I am free to admit that when I glance over the newspaper reports of brutal outrages and horrible crimes my sympathy swings over wholly to the injured party; I, too, feel as if no measure could be too severe for the perpetrator of the crime. That there are human beings whose confinement is demanded by public safety I do not question, but modern scientific study is leading us to the conclusion that back of abnormal crimes are abnormal physiological conditions or abnormal race tendencies. And the "habitual criminal" is _not_ so designated because of the nature of his crimes but because of the number of his infractions of the law.
I might have concurred with the opinions of the learned professors were it not that just when legislation in my own State was giving no quarter to second and third offenders I was being led into the midst of this submerged tenth of our prison population, and my loyalty to their cause has been unswerving ever since.
"Have any of your 'habituals' permanently reformed?" I am asked.
They certainly have, more of them than even my optimism expected and under circumstances when I have been amazed that their moral determination did not break. In my preconceived opinion, the most hopeless case I ever assisted surprised me by settling down, under favorable environment, into an honest, self-supporting citizen; and we may rest assured that he is guarding his boys from all knowledge of criminal life.
After I came to understand how all the odds were against the penniless one, scarred and crippled by repeated crimes and punishments, it was not his past nor his future that interested me so deeply as _what was left of the man_. I suppose I was always in search of that something which we call the soul. And I sometimes found it where I least looked for it--among the very dregs of convict life.
John Bryan stands out in clear relief in this connection. How well I remember my first meeting with this man, who was then more than forty years old, in broken health, serving a twenty-year sentence which he could not possibly survive. He had no family, received no letters, was utterly an outcast. Crime had been his "profession."[4] His face was not brutal, but it was hard, guarded in expression and seamed with lines. The facts of his existence he accepted apparently without remorse, certainly without hope. This was life as he had made it, yes--but also as he had found it. His friends had been men of his own kind, and, judged by a standard of his own, he had respected them, trusted them, and been loyal to them. I knew this well for I sought his acquaintance hoping to obtain information supposed to be the missing link in a chain of evidence upon which the fate of another man depended. I assured Bryan that I would absolutely guard the safety of the man whose address I wanted, but Bryan was uncompromising in his refusal to give it to me, saying only: "Jenkins is a friend of mine. You can't induce me to give him away. You may be sincere enough in your promises, but it's too risky. I don't know you; but if I did you couldn't get this information out of me." Knowing that "honor among thieves" is no fiction I respected his attitude.