The Reformation Of Criminals -- By: Hastings H. Hart

Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 47:188 (Oct 1890)
Article: The Reformation Of Criminals
Author: Hastings H. Hart


The Reformation Of Criminals

Hastings H. Hart

The Reformation of Criminals is a subject which to-day engages the attention of some of the best thinkers and some” of the most efficient workers in the world. It is important because of its relation to the public welfare. There are about 75,000 persons in prison in the United States.1 There are at least as many more persons, out of prison, who belong to the criminal class, making 1 50,000 criminals, or one for every four hundred inhabitants. This army is recruited partly from the importation of vicious foreigners, partly from the dregs of our own society, but largely from the better elements of our population. A careful inquiry in the Minnesota State Reform School, some time ago, revealed the fact that the majority of the boys committed for crime had attended Sunday-school until near the time of their commitment. Forty per cent of them came directly from homes; forty-eight per cent more had lived at home within one year of their commitment; and only twelve per cent were entirely homeless. The assistant superintendent of the new Minnesota Reformatory for young men, an experienced prison officer, remarked recently that he had never seen so intelligent and fine looking a body of convicts as the thirty-five young men who had been committed to the Reformatory by the courts.

Crime is a contagious disease, and its spread is not confined to the debased classes. All authorities agree that crime is increasing in the United States faster than the population is increasing. It is manifest that popular education and the existing moral and religious agencies are not sufficient protection. If we are to check its spread, there must be improvement both in our preventive and remedial agencies. While crime is increasing here, there has been an extraordinary decrease in Great Britain; the number of convicts serving sentence of penal servitude having decreased2 from 10,500 in 1883 to 6,400 in 1889, a decrease of forty per cent in six years. It is claimed3 that this decrease represents a great diminution of crime, and is due largely to improved and reformatory methods of dealing with criminals. If this claim be true, the English prison system merits our careful study.

In addition to the interest which belongs to this subject as a study in social science and because of its relation to public morals and public economy, it has doubtless a personal interest to some of you who read, because you yourselves have at one time or another of your lives belonged to the criminal class. What is a criminal? According to Webster, ...

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