Cellular imprisonment is inhuman, because it blots out or weakens,
in the cases of the least degenerate criminals, that social sense
which was already feeble in them, and also because it inevitably
leads to madness or consumption (by onanism, insufficient
movement, air, &c.). Hence it drives the prison authorities, in
order to avoid these disastrous consequences, to the injustice of
building cells for murderers which are decidedly comfortable, and
consequently a mockery of the honest wretchedness of the cottages
and garrets of the poor. The treatment of mental diseases
recognises a special form of insanity under the name of prison
madness.
Cellular imprisonment, in temporary or indefinite sentences, can
do nothing for the amendment of the guilty, especially because,
when we do not amend the social environment, it is useless to
lavish care on our prisoners if, as soon as they quit prison, they
must return to the same conditions which led them into crime. No
adequate social prevention can in any way be provided by the more
or less arcadian devices of the prisoners' aid societies. The
chief mistake of the prison experts has been to concentrate their
attention exclusively on the cell and in the cell,
forgetting the external factors of crime; so that, by a familiar
psychological process, the cell has become for prison experts what
money is to the avaricious: it has ceased to be a means, and has
become an end in itself.
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