THE PRISON NEWS
PUBLISHED MONTHLY, BY THE STATE PRISON DEPARTMENT
VOLUME I THE STATE’S PRISON, RALEIGH, N. C. AUGUST i, 1927 NUMBER X
THE STATE’S PRISON MAKES GREAT STRIDES IN
MORAL AND SOCIAL PROGRESS IN PAST SIX YEARS
It is and always should be the duty of all
State and Public Officials and Institutions from
time to time to furnish the public through the
press an account of their stewardship. Publi¬
city is the bulwark of a representative govern¬
ment and the secrecy of its public and political
affairs is a true sign of its beginning decadence.
Likewise such agencies of the people should at
all times welcome the fullest investigation by a
just public and a fair press. Unfortunately at
times, a hostile press, based on prejudice or
partisanship, will deny to a faithful official a just
appraisement of his stewardship. This is the
exception, however, and by such exceptions
the entire press should not be judged. The
press as a rule and as a whole are fair.
Duty To Taxpayer®
That the public may know that these requi¬
sites of good government have been observed
by the State Prison Officials, that the monies of
the taxpayers have been wisely expended, that
the moral betterment of the prisoners has gone
forward under an awakened public conscious¬
ness, but gone forward with due observance
of economy, this article will attempt a short re¬
view of the moral and social reforms that have
been initiated and carried out by the prison of¬
ficials for the past six years. The consequent
industrial growth and expansion that necessarily
follows in the wake of moral betterment will be
dealt with in the next issue of The Prison
News.
Old System Opposed Reform
To initiate and carry out reforms far reach¬
ing, in an Institution having under its care six¬
teen hundred of life’s unfortunates, of a varied
aud complex group, ranging from the "gutter¬
snipe” to the “man of culture," from the novice
in crime to the "hardened thug”, from the age
of twelve to the age of eighty-five, embracing
both races and sexes is a vast problem. Under
the old system of the lash, prevailing in most
southern prisons until the last few years, with
the object of making money only, without
counting the cost to the prisoner and ultimately
the cost to the State, reformative measures were
impossible. You cannot beat a man with the
right hand, and guide him to moral betterment
with the left. Brutality and social reform do
not travel together; they are more than strang¬
ers, they are the antipathy and the bitterest en¬
emy of each other.
Make Men — Then Money
The public had not yet fully appreciated that
altho the prisoner owed a debt to ociety for
his crime, yet likewise this relationship was mu¬
tual and that society owed to the prisoner the
obligation enunciated by the “Man of Sor¬
rows”, to search out his heart and soul, to seek
the good in him and help him to stage a "come¬
back", rather than to make of him an “outcast”
and a scourge upon the body politic, to further
prey his nefarious traffic upon his release from
prison. Based on the sound principle that vice
is contagious and that the only effective weapon
to combat vice is by the inculcation in man of
its opposite, truth and virtue, the officials real¬
ized that if a man was "brow-beaten" and
driven to his task, that in the natural suscepti¬
bilities of human nature he would go out of
the prison "hardened" with a grudge against
society. Whereas if the deserving prisoner
felt that the State wanted to "make him" and
not to "break him” he might become a useful
citizen. To this great moral end, seeking its
accomplishment, the officials adopted as their
slogan, "Make Men — Then Make Money."
Segregation of Physically Diseased
The prison officials upon taking office in 1921,
were faced with the problem of devising a plan
for the proper separation of the tubercular, ve- 1
nereal and other diseased type of prisoners.
The Central Prison at Raleigh had insufficient
facilities. They realized even tho the healthy
prisoners owed a debt to society, that they did
not owe their health and possible danger of
their lives being exposed to such contagion and
that it would be a disgrace to and a crime to
any State to permit such a condition to exist.
With this humanitarian view and also appre-
preciating that a segregation of the diseased pris¬
oners would also result in economy, the offi¬
cials at once began to formulate plans to cor¬
rect this condition.
Sanatorium Ward for Prisoners
With the able assistance of Governor Mor¬
rison and the active support of other State agen¬
cies that had been enlisted in the cause, in the
face of opposition, the officials were rewarded
for their effort, by the General Assembly enact¬
ing a law creating a Prison Department at the
State Sanatorium, for the care not only of the
State’s Prison’s tuberculars but also the coun¬
ties and towns. This is said to be the first
prison tubercular sanatorium ever established
in the U. S. The great good accomplished
by this wise and humanitarian measure not on¬
ly for the afflicted prisoner but for the State as
a whole, in the improved health and efficiency
of the prisoners thus protected by the removal
of possible contagion, is proven by the records
of the prison hospitals, which show that six
years ago, under conditions of the diseased
types intermingling with the non-affected, the
average hospital inmates of the Prison was six
per cent daily of the population as against an
average hospital count for the past year of less
than one per cent; showing a per centage reduc¬
tion of over 500 per cent.
Segregation of the Insane
Now that the officials had completed
their program for the removal of the tubercular
from the prison they were faced with the prob¬
lem of still having at the Central Prison more
than one hundred criminal insane with no prop¬
er facilities for caring for those "bereft of rea-
on". Realizing that our State was maintain¬
ing Institutions for the Insane, for both races,
with a highly capable staff of medical experts
and psychiatrists trained in the studies of ment¬
al defectives, trained in exploring the brain, an
“embryonic world of mysteries unfathomable"
the Prison Officials asked why our State should
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