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PRISON DISCIPLINE*.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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MONTHLY REPOSITORY . NEW SERIES , No . LXIX
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SEPTEMBER , 1832 .
Prison Discipline*.
PRISON DISCIPLINE * .
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While , as a nation , we are setting to work in earnest to prepare for ourselves institutions which will , in all probability , lessen the amount of crime within our borders , the greater number of us are little aware how barbarous are those of our regulations which relate to the custody and punishment of criminals . Our ignorance is not the less because we venerate the names of Howard and of Romilly . If this had been enough , their philanthropic successors would not now have had to deplore that the work begun by them has made little progress in comparison with the time which has elapsed since they set it on foot ; and that our treatment of the
sinning part of our population , is as largely compounded of folly and cruelty as if our Christianity were no more than a name , and our civilization a false and conceited assumption . As a nation , we have not even arrived at the principle of punishment : we are blind to its objects , and therefore erring in the use of its means . The lowest classes among us look upon punishment as sheer cruelty , inflicted by those who have power , for some unknown purpose of gratification or advantage . Those a little above them regard punishment as vengeance ; others , as something connected with crime by an unknown moral necessity ; others , more enlightened , see in it a benevolent purpose of preventing more evil by the
infliction of less . Few , very few , question whether any right exists to inflict punishment at all , except in as far as punishment is involved in the regulations by which the orderly part of society is secured from aggression . Of all these the lower classes know most of the facts of the treatment of our criminals , and all that they know is so corroborative of their notions of punishment being either gratuitous cruelty or vengeance , that we must not expect
them to improve their conceptions till we have amended our management . In order to bring about this amendment , the comparatively enlightened classes must be more fully informed than they * The Eighth Report of the Committee of the Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline . 1832 . Punishment of Death . A Series of short ArticVs , &c . 1832 .
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No , 09 . 2 X
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1832, page unpag, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1820/page/1/
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