In Prison

Kate Richards O'Hare

• Publisher: Golden Springs Publishing
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781786255129
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

A fascinating view of prisons in the early years of the Twentieth Century.Carrie Katherine "Kate" Richards was born March 26, 1876 in Ottawa County, Kansas. Her father, Andrew Richards (c. 1846-1916), was the son of slave-owners who had come to hate the institution, enlisting as a bugler and drummer boy in the Union Army at the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861. Following conclusion of the war he had married his childhood sweetheart and moved to the western Kansas frontier, where his wife Lucy and he had brought up Kate and her four siblings, raising the children as socialists from an early age.After America's entry into World War I in 1917, O'Hare led the Socialist Party's Committee on War and Militarism. For giving an anti-war speech in Bowman, North Dakota, O'Hare was arrested and taken to prison by federal authorities for violating the Espionage Act of 1917, an act criminalizing interference with recruitment and enlistment of military personnel. With no federal penitentiaries for women existing at the time, she was delivered to Missouri State Penitentiary on a five-year sentence in 1919. While in prison Richards published two books, Kate O'Hare's Prison Letters (1919) and In Prison (1923). After a nationwide campaign President Calvin Coolidge commuted her sentence. Richards took a keen interest in prison reform and carried out a national survey of prison labor (1924-26).

APPENDIX

STATEMENT BY THE AUTHOR

When I found that I might be compelled to spend many months in prison I felt that I should like to make my incarceration of social value, if possible, by making a detailed study of my fellow convicts.

With the co-operation of the heads of departments of universities, heads of social service organizations, scientific societies, employers of labour, labour leaders and other interested individuals I prepared the outline reproduced in this appendix, for a case book on criminology.

When the outline was completed I visited (1918) Governor Frederick D. Gardner of Missouri, submitted a copy of the schedule, and asked his co-operation in securing permission to make the survey in case I should be compelled to serve as a federal prisoner in the state penitentiary at Jefferson City. Governor Gardner seemed to feel quite sure that such a survey would be of great social value. He called in his private secretary, discussed the matter with him at length, and then gave his unqualified promise that he would arrange that the prison officials should not only give me permission to make the survey, but that I should have every co-operation needful.

I then visited the University of Missouri at Columbia, and found that the department of psychology and the medical school would be willing to make the psychological and medical examinations, and were keenly anxious that a case study in criminology should be made.

I also visited Governor Lynn J. Frazier of North Dakota, the state in which my presumed offence was said to have been committed, the University of North Dakota at Grand Forks, and the warden and physician of the state penitentiary at Bismarck.

The North Dakota officials were eager to arrange with the Department of Justice for my incarceration in the penitentiary at Bismarck. They were deeply interested in the data the survey might make available and offered every opportunity for the work to be done, as well as the services of certain convicts capable of doing clerical work.

Before entering the prison at Jefferson City I had prepared myself for the work on the case book. The schedules had been printed and I expected to undertake the work which Governor Gardner had promised that I should be permitted to do. But the prison officials were of another mind. I was strong and in good health and capable of doing more than the ordinary amount of work in the prison workshop, so I was told that I was there to work and not to make a prison survey. However, my husband was permitted to bring me a bundle of the schedule blanks and I made the survey “under cover” during recreation hours. I managed to get the case histories of about two hundred women. I not only had no difficulty in getting the information I desired, but the prisoners felt slighted if I failed to ask them for the data. When Mr. Fishman, the U. S. Inspector of federal prisons, visited me in Jefferson City I gave him the above facts, and made a formal request to be transferred to the penitentiary at Bismarck, North Dakota. I thought that this work might be of greater social value than making overalls in the prison workshop, but the Department of Justice refused to make the transfer.

When I was released I was permitted to take out my library of several hundred books which had been sent me by friends, as well as paintings, gifts and other personal belongings, except my bundle of case histories. This had been taken to the matron’s office by a trusty with my other property, but when I looked for it to pack with my books I found that it was missing, and I was told that it had been destroyed. I feel that this action on the part of the prison officials at Jefferson City was anti-social. Such data as I had secured would certainly have been of some...

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• FOREWORD
• I - WHAT IS CRIME?
• II - RICH AND POOR BEFORE THE LAW
• III - THE FUNCTION OF THE PRISON
• IV - THE PRISON
• V - THE PRISONERS
• VI - PRISON FOOD, CLOTHING, EDUCATION, AND RECREATION
• VII - TASK AND PUNISHMENT
• VIII - THE RELIGION OF THE CONVICT
• IX - CRIMES OF INDIVIDUAL AND OF STATE
• X - THE WASTE OF OUR PENAL SYSTEM
• XI - WHERE RESPONSIBILITY LIES
• XII - CONCLUSIONS
• APPENDIX