A more remarkable case was that of a man who had undergone several terms for making counterfeit coin. He wrote to me from prison reminding me that I had spoken with him in the cells, telling me when his time would expire and asking for an appointment. I did not remember him, and had not much faith in his intentions, so I did not reply to him. But he came to see me, and I was rather impressed in his favour, so I took him up. I found he was a clever tinsmith, without wife or friends. I could not get him work, so I bought him tools and metal and hired a small place for him to work in. He went straight, and got on fairly, for he has now a little shop front in which he displays his wares. This happened four years ago, and I believe him to be living honestly. He has paid me for the tools, and though he lives miles away he sometimes looks me up.
I might tell of others, but I refrain. I tell of these because I know, in spite of my brilliant failures, that many criminals can be saved; and I would not have it inferred, because I tell in this chapter of the failures, that success has not smiled upon me. It has; but it required effort and the application of common-sense to bring it about. There is no royal road to save them; for it is individually, not in the mass, that such can be redeemed, and any plan for rescuing them which does not give scope for individuality and does not allow for the temperament, characteristics, and abilities of these men is sure to be a failure in the long-run. The attempt to deter men from crime by squeezing all of them into the same mould while they are in prison is a dismal and disastrous failure; it deters them not. The attempt to redeem them when at liberty by pressing them into another mould in any institution is equally certain to result in failure. Destroy a man’s individuality and you destroy the man.
With a wise prison system and properly qualified prison officials, societies for the aid of discharged prisoners would be unnecessary, for their occupation would be gone. Each prison ought to contain its own Prisoners’ Aid Society, and what is to hinder the governor, chaplain, and doctor being at the head of it? But we want, first, a system that will be sufficiently elastic, and, secondly, officials who will seek to understand it before much good can be done in this direction. Given a system that seeks to humanize, that prepares prisoners for their liberty by a gradual improvement in their conditions, approximating more and more closely to a state of freedom as the day of release draws nigh, a system that shall not convert the eyes of men into the eyes of hunted animals, and that shall not make his heart a sealed book, a system that shall deliver men from senseless drudgery and damning monotony--then, and not till then, will prisoners, officials, and aid societies have a fair chance, for this must be the keynote of any reform.