Indeterminate Sentence | Page 7

submit him to influences
that will change that habit. We also know that this is not accomplished
by suppressing that habit, but by putting a good one in its place.
It is true in this case that nature does not like a vacuum. The thoughts
of men are not changed by leaving them to themselves, they are
changed by substituting other thoughts.
The whole theory of the Elmira system is to keep men long enough

under a strict discipline to change their habits. This discipline is
administered in three ways. They are put to school; they are put at work;
they are prescribed minute and severe rules of conduct, and in the latter
training is included military drill.
The school and the workshop are both primarily for discipline and the
formation of new habits. Only incidentally are the school and the
workshop intended to fit a man for an occupation outside of the prison.
The whole discipline is to put a man in possession of his faculties, to
give him self-respect, to get him in the way of leading a normal and
natural life. But it is true that what he acquires by the discipline of
study and the discipline of work will be available in his earning an
honest living. Keep a man long enough in this three-ply discipline, and
he will form permanent habits of well-doing. If he cannot and will not
form such habits, his place is in confinement, where he cannot prey
upon society.
There is not space here to give the details of the practices at Elmira.
They are easily attainable. But I will notice one or two objections that
have been made. One is that in the congregate system men necessarily
learn evil from each other. This is, of course, an evil. It is here,
however, partially overcome by the fact that the inmates are kept so
busy in the variety of discipline applied to them that they have little or
no time for anything else. They study hard, and are under constant
supervision as to conduct. And then their prospect of parole depends
entirely upon the daily record they make, and upon their radical change
of intention. At night they are separated in their cells. During the day
they are associated in class, in the workshop, and in drill, and this
association is absolutely necessary to their training. In separation from
their fellows, they could not be trained. Fear is expressed that men will
deceive their keepers and the board which is to pass upon them, and
obtain parole when they do not deserve it. As a matter of fact, men
under this discipline cannot successfully play the hypocrite to the
experts who watch them. It is only in the ordinary prison where the
parole is in use with no adequate discipline, and without the indefinite
sentence, that deception can be practiced. But suppose a man does play
the hypocrite so as to deceive the officers, who know him as well as

any employer knows his workmen or any teacher knows his scholars,
and deceives the independent board so as to get a parole. If he violates
that parole, he can be remanded to the reformatory, and it will be
exceedingly difficult for him to get another parole. And, if he should
again violate his parole, he would be considered incorrigible and be
placed in a life prison.
We have tried all other means of protecting society, of lessening the
criminal class, of reforming the criminal. The proposed indeterminate
sentence, with reformatory discipline, is the only one that promises to
relieve society of the insolent domination and the terrorism of the
criminal class; is the only one that can deter men from making a career
of crime; is the only one that offers a fair prospect for the reformation
of the criminal offender.
Why not try it? Why not put the whole system of criminal
jurisprudence and procedure for the suppression of crime upon a
sensible and scientific basis?

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Charles Dudley Warner
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