led by officers who
may do the best they can, but who by training and experience and for
lack of time and facilities are not fitted for their important
positions. I say this in spite of the fact that my experience has taught
me that policemen, as a rule, are kindly and human. From the police
station the offender is lodged in jail. Here is huddled together a great
mass of human wreckage, a large part of it being the product of
imperfect heredities acted upon by impossible environments. However
short the time he stays, and however wide his experience, the first
offender learns things he never knew before, and takes another degree in
the life that an evil destiny has prepared for him. In the jail he is
fed much like the animals in the zoo. In many prisons the jailer is
making what money he can by the amount he can save on each prisoner he
feeds above the rate the law allows of twenty-five or fifty cents a day.
In a short time the prisoner's misery and grief turn to bitterness and
hate; hatred of jailer, of officers, of society, of existing things, of
the fate that overshadows his life. There is only one thing that offers
him opportunity and that is a life of crime. He is indicted and
prosecuted. The prosecuting attorney is equipped with money and provided
with ample detectives and assistants to make it impossible for the
prisoner to escape. Everyone believes him guilty from the time of his
arrest. The black marks of his life have been recorded at schools, in
police stations and examining courts. The good marks are not there and
would not be competent evidence if they were. Theoretically the State's
Attorney is as much bound to protect him as to prosecute him, but the
State's Attorney has the psychology that leads to a belief of guilt, and
when he forms that belief his duty follows, which is to land the victim
in prison. It is not only his duty to land him in jail, but the office
of the State's Attorney is usually a stepping-stone to something else,
and he must make a record and be talked about. The public is interested
only in sending bad folks to jail.

No doubt there are very few State's Attorneys who would knowingly
prosecute unless they believed a man guilty of the offense, but it is
easy for a State's Attorney to believe in guilt. Every man's daily life
is largely made up of acts from which a presumption of either guilt or
innocence can be inferred, depending upon the attitude of the one who
draws the inference.

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