![handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl27 and id is 1 raw text is:
IMPRISONMENT FROM THE INSIDE'
By
BAYARD RUSTIN'
Field Secretary Fellowship of Reconciliation
In May 1946, Caleb Foote, a graduate of Harvard University
and imprisoned for his conscientious objection to war, wrote a
thought-provoking article in Fellowship, the magazine of The
Fellowship of Reconciliation. Of the four freedoms, he wrote,
Perhaps the greatest public response has been to freedom from
fear. Upon that freedom the other three depend; yet if our so-
ciety is ever to achieve that freedom, it must discard a penal
system that creates fear and utilizes the threat of insecurity.
Three years earlier Harry Elmer Barnes and Negley K.
Teeters had published their now classic study, New Horizons
in Crimonology. In Chapter 26, discussing the Cruelty and
Futility of Modern Prisons, they concluded:
The authors of this book are convinced that the makeshifts
and patch-work undertaken by prison administrators, worthy
as much of it is, offers no adequate solution. Nothing, short
of a complete overhauling of our jurisprudence, including
the abolition of penal codes, and the introduction of an
entirely new concept of treatment of offenders offers much
promise in the field of penology.
In February 1945, Robert M. Lindner's book, Rebel With-
Out a Cause, was published. Dr. Lindner was at that time on
the faculty of Bucknell University and on the staff of the United
States Public Health Service and Psychologist at the Federal
Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pa. It is highly significant that a man
of Dr. Lindner's scientific training and long experience in pri-
sons should thus conclude his meticulous and dispassionate
study:
We have had in this volume a striking illustration of the
truth of William A. White's remark that behind every crim-
inal deed lies a secret. But more important, we have glimpsed
the utter futility, the sheer waste of confining individuals
in barred and turretted zoos for humans without attempting
to recover such secrets . . . Modern prisons, the gleaming
shops and factories, the bright young social workers, the
custodial hierarchy-in brief, the whole hollow structure of
rehabilitation [are] based upon expediency, untested hy-
potheses, unwarranted conclusions from a pseudo-scientific
empiricism.
Address delivered at One Hundred Sixtidth Annual Meeting of the Prison Society.
2 Mr. Rustin served 28 months in prison as a conscentious objector to conscription.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/prsjrnl27&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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