Part 3

“Then we have dormitories,” continued the warden, “not the big dormitories of olden times, but comfortably small rooms that will accommodate from twenty-five to thirty men. We are trying the experiment. I don’t know yet how it will work out. We are expecting to have here ultimately about seven hundred men.”

I asked him about the expense of all this. “Are you saving money or saving men?” was his sharp retort. “Nevertheless, we are demonstrating every day the economy of using prison labor, as well as the economy of giving these men reasonable accommodations. I can’t give you as yet the figures you want. We are teaching these men how to work, and the usefulness of work. The bulk of them, when they leave here, are not going upon farms, but back to the cities from which they came. So we are teaching some city trades, but without neglecting farm industries. We are raising about all we need to eat, as well as the stock we raise for food. But a prison farm without important and diversified industries is a mistake.”

I looked around the eight hundred acres. There was a sweep of horizon, a tingling acid in the air, a quietude, a blessed monotony in comparison with the feverish city, a spaciousness of possibilities, as compared with the walled-in prisons like Sing Sing; in short, an approximation to the sanest kind of normal life.

“Work?” The warden smiled. “Why, we’re working here ten hours a day; seven to twelve, one to six. Each man that works here gets a gratuity of two dollars a month, but he loses a part of that gratuity if he offends against the rules of the place. They get the money when they go out. Our payments to prisoners amount to between one hundred and fifty and two hundred dollars a month. We discharge each month about thirty to forty men. They get, in addition, a ticket back to the place from which they were sent.”

I asked the warden if he was ultimately going to build a wall around the place. “Not if I can help it. I don’t think bars on cell windows are necessary; but supervision is. However, we may as well proceed with reasonable speed in our modern ideas. Ultimately we may need the protected windows.”

For the completed prison, Warden Gilmour is planning a number of industries, all directly related to the life of the institution. There will be tailoring, carpentry, shoemaking, a woolen mill, a machine shop, a tile factory and other industries. And as for recreation, plans are not failing. There is already a ball team that has beaten, with one exception, all the teams that have come from the surrounding towns. There is fishing and swimming in case of good behavior. And when the warden gets the prison all built, he is going to turn much of the land, which is not used for farming, in to a kind of natural park.

Up there, across the line, some thirty miles north of Lake Ontario, where the summer heat gets into the nineties, and the winter cold sends the bulb down to thirty and more below, there is going to be a radical overturning of old prison regime. Inevitably the influence of Guelph and of a dozen other prisons in the “States” will send the walls of the older prisons crumbling. For Guelph means nothing else than a reversal of the theories of prison administration.

The old prison believed in dungeons and bars. The new prison substitutes therefor single rooms and God’s outdoors. The old prison feared an escape like the plague. The new prison forces an escape into its proper perspective as a serious episode in the training of the prisoner for honest life. The old prison shut out life and hope by monstrous walls. In the new prison, walls for all prisoners are regarded as monstrous things. The old prison drove men like brutes to work and often to mutiny. The new prison blows the whistle at noon, and the men come in from all over the farm to dinner, and go to their rooms or to the dormitories afterward for a short rest, and then back to normal work. The old prison--and there are many of them still--believed in squeezing the life blood out of the prisoners for the benefit of the State and of private contractors. The new prison believes in the working of the men for State profit, if for profit at all. And the modern chiefs of new prisons are giving sober attention to a fairer division of the profits of prisoners’ labor between the prisoner and his compulsory employer, the government.

The old prison believed in wretchedly small cells, in a minimum of fresh air, in messes of poorly prepared food; in the lock step, the stripes and the shaven head; in punitive methods. The new prison believes in an ample cell and an outdoor life so far as possible; in decent food, the abolition of the lock step, a decent head of hair and a decent uniform--in reformation, if possible.

As to the future, who can tell? The new prison is an experiment. So far, it has worked in general remarkably well. Its sanction lies in the fact that it makes on the average mind the impression of being a common-sense proposition.

BOOK REVIEWS

_Young Delinquents._--Mary G. Barnett, London 1913, Methuen and Co. Ltd., pp. 222.

