increasingly to condemn the more
blatant forms of deviation from fair trial in the lower courts.
A new generation of lawyers with a better general education and profes-
sional training is coming forward. I have been told that it is becoming easier
for Negroes to get even the best local white lawyers to take on their defense
in serious cases where there will be much publicity, and white lawyers
have testified that their risk of meeting threats and ostracism from white
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