Remarks on prisons / By Stevenson MacGill.

  • Stevenson Macgill
Date:
1810
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Remarks on prisons / By Stevenson MacGill. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    of prisoners who have not been convicted of crimes. Miany other reasons combine, to enforce this object. Employment would render the management of the prison more easy and safe. It would direct the thoughts of active spirits from dangerous caballing; it would prevent that disorder and tendency to riot, which is, at all times, the fruit of idleness, but which must particularly arise among persons, whose habits are disorderly, and whose thoughts will, probably, take the course of mischief and of profligacy. This leads me to observe the importance of employment, to the habits and moral interests of the prisoners. It is the duty, we have observed, of a well regulated society, so to order its public institutions, that they become not the means of corruption, and nurseries of profligacy. And does not idleness naturally lead to vices and to crimes? Must it not be particularly danger- ous among those, whose habits already lead them to disorder and profligacy? By not furnishing prisoners with the means of employment, you increase the ten- dency to idleness, disorder, and vice, among the corrupt, and you place those of a better description, in circum- stances of the greatest danger. But as a community, professing the character of humanity, and acknowledging the infinite importance of virtue and religion, both to states and individuals, should we not have in view, not merely to preserve individuals from increasing wretched- ness, but to employ such means as we possess, and are
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