Miss Barnett’s book is a very clear exposition of the British system of Industrial and Reformatory Schools for taking care of children fallen, or in the danger of falling, into criminal ways. As such an exposition it very properly gives, after a few introductory statements as to the chief causes of juvenile delinquency, the legal basis of the system at present in vogue which is found in the Children’s Act of 1908, by which the existing schools and their accessories take their proper places in the scheme provided or sanctioned. Thus far the book is merely the description of the fundamental determinants, in a legal way, for a particular place--Great Britain. With the description of the schools themselves, their physical conditions, financing, management, difficulties of personnel, discipline, methods of elementary, industrial and religious education, of social training, of employment, inadequate facilities of proper aftercare, the methods of administration of single institutions and of the whole system of institutions, their inspection, and a horde of other things, we get into territory that is as pertinent to our own problems in this field as it is across the sea. The book shows that the author has had an extended and intimate acquaintance with her subject, and has made good use of her gift of observation. As one would expect, there are numerous weaknesses in the system for which remedies should be found. Such suggested remedies are included in the last chapter of the book, in a resume of the findings and conclusions of the Departmental Committee appointed in 1911 to look into the matter of these schools. To give a complete list of all the recommendations of that committee would be out of place here. But its most important features should be, if only briefly, mentioned. First appears the need for a special central authority, expert and responsible, to set a standard and maintain it; there should be woman members on the boards of managers; employees should be properly pensioned. The chief cause of unsatisfactory conditions is found to be inadequate finances. In reference to the children themselves, the principal demands are for more intensive classification, particularly by age, more education, especially physical training, less drudgery, less punishment, more individual attention. Definite methods for rendering reports, for extending after-care, for utilising voluntary aid are suggested, and the uselessness is shown of some of the petty yet harmful restrictions, as for example silence at meals.

Miss Barnett discusses conditions in a different land, but the greater part of her discussion can be applied directly to our own conditions. The book should be in the hands of every member of the board of managers of a reform school.

P. K.

* * * * *

_Prostitution in Europe._ Abraham Flexner, New York, The Century Co., 1914. Publication of the Bureau of Social Hygiene. Pp. 455.

A splendid contribution to the subject, especially useful to American penologists and criminologists, who have been obliged to put up with sporadic and often inaccurate reports of this very important and social evil in Continental countries. Mr. Flexner promises a study shortly of prostitution in the United States. Let us hope that it will meet the high standard of the work under discussion. It is almost trite to say that no library of a social worker should be without this book. Mr. Flexner’s treatment is dispassionate, careful, thorough, and broad. He has persistently gone after the facts. The book is commendably free from propaganda. He defines prostitution, discusses the demand and supply, and after showing the relation of prostitution to law and law enforcement gives several chapters to the discussion of regulation, after which he treats with equal detail the method of treatment commonly called “abolition”. The last chapter, summing up the outcome of European experience, is for Americans cognizant of the many surveys of the social evil in American cities, of especial interest and importance. “Prostitution is a modifiable phenomenon, arising out of the complicated interaction of personal factors and social conditions. The attempt to stamp it out completely by summary, even though persistent action, cannot be hopefully regarded. Repression requires an abundance of institutional facilities such as nowhere exists. Although important good is achieved at the moment (by repression) and still more in the long run, prostitution as a formidable problem will still remain. Repression is what the physicians call symptomatic treatment.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Flexner, having shown that “regulation” does not regulate, and that repression does not wholly repress, says in conclusion that a direct frontal attack in the repressive spirit would accomplish much. “It is well worth doing; it is, humanly speaking, a possible undertaking. Let us not, however, deceive ourselves into thinking that such a frontal attack absolves us from effort in other and different directions. Further achievements depend upon alterations in the constitution of society and its component parts.” And after outlining the important social factors that make for prostitution, such as ignorance, mental or moral defect, natural impulses, alcohol, illegitimacy, broken homes, bad homes, low wages, wretched industrial conditions--and their potential offsets through education, religion, science, sanitation, enlightened and far-reaching statesmanship, he continues: “Civilization has stripped for a life-and-death wrestle with tuberculosis, alcohol and other plagues. It is on the verge of a similar struggle with the crassest forms of commercial vice. Sooner or later, it must fling down the gauntlet to the whole horrible thing. This will be the real contest--a contest that will tax the courage, the self-denial, the faith, the resources of humanity to their uttermost.”

O. F. L.

* * * * *

_Why Crime does not Pay._ Sophie Lyons. J. S. Ogilvie, New York. pp. 268.

A series of not uninteresting sketches of alleged actual adventures in crime by one who claims to have been called the “Queen of the Bank Burglars”. The publishers call her the most remarkable and greatest criminal of modern times, a thief from the cradle. The burden of the stories is that crime does not pay. She was associated with a number of noted bank burglars, among them Ned Lyons, her husband, and George Bliss, alias George White, who some half dozen years ago published a strikingly well-written narrative of his own criminal career, entitled “From Boniface to Bank Burglar”. Mrs. Lyons’ stories are circumstantial and give detail accounts of daring and often successful burglaries.

O. F. L.

* * * * *

_A History of Penal Methods._--George Ives. Stanley Paul and Co., London, 1914. pp. 409.

