Part 3

Married (44 since leaving here) 58 Dressmakers 3 Keep house for members of family 3 Assist at home 6 Nurse 1 Office clerks 2 Salvation Army officer 1 Laundry 1 In sanatorium in poor health 1 Attendant Institution 1 Piano accompanist 1 Factory operatives 6 Saleswomen 5 Domestic service 38

In conclusion Miss Davis points out that one reason why the results are not more satisfactory than they are is the fact that the period of legal control which the reformatory has over a girl is fixed at three years. In the case of a girl of the worse sort it may be over two years before the reformatory can begin to exercise an influence over her. The period of its after-supervision is then inadequate to secure effective results. The reformatory should be allowed, Miss Davis thinks, at least one year of after-supervision, no matter what the length of confinement may be.

REGULAR EMPLOYMENT NOT GOOD FOR DISCHARGED PRISONERS

The Home of Industry for Discharged Prisoners of Philadelphia, Pa., which was organized in 1889 to provide a home and employment for released prisoners, cared for 73 men during the year 1910. These men were given board, lodging, and an additional money remuneration for employment provided them by the organization. This is accomplished at a financial loss which is met by state appropriations, donations, etc. The work provided consists of making brooms, caning chairs, etc., the products being placed upon the market. The Board of Managers, in its annual report says:

“It is our firm conviction that it is a radical error to place a man in regular employment as soon as he leaves prison. There should be a probationary, or convalescent, period in every case. The Home of Industry for Discharged Prisoners provides a retreat for just such a period, where the man can be rebuilt. When he shows by his actions, outside of prison walls, that he is worthy to be recommended it will be quite time enough for the philanthropic to assume sponsorship. The best part of it all is that no sponsorship is then needed, for the man is quite capable of taking care of himself.”

CONCERNING OUR LIST OF SOCIETIES.

In the issue of January, 1911, THE REVIEW published a list of societies engaged in prisoners’ aid work, with a request that corrections and additions be sent to the editors. This request is repeated at this time. Instead of the Kansas and Missouri divisions of the Society for the Friendless, the following should have appeared:

The Massachusetts House of Representatives recently refused by an overwhelming vote, to substitute for an adverse committee report two bills relating to capital punishment—one giving the jury the right to say whether the penalty for murder in the first degree should be life imprisonment or death, and the other providing that the punishment should be life imprisonment.

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_Opposes Walking Chained Prisoners Through Streets._—Dr. Elizabeth Cassidy, of Denver, Colorado, is urging the board of county commissioners to provide means for transporting prisoners from the courthouse to the county jail, other than walking them along the streets chained together.

“That system is a relic of barbarism,” declares Dr. Cassidy. “Persons sentenced for vagrancy and other minor offenses should not be chained together like criminals and be subjected to public gaze.”

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The recommendation of the Ohio legislative committee, as reported in the last issue of THE REVIEW, that a joint reformatory and prison for women, under a management separate from that of the penitentiary, be built without delay, has obtained the approval of Gov. Harmon. In a recent message to the legislature he urged that appropriations be made for such an institution.

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_Kansas-Missouri Division._—Rev. Edward A. Fredenhagen, General Superintendent; Mrs. Edward A. Fredenhagen, General Matron; Rev. J. O. Stutsman, General Superintendent’s Assistant. District Superintendents, Rev. George S. Ricker, Wichita; Rev. Jonathan Staley, Salina; Rev. Benj. Porter White, Topeka; Rev. James B. Bollman, Kansas City; Rev. Taylor Bernard, St. Louis.

The officers of the National Society for the Friendless follow: President, Judge T. F. Garver, Topeka; Vice-President, Ex-Mayor Henry M. Beardsley, Kansas City; Secretary and National Superintendent, Rev. Edward A. Fredenhagen, Kansas City; Treasurer, Cashier James T. Bradley, Kansas City; National Matron, Mrs. Edward A. Fredenhagen, Kansas City.

EVENTS IN BRIEF

[Under this heading will appear each month numerous paragraphs of general interest, relating to the prison field and the treatment of the delinquent.]

_Prisoners Idle; Insanity Growing._—Hundreds of prisoners idle, discipline ruined, disease spreading and insanity increasing, are the results affecting the Ohio penitentiary brought about by a law passed in 1906, publicly declare prison officials in that state. The startling situation was graphically described recently by the Cleveland (O.) _Plain Dealer_, in part as follows:

“Penitentiary officials are facing a critical situation, resulting from the constantly increasing number of prisoners they are compelled to confine in the idle house. More discouraging than the existing conditions is the prospect that, in six months at the outside, practically all the prisoners will be idle. Conditions cannot improve; they will become graver and graver unless relief is given during the present session of the legislature.

