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What most convicts really need is neither repression nor sentimental treatment as patients, but rather opportunity for restitution. Never was American prison morale so high as during World War II when the nation relied on convicts to work their heads off producing almost $300 million in war goods and food. Never was morale so low—and riots so rife —as when idleness returned after the war. On many occasions, prisoners have fought fire and flood with a zest and courage that amazed and won the communities they saved. As guinea pigs in countless medical experiments, they have voluntarily suffered malaria, cancer, syphilis and other ugly ills for the public benefit—and their own.
The key is self-respect: prisons are full of men who perhaps above all need a chance to serve society in order to respect themselves. When the law-abiding public accepts that fact, U.S. penology will be on the road to genuine rehabilitation.
-A seeming example: Winston Moseley, 33, convicted for the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese, whose screams were disregarded by 38 neighbors in New York City. Now a lifer at maximum-security Attica Prison (the wall alone cost $1,275,000 in 1931), Moseley was recently hospitalized in Buffalo for a self-inflicted wound. Last week he escaped from the hospital, raped a housewife, terrorized the area until an FBI agent talked him into surrender. Whether or not Attica is the right place for Moseley, he obviously needs confinement.