This is the improved
system of Prison Discipline which we have imported into England,
and which has been in successful operation among us for some years
past.
America, as a new and not over-populated country, has in all her
prisons, the one great advantage, of being enabled to find useful
and profitable work for the inmates; whereas, with us, the
prejudice against prison labour is naturally very strong, and
almost insurmountable, when honest men who have not offended
against the laws are frequently doomed to seek employment in vain.
Even in the United States, the principle of bringing convict labour
and free labour into a competition which must obviously be to the
disadvantage of the latter, has already found many opponents, whose
number is not likely to diminish with access of years.
For this very reason though, our best prisons would seem at the
first glance to be better conducted than those of America. The
treadmill is conducted with little or no noise; five hundred men
may pick oakum in the same room, without a sound; and both kinds of
labour admit of such keen and vigilant superintendence, as will
render even a word of personal communication amongst the prisoners
almost impossible.
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