Nor is that all. This inhuman treatment--I hope I am not guilty of too much rhetoric in the use of the adjective--this punishment of being sent here to the dark cells, is only one, as I learn from my new friends, of five simultaneous punishments, all for the same offense.
There is First: Your imprisonment in the jail, under such conditions as I am trying to describe.
Second: Your hard-gained earnings are taken away by a fine which is charged against you on the prison books. As an instance, take my own case. My six days' work in the basket-shop would have entitled me, as a convict, to receive from the state of New York the munificent sum of nine cents. But my fine for spending one night in the punishment cells was fifty cents. So at the end of my week's work I owed the state of New York forty-one cents. If I had been a regular convict I should have had to work four weeks more before I could have got back even again. But, on the other hand, had I been a regular convict I should have been much more heavily fined, and my punishment would not have ended with a single night.
This is of course the highly humorous aspect of my particular case. To a prisoner who sometimes loses several years' pay for the privilege of spending a few days in these cells, there is precious little humor about it. At the mere whim of a bad-tempered keeper he may lose the acquisition of months of patient toil. And against the keeper there is no practicable appeal whatever, for the P. K. simply registers the action of the officers, on the theory that "discipline must be maintained." Experience has taught the convict that there is no use in kicking--that would only be to get into deeper trouble; so he takes his medicine as the shortest and quickest way out. But we may be quite sure that the convict does not forget his grievance, and ultimately Society pays the penalty.
But let us go on with the other punishments involved in this jail sentence.
Third: The disc upon your sleeve is bulls-eyed--that is, changed to a circle--or taken off altogether, as a mark of disgrace. And you never can regain your disc, no matter how perfect your future conduct. Your sleeve shows to every observer that you have been punished; that you are or have been a disturbing, if not dangerous, character. It is astonishing how much the prisoners get to care about this disc, and how deeply they feel the disgrace implied in the loss of it. But however strange it seems, there can be no doubt as to the fact.