Prisons... These Reform Institutes

For two months and more, an outcry has been raised in Beirut out of zeal over the fate to which the prisons in Lebanon have come, and out of concern for the reform that is sought. The campaign began with the report submitted by the three deputies — Edouard Honein, Raymond Eddé, and Mounir Abou Fadel — after a visit they made to al-Raml Prison.

On another front, the "Committee for the Improvement of Prisons," headed by Mrs. Adlette Richani, continues to hold its meetings, now at the home of the president, now at the home of Mrs. Nadia al-Mouna or of Madame Tawfiq Moufarrej, with an elite group of ladies fired with enthusiasm for the cause. They paid a visit to His Excellency the Minister of Health, Mr. Albert Moukheiber, demanding an improvement in health conditions, particularly in the women's and children's prison; they also called on Emir Abdel Aziz Chehab, Director General of the Interior, and presented their demands for the improvement of the prisons and the supervision of motion-picture films.

The ladies' efforts joined with those of the inspector of prisons, Captain Youssef al-Haraka, and it became clear that the ideal final solution can come only through the building of a new prison provided with every requirement of health, with workshops, factories, schools, playgrounds, houses of preaching and guidance, and recreation halls.

To carry out this vital and important project, Captain Haraka, together with the committee of experts and engineers, was chosen to appraise the properties on which the prisons stand, in preparation for selling them and building a new prison with the proceeds.

The causes of crime go no further than these: poverty, ignorance, and disease.

● Our inmates are not all criminals by heredity
● From a spark struck in the Lebanese Chamber of Deputies
● The ladies of society have risen up
● The Minister of Health and the Director of the Interior are called upon to act quickly
● Modern education requires the instruction of prisoners
● Why should the prisoner not be a good citizen

"The Woman's Voice" had promised its readers a talk on the prisons from Captain Haraka, and our request happened to come while he was preparing an absorbing book, soon to be published, which treats important subjects in strengthening the general relations and bonds between the people and the men of public security. He kindly let us see some chapters of his book "With the People," from which we have excerpted part of this chapter, which concerns prisoners. We shall also publish another chapter, on combating juvenile crime, in the next issue.

The Modern Conception of the Prison

Gone is the time when we looked upon the criminal as an aberrant creature who must be cast out of our society and confined within four walls for retribution and revenge — this out of a desire to execute the letter of the law,

to make a show of social justice, and to satisfy those members of society who had been wronged.

The prison is no longer a place of retribution, a source of contempt for the citizen, a squanderer of his human character.

In other words, the prison must no longer be a school of corruption, or a mine [...] in inculcating the arts of crime, or a wellspring for teaching the varieties of ignorance and vice, or a training ground in the colors of thievery.

As for that band of ill-starred citizens who have strayed from the straight path, violated the sanctity of the laws and statutes, and ended in the darkness of the prisons — it is neither lawful, nor just, nor in keeping with common usage, that we should give up hope of their reform and of straightening their crookedness so as to make good citizens of them. So long as it is among our duties to guard the prisons and oversee the confinement of these inmates' liberty until the terms they spend in our precincts come to an end, we must strive earnestly to return them to the fold of society as good citizens.

The reform of the criminal, like the teaching of the ignorant, is a duty of the utmost importance, for the correction of criminals and delinquents within the prisons differs in nothing from the instruction of pupils within the schools: the latter are schools of teaching and guidance, and the former are institutes of reform and correction. If the men of public security fall short in straightening the crookedness of the prisoners, society will go on complaining of corruption, and the men of public security will go on struggling to no avail.

The State's Responsibility

The modern theory in the science of imprisonment holds today that the state is responsible

for every crime committed by one of its subjects, because the causes of crime go no further than these: poverty, disease, and ignorance. And since the state collects taxes from its citizens to combat these three scourges, and since no state in the world can or ever will be able to remove these causes from its society, it is only fitting that it treat these scourges and finish them off once and for all when the criminals come into its keeping.

The men of public security and their officers, to whom the guarding of the prisons is entrusted, must fight poverty through industry, by establishing workshops and factories within the prisons to teach trades and put an end to idleness and vagrancy, so that every prisoner may master a craft that will spare him the burden of poverty and ward off from him the pain of want. He will then leave prison with a trade or more in his hands, and in his pocket some money he has saved inside the prison from his labors, and he will return to society a good citizen and never come back to our dark abodes again — for the dignity he has recovered, after having once lost it, will not allow him to give it up anew, and the liberty whose taste he has known with honor and dignity will be too dear to him to sell for corruption.

Positive Reform

Here the essential purpose of the prison and of imprisonment stands revealed, and here the aim of correction and reform appears in its clearest form. Duty likewise requires those responsible for subjects whose liberties are confined to watch over their lives as human beings, and as citizens, sons of society: continuous health supervision must be kept over their bodies, and all the diseases and germs that gnaw at their frames, or share their food, or lodge in their clothing and bedding, must be fought, with unremitting effort to treat them for all the ailments to which they are exposed.

Duty also requires those responsible for national education and instruction — who have not been able, and will not be able, to teach and educate all citizens — to set about teaching and guiding the prisoners by opening schools within the prisons, for these unfortunates are more in need of reading and writing than any others.

And we, the men of public security, who have so long stood in enmity to these men and pursued them, and whom they have so often wished to destroy — these men are, after all, citizens... of the same clay as all mankind, possessed of all the qualities we ourselves possess. Once they understand that we labor to raise their level, watch over their comfort, and do all in our power to lighten the pains that come of confining their liberty, the evil in these very men will melt away, or its edge at least will be dulled, and they will turn — unbidden — onto the straight path.

After today we shall not mock any who alight, against their will, as our guests, nor shall we despise any of our inmates; our clientele are not all criminals by heredity, for every human being is liable to slip and go astray — every thoroughbred stumbles sometime. The best we can do is to reform and to teach, to educate and to correct, to guide and to counsel, and to remember from time to time that "the blue tent has not pitched its ropes over a single head alone"...