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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (May 31, 1962)
6 m JJ THURSDAY. MAY 31. 1962 jraark by'Swis MEDFOHD MAIL TRIBUNE. MEDFORD. OREGON (Editor's note: Swiss The ologian Karl Barlh recent ly asserted that some U.S. jails resemble "Dante's Hell." For comment on this UPI went to James V. Ben nett, director of the Fed oral Prisons Bureau for the past 25 years and on of the world's leading penal au thorities. The following dis patch g'ves his rehultal as well as his views on capital punishment, the parole sys tem and allejed "coddling" of prisoners.) fogiair Brings Review of Prison Management TIteo report to the American pco-,25 years or so in improving pic on the seamy, shu:Bed-up prison conditiQs in this coun civic problem of prison man-1 try, but there is a long way aKement. o . Pstill to go. More than a hun- In 25 vears as director of ! dred prisons still in use today the U.S. Bureau of Prisons James V- Bennett has estab lished himself as a penologist of international renown as well as a respected adminis trator. Today he directs 29 ferienil institutions with about 24.000 inmates. nt his con cern reaches to the approxi mately 500.000 Americans in federal. ?tate and local were built before the Civil War. The Maryland prison in Baltimore dates back to 1811. and the Ohio penitentiary at Columbus was opened in 11134. Overcrowding is a se rious problem even In our federal prisons. At the At lanta penitentiary, eight and 10 men are occupying cells intended for four. Men stand nrisons. jails, workhouses and (in line at the toilets and wash- other penal Institutions at ! rooms. They go to the dining any given mfnent. By LOUIS CASSELS1 United Press International In lfl:B a congressional j Bennett is a gray-haired commit lee retained James;m;in of great dignity. He Vnn Pfjnschoten Bennell. a sneaks in a measured tone. jVung attorney not long out' of 1 A,s discussed the problems Silver Creek, N.Y.. and Brown University, in study condi tion in fer'ral jails. What he found wa? a mess. He was then hired In clean it up, and this has been his life's work. A famous foreigner said room In shifts. Conditions like these breed unrest, and, make it virtually impossible to do any effective educational or rcluibllitational work with prisoners. Q. Why don t we build new of criminal re'iabilitation a nrnVilcm riii-ectlv nffnntinrt roughly one out of every rim ''" y '""" Americans his voice roe ' Roluctant to Vote Funds and his hand shook. Shocked By Conditions Dr. Karl Barth, thi noted something shocking about an 1 Swiss iheologian who current American nrison inis mnmn. j jv , making his first visit It stirred Bennott, now 67, lo : lo tnP United States, told a look buck over his career and nrw, conference in New York utter what might oe termed a Liberate Slowed By Tenden Strain Portland -TOPU- PianiBt Lib erace has been told to take it easy for a few days after n.iitir, uhnrl a PftncoH tild Tuesday night because of a strained tendon in his hand. The entertainment idol played the piano with his left hand only during the shorten ed final half of his perform ance. He then was taken to a hospital. His doctor said Lihcrace suffered an irritated tendon when he slipped on an oil slick in the driveway of his Los Angeles home a week ago. The doctor said Liberate probably would be able to play most numbers In a sched uled appearance this Friday at the Seattle World's fair. Liberace said the hand has hurt him since the fall. It gave way during a Chopin piece thai required the pianist to stretch for notes. that he shocked" was "terribly by the conditions JAIL VOTE CHALLENGED Lincoln, N.C. - ftiPD - Cliff Lowe, who lost an election for sheriff to the Incumbent here last, week by two votes, filed a complaint Tuesday, charg ing that two prisoners and a minor were t.llowed lo vote. Sheriff Frank P. lleavner de feated Lowe by vole of 3,-KOfi-3,604. Hravner has agreed to a recount of the ballots. he observed in one prison he visited. Barth said he found human beings incarcerated like ani mals In "cages" and that it was like a scene out of "Dante's Hell." He added that "the jails In Switzerland are a pnradise compared lo what I saw here." When these quotations were read to Bennett, he gazed silently at the ceiling of his office for a moment as if he were praying for patience. Then he asked, "Did Dr. Barlh say which prison he saw?" Delivering Lectures "No. he didn't identify it. But he was delivering lectures at Princeton Theological Sem inary. Princeton, N.J., at the lime." "I thought so," said Ben nell. "They prooably showed him the New Jersey State Penitentiary at Trenton. It is one of the oldest prisons in America - In use since 17IIR - and it is one of the wor?t. I have been saying for years thai it is a disgrace to Ameri can penology. It is hardly a fair sample of our prison sys tem. We have a number of new institutions, state and federal, which are just as good as anything they have in Switzerland. Why didn't somebody phow Dr. Barlh one of them?" Q. Do we have many jails like the one at Trenton? A. We have made a great deal of progress- in the past A. With all the demands for money to build new schools, highways and hospitals, leg islatures are reluctant to vote appropriations for prisons. The lawmakers are reflecting publft' attitudes when they put nrisons al the bottom of I the list of needed civic Im provements. Q. Do you think the public Is indifferent toward prison reform? A. A considerable portion of the public has the idea that prisoners are just a lot of human scum who deserve whatever misery they suffer. The average citizen seems to think that our jails are filled chiefly by murderers, rapists and kidnapers. Q. Isn't that true? A. No, il is not true. More than half the people commit ted to our jails are drunks and vagrants. Two-thirds of all offenders sent lo prison each year are convicted of non-violent crimes. Less than 10 per cent have been con victed of homicide, rape or kidnaping. Sure, there are same prisoners who are pretty nasty individuals, and who ought to be quarantined. But there are lens of thousands who are simply victims of dis crimination and environment. They are the handicapped, the underprivileg ', the slow wilted, the alcoholics, the drug addict, the kids from slum neighborhoods who drop out of sclflml and drift into crime . . . Voice Steadily Rising Bennett's voice had been rising steadly as he talked. Now he was obviously angry, and his hand shook slightly as he interrupted himself to light a cigaret. . "To put It quite bluntly," he said, ".society uses prisons new nee mixes from Uncle Ben's! Perfect riei dishis...tisy as bailing witirl . t,,r , i.