A distinct contribution and a distinct disappointment. The amount of research into the most diverse authorities is remarkable. For chapter after chapter practically every sentence is annotated by reference to the authority from which the fact is culled. The earlier chapters are relatively full, and even laboriously worked out. The early methods of compensation, of torture, of banishment, transportation, etc., are fully treated--but almost entirely from the standpoint of English experience. Rarely does one find so pretentious a book so insular in its actual scope. The student desirous of knowing how penal methods developed in France, or Germany, or the United States would be at sea, save for the most occasional reference. And when we come to the developments of the English penal system itself since the 70’s of the last century, we obtain little. The reader, ignorant of recent English development, would be very unclear at the end. There is little about the treatment of juvenile adults, the Borstal system, the preventive detention plan, the development of the work for discharged prisoners, and other important and almost epoch-making innovations. In short, instead of having a book that, on the basis of past penal methods, studies illuminatingly the most recent developments, we have a book of distinct value for early English penal history.

O. F. L.

* * * * *

_Causes and Cures of Crime._--Thomas Speed Mosby. C. V. Mosby Co., St. Louis, 1913. Pp. 354.

Because the “cost of crime in the United States now amounts to one-third the total cost of the Government, and because the burden is yearly increasing”, Mr. Mosby has made a careful compendium of the statements of many authorities, including his own opinions, on the subject of the book. The reader finds the little volume a useful manual. Etiology, prophylaxis, and therapeutics are the logical divisions of the subject. The specialist will find little that is new; the student will be grateful to Mr. Mosby for getting so much together in available form. Like most writers of today, the author has little use for the traditional penitentiary system. The book is not a quick, hastily-compiled potpourri of what other people happen to say; it is a carefully selected collection of material that we all want to have handy. And what Mr. Mosby himself contributes is not a small part of the product.

O. F. L.

* * * * *

_Beating Back._--Al Jennings and Will Irwin. Appleton’s, New York, 1914. Pp. 355.

A most readable narrative of the career of the “famous train robber”, Al Jennings, who figured in a number of holdups and subsequently in the Ohio State Prison and the Federal Prison at Leavenworth as inmate, and still later as candidate for county attorney in Oklahoma, and now as candidate for Governor of Oklahoma. Will Irwin has edited the autobiography, and it reads many times better than the old-style “From Log Cabin to White House” literature, besides being very human, and, to penologists, more than interesting. Here is a man that, according to his story, did not start out along criminal lines, but through force of circumstances and considerable of a temper, swung into crime in woolly Western days. He was finally caught, imprisoned, underwent the pretty rigorous penitentiary discipline of Ohio and Kansas, and discovered the importance of being honest. The tale is as good as a novel of adventure; more moral than many a didactic screed; and more just to prison regimes of the older days than many a diatribe of a narrow-visioned reformer.

O. F. L.

NOTES.

The most “innovating” sheet of the Umpire is that on which the schedule of baseball games, to be played this season at the Eastern Penitentiary, is given. The following clubs are included: “Cubs, Ninth, Shed, Band.” There are both home games and games on other grounds, but all within the prison yard. Total number of games to be played, 56. Contracts, protests, violations of agreements, ground rules, limitation of number of players carried by each club, limitation by ground rules (ball lodging on the roof to be counted for two bases only), furnishing of balls by the home club, etc., are all down in black and white. Good luck to the series! This is the institution that started by adopting solitary confinement in all its severity. Even now the Pennsylvania system is treasured as a great historical fact in Europe, and most continental prisons are built largely on the architectural model of the old penitentiary. How long will it be before the European prisons adopt the new Pennsylvania methods?

* * * * *

Hereafter all executions in the State of New York must take place at Sing Sing prison.

* * * * *

The first monthly report of Charles H. Girardeau, who was named warden following the recent shake-up in the county convict camps of Georgia, shows that whippings under the new regime have been reduced by more than 50 per cent. He admits the truth of the report that the food served the convicts was bad in some instances and makes a number of recommendations for further reforms in the system.

* * * * *

The sale of convict labor to private contractors was condemned by the investigators of the Chicago efficiency division of the city service commission, who report that labor which sold for 38c. a day was worth 97c. a day to the city.

STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, ETC. of THE DELINQUENT.

Published monthly at New York, N. Y., required by the Act of August 24th, 1912.

NAME OF POST OFFICE ADDRESS Editor, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City Managing Editor, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City Business Manager, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City Publisher, The National Prisoners’ Aid Association, 135 East 15th St., New York City Owners, The National Prisoners’ Aid Association, 135 East 15th St., New York City

There are no bondholders, mortgages, or other security holders.

O. F. LEWIS, Editor and Business Manager.

Sworn to and subscribed before me this 30th day of September, 1913.

H. L. McCORMICK, Notary Public No. 6, Kings County. My Commission expires March 31, 1914.

Transcriber’s Notes

A number of typographical errors were corrected silently.

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.