CHILDREN'S PENALTIES
The school of hate

We are approaching the gates of terror. In my last article, I described an evening at the Petite Roquette, but the Petite Roquette, a stinking and lightless prison, is above all a disgrace to the city of Paris, which tolerates it as it is. It is not a place of torture. Hatred only germinates there. Elsewhere it becomes more precise, it takes shape, it rises and the so-called "correctional" house is nothing more than the school of crime.
How many of these schools of crime do we have? Twelve. Here is the official list: penal colonies are classified into two categories: private colonies created and administered by private initiative, but placed under the supervision of the State with subsidies in return, and public colonies, created and administered by the State. Penal colonies receive three categories of wards.

1° Minors aged 13 to 16 sentenced to less than two years of imprisonment, under Articles 67 and 69 of the Penal Code;
2° Minors aged 13 to 18 acquitted for lack of discernment and sent to correction until they come of age, under Article 66 of the Penal Code;
3° Minors under 21 who have given rise to discontent and are entrusted to the prison administration.

There are twelve public colonies, nine of which are assigned to boys: the Aniane industrial colony (from which eight kids have just escaped), the Auberive agricultural colony, the Belle-Isle agricultural and maritime colony, the Douaires agricultural colony, the Eysses correctional colony, the Haguenau agricultural colony, the Saint-Hilaire reform school, the Saint-Maurice agricultural colony, the Val d'Yèvre agricultural colony, and three assigned to girls, pompously called "preservation schools": those of Cadillac, Clermont and Doullens.

Now, if category number 2, mentioned above, largely includes innocent people, category number 3 includes minor children who have displeased (this is the legal term) their father or guardian and are detained under the right of paternal correction.
Now, I have consulted the statistics and questioned the prisoners, I have even gone further in my research, I have visited parents. Both cannot, alas! that we agree to shout to the legislators a painful truth: There is no example that the penal colony has improved a guilty person or saved an innocent person!

And how could it be otherwise? Has a bent tree ever been straightened by hitting it with an axe? Has a tree ever been made to blossom in the spring by crushing it under four walls? For abandoned and guilty children, as much care would be needed as for those bone-sick people who breathe the pure air of Berck, and for innocent children, all we need is work, bread, sun, hope!... We are far from that! Do you know what is (officially) the food to which the population detained in these twelve penal colonies is entitled (still officially): one or two vegetable soups per day, and, twice a week, a ration of boiled meat with fatty soup. That's all.
As for the moral regime, it has been reduced by regulation to one hour per day (officially, on paper), with reading, the four operations and the legal system of weights and measures as a program...
But above all he will add up his hatreds!
He will have the hatred of his fellow men, the hatred of the laws, the hatred of his country, the hatred of his parents, the hatred of God! His condemnation, marked on the criminal record, will pursue him from door to door, from workshop to workshop, from dream to dream!... He will have no companion but his ignorance!... And this man on the road to life, weary of war, will turn off at the crossroads of crime... The shadow of the penal colony will envelop him all the way to the planks of the guillotine!

PIERRE-PLESSIS.