The men who advocated the separate sys tems were without a true conception of social living, social control and social growth. They had no proper conception of how dependent man is upon his ability to imitate the good in others if he is to grow and develop. Deprived of the opportunity to imitate others, he shrivels and shrinks up and cannot grow out of delin quency into moral health and stability. The evils which Crawford and Russell saw in the Silent or Auburn System are inherent and in the Separate System also. The remedy for these lies in classification of offenders, and in the erection of special hospitals, schools and prisons for each class or group. Within each such institution the prisoners must be split up into groups and governed in accordance with the needs of each such group. See PENOLOGY.
Both the Separate and Silent Systems presup pose prison government which is autocratic or despotic in form. Transportation of prisoners overseas to Australia and Tasmania greatly changed and differentiated the methods of hourang and governing them. Upon their ar rival there they were usually placed in close confinement for a time, under sonic modifica tion of the Separate or Silent System. Then during the next period they were permitted to associate at work under modifications of these systems, and finally were given a ((Ticket of Leave,P permitting them to go beyond the boundaries of the so-called prison to engage in work under more or less supervision.
The fact that they could be allowed to go beyond the confines of prison to engage in work reacted profoundly upon the management of the prisons and led Capt. Alexander Mace nochie, who was the superintendent of the Eng lish prisons, to establish in Tasmania, then known as Van Dieman's Land, a new method of prison management, which has modified Eag fish prison methods to a considerable degree since that time. He originated the plan, which he outlined to the transportation committee of the House of Commons in London in 1837, of rewa rding men for service performed by the grant of marks or credits which should take the place of money as a pecuniary reward for work performed and would secure for thein a more speedy release.
Captain Maconochie's system, applied after 1841) in Van Dieman's Land, was modified and extended by Sir Walter Crofton, director of Irish prisons, following 1853. This system, as developed by Crofton and known as the Irish System, may be described as follows: " The period of cellular incarceration was served at Mount joy. where there was a prison in two departments, one for
men and one for women. The second stage was that of • progressive classification,' a phrase of which be was the author. Flls male prisoners were transferred from Mountjoy to Spike Island, where they were divided into five classes: the probation ciao, third, second, and first chases, and the advanced class. The probation class could be nipped by prisoners who had madea good record at Mountjoy. The those transferred were placed in the third clam where t bad to earn nine marks per month for six =oaths. or 54 mar in all, as the condition of promotion. The mm ber of marks to be earned in the second class was the mme; and in the first class twice as many, so that they °mild not pass from the first to the advanced class in less than one year. Under the English system they would then have been entitled to a ticket of leave; but Sir Walter would not grant it until after a test had been applied, in a condition of =separative freedom at a third prison, called an intermediate prison, at Lusk. *here they slept in movable iron huts and were oc cupied almost ly as freemen would have been, in farm ing and manufacturing. The prison at Lusk had neither bars, bolts. not was. Its aim was to make practical proof of the prisoner's reformation, his power of self-control, his ability to resist temptation, and to train him for a considerable period — never less than six months — under natural con ditions. and so to prepare him for full freedom by the enjoy ment of partial freedom as a preliminary step." The Ithh Prison System was first introduced into America at Elmira in 1876 by Superintendent Zebulon Brockway, aided by Gaylord Hubbell, E. C. Wines, Frank Sanborn and Theodore Dwight. Therefore, in America the Irish System was called the Elmira System, and applied chiefly to young first offenders.
The Elmira Reformatory building was con structed on the Auburn plan, but the rigor of silence was relaxed in the schoolrooms and to a certain extent in the shops and in the admin istration of the military system which Mr. Brockway introduced later on in the manage ment of the institution. A modified marking and grading system was substituted for the definite sentence. The schoolroom and military drill were thus the American developments of the Irish Prison System. Later this enterpris ing superintendent borrowed therapeutic baths from the insane hospital, which he substituted for the dungeon and the club.