Lee Simmons - Assignment Huntsville, memoirs of a Texas prison official.

Perditus Liber Presents

the

OCLC: 1677821

book:

Assignment Huntsville

by

Lee Simmons

Published 1957

Assignment Huntsville

Lee Simmons, General Manager, Texas Prison System, 193035

Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 57-11130

1957 by the University of Texas Press

All royalties from the sale of this book and all income from the sale of subsidiary rights, which normally would accrue to the author under his contract, will be divided equally among Austin College, Sherman; Texas Christian University, Fort Worth; and welfare work in Grayson County, Texas. A trusteeship has been established by the author to make this distribution.

Manufactured in the United States of America by the Printing Division of the University of Texas

D EDICATED TO THE MEMORY

OF OF MY BELOVED WIFE

Contents

xiv

Illustrations

xvi

Foreword

T here is no magic about getting a big job done. The basis of getting it done, according to my experience, is co-operation. And the basis of co-operation is confidencemutual confidence. Whatever success I have had in handling the lawless and violent men given into my keeping involved firmness and fairness. But I could get nowhere with being either firm or fair to five thousand convicts unless first I had obtained the loyal co-operation of the many employees of the administration of which I was the head. Beyond that, I had to get, and deserve to get, the co-operation of the prisoners as well. The astonishing thing about it all was that a great majority of the men in my keeping had a sense of fair play to which I could and did appeal in ways which worked out well for them and for me.

In the pages that follow, therefore, you will be hearing a good deal about co-operation and confidence. Confidence bestowed upon the right sort of man begets in him a worthiness of still more confidence. It was my good fortune to find and to recognize such men. As for respect, I suppose it has to come before confidence in the sense that you command respect, whereas confidence is given.

In dealing with men most of whom came to be behind walls and bars because they could not discipline themselves, I had to make it perfectly clear to everybody that I could and would discipline them, if occasion arose. Prompt and certain punishment has a justice of its own, and I believe in it.

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I do not belittle the methods of correction advocated by the modern sciences, and I have made use of them, but I am a firm believer nonetheless in corporal punishmentin the home, in the schoolroom, in the reformatory, in the penitentiary. I know my notions about that are diametrically opposed to the notions of almost all present-day psychologists, psychiatrists, and penologists. I have most of the wardens and prison board members against me on that. But I came to my belief from experience, and experience is what I base my conclusions upon. Whatever else I may lack, I have had, I think, plenty of experience.

Of course, I do not claim to have all the answers to these prison mutinies and outbreaks which continue to plague our penitentiaries. But, right or wrong, in the Texas Prison System we whipped our hardened criminals, when other means of persuasion failed. And I shall be telling you, before many pages, what came of it.

I was reared in a family of children, have children and grandchildren of my owngreat-grandchildren by this time. And while love and kindness, sympathy and tender care are proper requisites for developing character in the home, the rod is needed. I have no doubt about that. Discipline of like sort is needed also in the schoolroom and in the prison. It has one great advantage: It works. I know that it works.

Excessive indulgence by parents and misguided kindness go a long way, I believe, toward filling up our reformatories and penitentiaries. A little of the rod, rightly and sternly applied in childhood, I am convinced, would have saved many a grown man the pains of a prison sentence later on.

In all my early school days I never knew of a pupils being sent home for correction. Nobody was expelled from school. The teacher handled such problems with vigor and dispatchand discipline did the job. Parents were wise enough to leave school discipline to the teacher. And that is where it belongs.

When I entered the University of Texas, the President said to the student body: You are supposed to be ladies and gentlemen, and we hope you are. We have no rules or regulations to give you. You are on your honor here. If we find out later that you are not conducting yourself as a lady or gentleman, you will be discharged. Few university

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students were sent home; discipline had been in force before their college days; character had already been formed. With many young men and women of this day and time it has not been so.

The real objective of a prison sentence is, or should be, reformation. Surely it ought not to be merely punishment. And in the prison, I freely agree, corporal punishment should be the last resort. A prison official, whether he be guard, warden, or head of the system, should have patience and use it. He should study and know the individual prisoner. You cannot use the same method of discipline with all convicts, any more than you can deal with all children or all pupils alike. There is a wide difference in temperaments. That is why a knowledge of human nature is so important in prison management.

The average conception is that the use of the bat in prison management is outmoded and belongs to the Dark Ages. But, to my way of thinking, the alternative of solitary confinement as practiced in nearly all present-day prisons is inhuman and should not be tolerated. Thousands of prisoners are in solitary confinement today because of supposed or real misconduct. I say that it is inhuman to place a man in solitary for thirty, sixty, or ninety days. In some cases the troublemakers are confined in isolation for years. It was never intended that man should be idle. If he is physically able, he should be at work, both for the sake of his health and for the earning of his living, whether he is in prison or out of prison.

After every warning has failed, after every attempt at guidance has been rejected, corporal punishment should be used, but used for disciplinary purposes only. I used to say to prisoners: Outside of my mother, my father thought more of me than any other person. And yet, what would he have done to me, even when I was only a boy, if I had done such things as tear up plumbing, take out a water pipe, drive wooden pegs in it and then connect it back againor if I had deliberately set fire to bedclothes? He would have done to me exactly what I expect to do to you boys, if you dont stop doing these things.

Did they believe me? Read the printed record. I took charge in April, 1930. For 1929: prison population, 4,868; corporal punishments, 326; escapes, 302. For 1935: prison population, 5,623; corporal punishments, 80; escapes, 71.

There were twenty bad men in solitary confinement at the Huntsville