-:.: 3ufTZj.?t ac o Curried Kiel Dlihn Rich, leity, Roldan, Authntlc curriad rice, fragrant with Fur Eastern htrb and plctt . . . ay as .?.',n, sS Atf1 mt w s ftSrPW' Sj;i.v i Perfect Wild Rice Dlihst ol Ions B'm and ljt-CA - '" ' tjrfactly sanioned and iptcad . . . amy Bit hnlllng watert0 Spanish Rice Dishes that toloflul Old World traat ol baautifullv saasonad uca with tomatoai and pappa'S and onions . . . aa1 a bnilmg walarl as a dumpingtSground - a place to get rid of the misfits and outcasts'eVhom we want to get out of sight and out of mind. "The p r is o n population could be reduced enormously if communities would accept the responsibility of . .-oviding really constructive solutions for some of our social prob lems - like slums ... or alco holism." Under Bennett's jurisdic tion are 2!) federal institu tions, ranging from "maxi mum security" penitentiaries, sufli as Alcatraz, to relatively open correctionnl camps for boys who have gotten Into trouble with the law. Small Proportion (The federal prisons, with about 24.000 inmates, consti tute a relatively small pro portion of America's detention system, About 175,000 prison ers are housed in slate re formatories and penitentiaries, and some 300,000 are in local jails and county workhouses, making a total U.S. prison population of half a million persons.) Bennett's blood pressure also rises when anyone sug gests in his presence that pris oners are "coddled" in some of his new model institutions, such as the one at Seagoville, Tex., where men live in an environment like a college t campus, with no walls and no i bars on the windows. . I "It is not coddling to make i a decent human being out of a criminal," he said. "With the exception of the three or four out of a hundred who die in prison, the rest all come out some day. They come right back into the commun ity, and the point of all prison rehabilitation programs is to prepare them for this day by helping them learn the moral values of society and the skills that will make them produc tive citizens. Is Tough Medicine "Make no mistake - a pris on sentence is tough medicine under the best conditions. It ! imposes a stigma that will lingcP with the offender long after he has served his time. I takes him away from his loved ones, confines him to a few acres of land, enforces a monotonous regime upon him. I and deprives him of any normal sex outlet. The latter I is for most prisoners a more i refined torture than the cruol i est kind of corporal punish ment. I "If you add a deliberately I punitive prison program lo these hardships, you are going to send men back into society al the end of hoir sentences filled with so much Tiate and bitterness there is not much hope of their going straight." Q. Isn't it true that a ma jority of prisoners do come back for a second or third hitch? A. Yes, we always have that t.'ejrown at us as "proof" that rehabilitation is a failure. Considering the overcrowd ing, the lack of rehabilitation facilities and other handicaps, I think it's pretty miraculous that one third of the people who serve time in prison never get into trouble again. Controversy on Paroles Q. There is also a lot of controversy about paroles. Some people feel that parole boards are too lenient and release me who promptly go out to commit new crimes. How do you feel about that? A. You newspapermen stir up a l8t of that. You write as if the parole board had just deliberately turned loose some criminal to let him prey on the public. I'll grant you that parole boards - like everybody else - sometimes make mistakes. But nobody's ever been able to document a single case in which a parole board had wilfully released a prisoner knowing he would go out and commit another crirtie. Q. But . . . A. Just a minute. Let's talk about parole for a bit. Parole is never supposed to be a means ofocxtending lenience. It has two purposes. First, it is a technique of getting a man out of prison at the time 'ghen he is best adapted to a successful return to society. Second, it is a devic where by we can have, in reality as well as theory, some sem blance of equal justice under law. Q. What do you mean by that? o Different Sentences A. I meant that different judges impose greatly differ ing sentences for the same type of crime. We encounter almost incredible extreiUVs. One judge will put a man on probation, and another will send him to prison for 25 years - for the) same offense. The United States is the only nation in the western world where the sentence, as long as it remains within legal limits, can be imposed by a single judge without any review of its fairness by a higher court. We have some real sadists on the bench. We also have some mentally 111 judges who are still passing out sentences. Tie only way you can bring some degree of fairness and groun judgment into this is I through a system gf paroles. The system may not always work perfectly - nothing does - but what we0ought to do is to improve it, not abolish it. Q. Do you think you've made any headway during your 25 years as bureau di rector in eductfting the public about prison problems and needs? Bennett 'smiled at the ques tion, and swheled his chair around to look out of his of fice window, which commands a magnificent view of the Capitol Dome. "Oh. I think we've made a little headway,'" he said. 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