d. That touches upon one of the very worst features of the
situation. No discrimination is ever made. It is not admitted that, while
one convict may be a liar, another may be entirely truthful; that men
differ in prison exactly as in the world outside. It is held, quite as a
matter of course, that they are all liars, and an officer's word will be
taken against that of a convict or any number of convicts. The result is
that the officers feel themselves practically immune from any evil
consequences to them from their own acts of injustice or violence. What
follows from this is inevitable. Our prisons have often been the scenes of
intolerable brutality, for which it has been useless for the victims to
seek redress. They can only cower and endure in silence; or be driven into
insanity by a hopeless revolt against the System.

Not so very long ago one of the prisoners at Auburn, on a hot night in
summer, as an officer was shutting the windows in the corridor outside,
called out from his cell, "Oh, Captain, can't you let us have a little
more air?"

The officer promptly went to the tier of cells whence the voice came and
made a chalk-mark around the keyhole of one of the locks. When a man is
"round-chalked" he is not released when the rest of the prisoners are let
out of their cells, but reserved for punishment. In this case the officer
mistook the cell from which the voice had come, and round-chalked the
prisoner who was locked in next to the one who had dared to ask for more
air.

The next morning, finding that his neighbor was about to receive the
punishment intended for himself, the culprit promptly told the officer
that he was the guilty party, and if anyone was to be punished, he ought
to be. This honorable action was allowed no weight. He had some of his
hard-earned money taken away from him, three days of his commutation
cancelled, and the disc removed from his sleeve as a mark of disgrace; in
short, he was severely punished--as his innocent neighbor would have been,
had he not prevented it by taking the punishment upon himself.

The point is this: that no convict has any rights--not even the right to
be believed; not even the right to reasonably considerate treatment. He is
exposed without safeguard of any sort to whatever outrage an inconsiderate
or brutal keeper may choose to inflict upon him; and you cannot under the
present system guard against such inconsiderate and brutal treatment.

I should not like to be