Chapel Hill, Aug. 4—Hoyle Sink, commissioner of pardons, addressing the Welfare Institute here last Thursday night on “The Less Fortunate Man,” declaring that “the thing we want to get at is the cure and not the punishment. If we can not cure the criminal tendencies in the homes, then our civilization is on the downfall and going fast.
There is but one hope and that is that our parents and teachers should teach something more than reading, writing and arithmetic—the eternal principle called character.”
“I have been accused of being everything from a penologist to a sentimentalist,” said Mr. Sink, “and I deny the accusation. Any man who takes a public office is more or less to be pitied, for one finds various aspects of the work which arouse varying feelings. There are times when I wish that I had a million dollars to help those whom the prisoners have left behind. Then again, I wish that I had the power to add to the sentences of many who are behind the bars; for I realize that they constitute a menace to society. I would like to turn them all out, if I thought it was safe. But I know that it is not.”
“A man cannot be paroled,” he declared in discussing the various reasons for granting clemency, “Unless first and foremost he shows evidence that he will lead a right life once he is let out. It is not enough that a prisoner should become converted. Because a man thinks has religion is no reason why he should be freed. Too often chain gang repentance is played up for sentimental reasons. It is not enough that a man has physical disability or that his family is in need. Often it has been said that a man has plead insanity in order to escape punishment. If this has ever happened, that man has received far greater punishment than he could have had in prison. I visited yesterday the Department of Criminal Insane, and I can conceive of no place that I would rather not be. I saw there a bunch of human derelicts.
“It has been generally found that those men who form the best class of prisoners, the class which is most obedient, are those who are guilty of homicide. A large number of these who commit other crimes are repeaters. The average age of those committed in the last 12 months is 23. There is a reason for these things, and I am here to help find it out. I am here because I want to know the welfare workers better in order that we may work together to greater advantages. During the last four months, we have granted 103 paroles, and we must depend largely on you to help in seeing that these prisoners keep parole and are at work.”
During the general discussion which followed Miss Kate Burr Johnson, commissioner of Public Welfare, committed on what Mr. Sink has said about the criminal insane. “Until we realize what a part mental sickness plays in the making of an anti-social individual,” she said, “there is little we can do. We need a broader conception and a more scientific way of treatment.”
From the front page of The Carolina Jeffersonian, Durham, N.C., Aug. 4, 1925
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn92073001/1925-08-04/ed-1/seq-1/
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