Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt:...is a very "rare bird" and if you find one among five. hundred delinquents, that is no reason why everybody should hasten to relieve himself of the burdensome task of reforming the other prisoners. If you abandon controlling people by moral force, you fall back on physical force: i. e., on brutality and chains and strait jackets. Even insane asylums scarcely find these devices useful for any cases of those really insane. We must still rely on moral force for controlling prisoners and for reforming them. We should all learn how to produce moral character by generating the capacity for self-control in our wards. Some people tell us that the delinquent is not to blame for his delinquency because his psychological characteristics are based on his nervous system which is inherited from his parents and his false standards and ideas were acquired from his associates or his superiors. Then they conclude that you should not punish such a man because he is not to blame. Do these people who think that the prisoner is not to blame for what he has done conclude that nothing should be done to restrain him from wrongdoing? Granting that we could and should punish the real offenders back of him, what then? Will he be reformed if we punish his grandfather and arrest his boyhood playmates? No. We will still have him on our hands. What shall we do with him? If he does not choose to do right, shall we give him license to do wrong, to the general detriment of himself and society? The fact is, he must be disciplined and reformed whether he is to blame or not. His reformation depends on our ability to impress upon him that he ought to do right and that he is morally bound to do right and, in fact, that it is absolutely just to expect him to do right....