Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - II. Chapter. The rise and development of the correction-system
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reasonable reward. It does not, however, bear a closer
examination, for besides that corruption which arises
from the prisoners being together, two new vices
are produced: falsehood and hypocrisy. Far from
being roused to a wholeseme self examination, the
offender is induced to show a contrition he does
not feel, an improvement which is not real. The
farther he can carry dissimulation and deceit, the
more certain he is of gaining his point; he puts
on only a deceptive exterior, but his inward man
remains equally corrupted, the soul equally vicious.
Enlightened men, who have carefully studied
the theory of the administration of prisons, as also
those who have attentively followed it practically,
agree perfectly as to the inapplicability of the idea
of classification and its unavoidable disadvantages.
In Mess:rs Beaumont and Tocqueville’s work on
the “Penitentiary-system in the United States,” (a
work of great merit, to which I shall often refer),
it is said: “The impossibility of arranging a
correct classification of the guilty, is proved with
such mathematical certainty, that it ought to form
the starting-point for all reform with regard to
the administration of prisons.”
The absence of all real improvement within
the houses of correction, and the frequent return,
in consequence of new mis-demeanours, of those
who had been liberated, showed at last a mournful
and undeniable certainty, that the system,
applied with so much expense, was built upon a
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