The Connecticut Prison Association and the Search for Reformatory Justice. Gordon S. Bates
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Black Americans and European and Asian immigrants were easy targets for police, especially after being once incarcerated for any perceived or real infraction as they moved about. Whether the determining factor was race, ethnic origin, or religious beliefs, they suffered immeasurably as expendable, replaceable laborers. In addition, as the twentieth century opened, there developed in U.S. industrialism an almost totalitarian passion to eliminate any social obstruction to the progress of business. There was plenty of obstruction to be found in the loiterers, the saloon crowds, and the many seeking honest work in a new location.
From 1870 on, thousands of war veterans, free blacks, and immigrants flooded the streets of Connecticut’s towns and cities. All, including the immigrants from overseas, were often subject to squalid living quarters and near-slavery conditions in the jobs they were able to obtain. Wages were withheld from workers who had little or no leverage to force employers to honor their commitment. Groceries and other basic supplies were available only from company stores and usually at higher than average prices. Living quarters were frequently unfit for human occupation, and for the privilege of having a leaking roof over their heads, they were charged exorbitant rents that left them with little money to look for other options, if there were any. Language difficulties made life precarious for immigrants and even blacks, who often had never had education beyond the first grade. These reasons alone made this mobile population easy prey and fostered the novel concept of associations of organized labor in the form of unions.
By 1900 Connecticut had over two hundred labor organizations, which slowly began to offer some protections. Immigrants gradually managed to find a way to survive, and some found the means to thrive. But a huge number carried baggage far too heavy to blend in. Vagrants filled the city streets of the larger cities and spread into smaller towns. There were so many that a new word emerged, trampdom, referring to the mix of hoboes, adventurers, panhandlers, thieves, and young adults seeking work. They took to riding the rails by the thousands, without tickets of course.
The presence of tramps, vagrants, and hoboes became a major challenge, especially on the outskirts of urban areas. Multiplying rapidly, they were soon labeled as a significant threat to the working class. They were more than a nuisance. The frequent accusation was that the tramps were impeding the civilized use of the train system, which was opening up the whole center of the country. Moreover, they were incipient criminals as well as being dirty and smelly. Along with all the other public nuisances, they were considered to be a dangerous infection of the body economic. Once caught, without alternatives, they were relegated to the jails and prisons. Once imprisoned, the chances of making an honest living became less and, eventually, too hard to achieve for most. Once they were released, if jobs were available, their children had even less opportunity to get the education and self-development that the rest of the nation took for granted. The “revolving door” cycle had its start in the 1880s. It could and did go on for generations.
VOTING RIGHTS FOR EX-OFFENDERS
Finally, one other minor debate, in which the CPA played a part, was about restoring the voting rights of offenders once released. By law, forfeiture of those rights was an automatic result of conviction and imprisonment. As early as 1900 John Taylor spoke directly to the issue. An ex-inmate had written to him, asking about the possibility of having this basic right of citizenship restored to him. Taylor shared the letter in his annual report. The published invitation to petition for a restoration of full citizenship required the advertisement of the crime and was unnecessarily shameful for the inmate and the inmate’s family. “I would suggest a Constitutional amendment providing that the power be lodged in the hands of the Superior Court Judges, where it would be safely exercised, and with little publicity.”49
The idea of an amendment to the Connecticut State constitution was never pursued, but the agency continued to press for a better method to restore civil rights to offenders. Over the years public opinion has fallen on the side of affirming that such rights should be permanently lost for convicted felons. The CPA fought consistently for the other side, believing that the restoration of rights of citizenship was one of the key ways to foster a sense of hope and provide an incentive for staying free of crime after release.
THE RESULTS OF CPA’S FIRST THIRTY-FIVE YEARS
The era of the Gilded Age in Connecticut, from 1875 to 1910, was characterized by repercussions from the severe national periods of economic boom and bust, the rapid growth of urban centers and the decrease in farming, and an enormous increase in immigration from the South and from overseas. In the words of Bruce Fraser, by the beginning of the twentieth century Connecticut was “highly urban, densely populated, heavily industrial and ethnically diverse.”50
This time was also marked by the continued dilution of another major cultural component, Protestant domination. The revision of Connecticut’s constitution in 1818 had eliminated the last of the Congregational preferences that had been in place for two centuries. Despite that change, the Protestant culture still maintained a strong influence in its political and economic control of business, banking, trade, and morals throughout the nineteenth century. In the criminal justice system the period witnessed the passage of historic legislation in sentencing and supervision of discharged offenders. It was a victory, however partial and provisionary, for the reformatory approach to prison discipline that would last for over seventy-five years.
The story of the battle for prison reform waged by John Taylor, Francis Wayland, and the CPA Board is the foundation of the Connecticut story. The reformatory ideal they sought to realize was hardly the result of a group of naive Pollyannas who looked only on the bright side of everything. On the contrary, they were practical realists as they sought to implement that ideal. Francis Wayland was a hardheaded, practical, and astute lawyer, judge, and politician. He considered whipping unnecessary, but he was hesitant to ban its use. He was a temporary politician and a long-term law professor who had little empathy for what he called career or “incorrigible” criminals. Strict retribution for those offenders who would not or could not change their ways made eminent sense to his Calvinist morality.
On the other hand, Wayland never lost his commitment to law and order in the community. He took the impact of crime seriously. He believed fully that a reformatory approach was infinitely better for most offenders and for the community than a retributive system, but he never disavowed the need for punishment. He thought systemically as well as about the care of the individual. His support of the indeterminate-sentence system never wavered, and he fought fiercely for the first probation law in Connecticut. With other members of the CPA, he contributed his leadership constantly to a number of improvements in prison conditions, including the abolition of shaved heads, striped uniforms, the ball and chain, the lockstep, and meals given in cells. Illness slowed him down from 1895 until his death in 1904. Rev. Henry Thompson assumed the presidency of the agency immediately afterward, holding the agency steady until William Bailey was installed in 1909.51
John Taylor’s contribution, on the other hand, laid not so much in his intellect as in the force of his personality and in his people skills, sharpened during his Civil War experiences. He had considerable natural organizing skills and a sturdy, indefatigable physical constitution. He appears to have been one who related easily to all the prisoners he dealt with, young or old, in a forthright and effective way. Entering the army as a youth, he had mustered out a mature man ready to deal with hardcase inmates. As a married man, Taylor was able to present himself as a father figure to the many younger prisoners whose care was in his hands.
Taylor held to the deeply engrained cultural value of giving all people, including ex-offenders, the benefit of the doubt until proven wrong. Informed consent was not part of his approach. Consequently, he did not reveal a prisoner’s background to a prospective employer very often, and he defended that approach under criticism at the national level. Taylor wanted his discharged offenders to have all the opportunities possible for restarting their lives. Although he was aware of the number of those returning to prison (his estimate of recidivism stabilized at 50 percent, approximating the average that has persisted into modern times), he was never a pessimist about his work. If he was ever discouraged, he never let it show. Along with all the other assistance he offered, Taylor fought consistently for the restoration of forfeited rights for discharged offenders who had stayed crime-free for one