Not so very long ago one of the prisoners at Auburn, on a hot night in summer, as an officer was shutting the windows in the corridor outside, called out from his cell, "Oh, Captain, can't you let us have a little more air?"
The officer promptly went to the tier of cells whence the voice came and made a chalk-mark around the keyhole of one of the locks. When a man is "round-chalked" he is not released when the rest of the prisoners are let out of their cells, but reserved for punishment. In this case the officer mistook the cell from which the voice had come, and round-chalked the prisoner who was locked in next to the one who had dared to ask for more air.
The next morning, finding that his neighbor was about to receive the punishment intended for himself, the culprit promptly told the officer that he was the guilty party, and if anyone was to be punished, he ought to be. This honorable action was allowed no weight. He had some of his hard-earned money taken away from him, three days of his commutation cancelled, and the disc removed from his sleeve as a mark of disgrace; in short, he was severely punished--as his innocent neighbor would have been, had he not prevented it by taking the punishment upon himself.
The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the right to be believed; not even the right to reasonably considerate treatment. He is exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever outrage an inconsiderate or brutal keeper may choose to inflict upon him; and you cannot under the present system guard against such inconsiderate and brutal treatment.
I should not like to be understood as asserting that all keepers are brutal, or even a majority of them. I hope and believe that by far the greater number of the officers serving in our prisons are naturally honorable and kindly men, but so were the slave-owners before the Civil War. And just as it was perfectly fair to judge of the right and wrong of slavery not by any question of the fair treatment of the majority of slaves, but by the hideous possibilities which frequently became no less hideous facts, so we must recognize, in dealing with our Prison System, that many really well-meaning men will operate a system in which the brutality of an officer goes unpunished, often in a brutal manner.