Review: Life and Death in Sing Sing
| Published date | 01 January 1930 |
| Date | 01 January 1930 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032258X3000300122 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
160
THE POLICE JOURNAL
INDIAN
VILLAGE
CRIMES,
with an introduction on Police Investi-
gations and Confessions. By SIR
CECIL
WALSH.
1929.
lOS.
6d.
(Ernest Benn, Limited.)
THIS is an interesting book and contains a suggestive introduction.
The
author's object is ' not merely to interest the student of criminology, and to
illustrate the fascination and difficulties of police investigation and of the
whole course of criminal administration in a large agricultural province,
but
to try to throw some light upon the life and mentality of the ordinary Indian
cultivator.'
Clearly and vividly he tells various tales of remarkable incidents for the
truth
of which he vouches. Memories of bygone days come over some of us
when we read them and enable us to appreciate the point and shrewdness of
his observations. On the Bench of the Allahabad High Court, Sir Cecil Walsh
has carefully studied the mentality and ideas of the great majority, ' the
teeming millions who know little and seem to care less about the professional
politician who claims to represent them.'
The
introduction is particularly valuable.
The
present reviewer would
add to it a reflection which has often occurred to him. When the worst has
been told of the methods of the Indian police, it is marvellous that their work
is done with the courage and ability which are so often displayed. A good
British Superintendent who has been given time to become well acquainted
with his men and his district does wonders and is served with remarkable
fidelity. His value is often appreciated
but
less frequently recognized with
adequate generosity.
The
publication of this book should bring a clearer
and wider understanding of his difficulties.
LIFE
AND
DEATH
IN
SING
SING.
By
LEWIS
E.
LAWES,
Warden of
Sing Sing, with a Foreword by Adolph Lewisohn. 1929. 18s. (John
Long, Ltd.)
FOR
all its base-ball games, smoking privileges, cinemas, and prisoners' band
playing the convicts into dinner, Sing Sing prison has not yet reached the
humanitarian
ideal;
for Mr. Lawes describes the cells still in use, pending
the completion of new buildings under construction, as intolerably small
(7 ft. long, 3 ft. 3 in. wide, and 6 ft. 7 in. high), with practically no ventilation,
often very damp, and condemned as unsanitary for more than sixty years.
The
material of this book is not circumscribed by its title. Apart from
its interesting account of Sing Sing prison, its inmates, and the lines on which
it is conducted, it contains a wide survey of the genesis of criminality, the
defects in existing legal and penal methods, with proposed amendments to
render these more efficacious not only for the reform of the criminal
but
for
the protection of law-abiding society against the law-breaker.
After twenty-five years' experience as a prison official, nine years of it as
Warden of Sing Sing, where he has handled over 10,000 convicts, among
them some of the ' shrewdest and most desperate criminals in the world,'
Mr.
Lawes is an earnest supporter of methods which
the'
hard-boiled'
advocates of the old system of rigorous penal discipline regard as ' coddling.'
He holds that all prison privileges are a powerful incentive to good behaviour.
,
The
hope of reward,' he writes, ' was ever a greater inducement than the
fear of punishment.'
In Sing Sing he has seen 176 men and 4 women face to facewith execu-
tion, and devotes a whole chapter to a well-reasoned plea for the abolition of
capital punishment, in the efficacy of which as a deterrent he was once a firm
believer. '
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