From: Programme of Proceedings for the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline to be held in Cincinnati, Ohio, October 11th to October 20th, 1870.
Reprinted to accompany the Transactions of the 1870 National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline by the American Correctional Association on the occasion of its Centennial Anniversary, October 1970.
I. Punishment is inflicted on the criminal in expiation of the wrong done, and especially with a view to prevent his relapse by reformation.
II. Treatment is directed at the criminal and his new birth to respect for the laws.
III. Practice shall conform to theory and the process of public punishment be made in fact, as well as pretense, a process of reformation.
IV. A progressive classification should be established and include at least three stages: a penal stage, a reformatory stage, and a probationary stage worked on some mark system where they earn promotion, gaining at each successive step, increased comfort and privilege.
V. Since hope is a more potent agent than fear, rewards more than punishments are essential to every good prison system.
VI. The prisoner's destiny during his incarceration should be put in his own hands.
VII. The two master forces opposed to the reform of the prison systems are political appointments and instability of administration.
VIII. Prison officers need a special education for their work, special training schools should be instituted for them and prison administration should be raised to the dignity of a profession.
IX. Sentences limited only by satisfactory proof of reformation should be substituted for those measured by mere lapse of time.
X. Of all the reformatory agencies religion is the first in importance.
XI. Education is a matter of primary importance in prisons.
XII. No prison can be made a school of reform until there is, on the part of officers, a hearty desire and intention to accomplish this effect.
XIII. There must be a serious conviction in the minds of prison officers that the imprisoned criminals are capable of being reformed.
XIV. A system of prison reform must gain the will of the convict.
XV. The interest of society and the interest of the convicted criminal are really identical. Society is best served by saving its criminal members.
XVI. The prisoner's self respect should be cultivated.
XVII. In prison administration moral forces should be relied upon with as little mixture of physical force as possible.
XVIII. Steady honorable labor is the basis of all reformatory discipline. It not only aids information, it is essential to it.
XIX. It is important that criminals be trained while in prison to the practice and love of labor.
XX. We regard the contract system of prison labor as prejudicial--alike to discipline, finance and reformation.
XXI. The stage of conditional leave is problematic to administer but we believe Yankee ingenuity is competent to devise some method of practical application among separate jurisdictions and the vast reach of our territory.
XXII. Prisons, as well as prisoners, should be classified or graded. There shall be prisons for the untried; prisons for young criminals; prisons for women; for misdemeanants; male felons; and the incorrigible.
XXIII. It is believed that repeated short sentences are worse than useless.
XXIV. Greater use should be made of the social principal in prison discipline than is now. The criminal must be prepared for society in society.
XXV. Public preventative institutions for the treatment of children constitute a true field of promise in which to labor for the repression of crime.
XXVI. More systematic and comprehensive methods should be adopted to serve discharged prisoners. Having raised him up, it has the further duty to aid in holding him up.
XXVII. The successful prosecution of crime requires the combined action of capital and labor.
XXVIII. It is plainly the duty of society to indemnify the citizen who has been unjustly imprisoned.
XXIX. Our laws regarding insanity and its relationship to crime need revision.
XXX. Does society take all the steps it easily might to change, or at least improve, the circumstances in our social state that thus lead to crime?
XXXI. The exercise of executive clemency is one of grave importance, and at the same time of great delicacy and difficulty.
XXXII. The proper duration for imprisonment for a violation of the laws of society is one of the most perplexing questions in criminal jurisprudence.
XXXIII. The establishment of a National Prison Bureau or a National Prison Discipline Society is recommended.
XXXIV. We declare our belief that the education and self respect of the convict would be served by the establishment of a weekly newspaper to enable him to keep pace with passing events.
XXXV. Prison architecture is a matter of grave importance. The proper size of prisons is a point of much interest. In our judgement 300 inmates are enough to form the population of a single prison; and, in no case, would we have the number exceed five or six hundred.
XXXVI. The organization and construction of prisons should be by the state.
XXXVII. As a general rule, the maintenance of all penal institutions, above the county jail, should be from the earnings of their inmates, and without cost to the state.
XXXVIII. A right application of the principles of sanitary science in the construction and arrangements of prisons is another point of vital importance.
XXXVIX. The principle of the pecuniary responsibility of parents for the full or partial support of their criminal children in reformatory institutions, extensively applied in Europe, has been found to work well in practice.
XL. It is our intimate convictions that one of the most effective agencies in the repression of crime would be the enactment of laws, by which the education of all the children of the state should be made obligatory.
XLI. It is our conviction that no prison system can be perfect or successful to the most desirable extent, without some central and supreme authority to sit at the helm, guiding, controlling, unifying, vitalizing the whole.