“In the meantime, on an average 300 men spend twelve hours each day on the benches in the idle house. This number is augmented on days when the weather does not permit working the prisoners about the yard. In one month, when the last contract expires, another hundred will join these ranks. In six months at the most, when all the contracts will have been cleaned up, all save the men employed in the administration of the big prison, which means about 1,000, will be idling. All the contracts but one have expired; yet most of the men employed in most of the old shops are still at work. This comes about only through sufferance; the companies holding contracts are being allowed to work up the raw material they had on hand at the expiration of their contracts. This keeps a few men going, but at best is only putting further away the problem that must be faced.

“Since Dec. 1, more prisoners have become insane than during any average eight months before the condition arose. In a little over one month, eight men have been taken to the prison asylum. When all were working, there was seldom more than an average of one a month who became insane, and usually it averaged less. This prison officials attribute directly to increased idleness. Moreover, discipline is more or less ruined. The men, sitting day after day, with nothing to do but to stare at the ceiling and turn over in their minds their misfortunes, are gradually becoming more and more morose, sullen and ugly. Not a day passes but that prisoners approach the guards and beg to be set at work. Guards, their hands tied by the legislature, are powerless to help. Nothing awaits the prisoner but a refusal.

“The air in the room is necessarily foul from the exhalations of these 400 men. Blazing coal stoves at frequent intervals keep the room at a temperature which, to one going in from the outside, is nothing short of sickening. The benches themselves are rather narrow, with twelve or fourteen-inch backs, which, from all appearances, would become very hard and uncomfortable in little or no time. The floor is sprinkled with lime at intervals, but after the men have marched in in the morning presents a dirty gray appearance—that of a thick coat of dirt covered over with whitewash, mud from innumerable pairs of boots tracked into it. Wooden boxes, filled with shavings, do duty as cuspidors. The men, fortunately, are allowed the consolation of a chew, and to chew one must, in plain English, spit. Yet the possibilities of acquiring disease are fearful to contemplate.

“Papers and magazines, with a liberal sprinkling of missionary tracts, are furnished. Most are necessarily out of date, and all are grimy with much handling. Those facing the windows read with certain injury to their eyes; those in the center of the room have not light enough to read at all, while the few at the rear of the room, who have light from the rear, can read with comfort. But at least half of these idlers are foreigners and cannot read at all; these can think. Such are the physical surroundings in this room, intended to house two-score and at present containing 300 to 400, with several hundred more to be added in the next few months.

“These men it is who each day beg to be put to work. They feel that the hardest drudgery, indoors or out, would be far preferable to such an existence.

“The cause? A simple one, say those at the head of the big prison, notably Warden T. H. B. Jones and Capt. C. W. Naas, who had charge of the contracts. They tell it in three words. The Wertz law. In 1906 the legislature passed this act, which just now is working such havoc with the penal institution. The law abolishes contract labor, at the demand of labor organizations that competition with prison made goods was unfair to labor. It provides that convicts must be employed in remodeling the institution and in making only such goods as are used in state institutions. The legislature neglected to provide money for installing machinery necessary for so doing and also neglected to compel state institutions to use the prison made product.”

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_Unusual Prison Supervision Proposed in Texas._—By a bill now pending before the legislature of Texas it is proposed to place at the head of the penal system of the state an officer with the title of “Supervisor of Prisons,” who shall have had some scientific training in the subjects of criminology and prison sanitation. His salary is to be $2,400 a year and his term of service to be two years. The office is to be an appointive one, made on the recommendation of the prison commission. Two assistant supervisors may also be appointed, at salaries of $1,500 each.

It shall be the duty of the supervisor to visit at least once each year every county jail, city jail, reformatory, juvenile training school, county and city convict farm and alms house in the state. His business shall be to enforce the humane and economic management of such institutions and to aid in securing erection of sanitary buildings for the accommodation of the prisoners. He shall have power to investigate the management of all such institutions and the conduct and efficiency of persons charged with their management. Reports shall be made of such investigations to the governor and to the local authorities, together with orders relative to improvements which in his judgment shall be required. And it shall be the duty of said courts of county commissioners, city commissioners or boards of aldermen to obey such order, and provide for the payment of the expenses incurred necessary to a compliance with said order out of the funds of the county or city or by issuing county or city warrants for this expense.

The power of summoning witnesses, administering oaths and taking testimony is conferred upon the supervisor and his deputies to enable the conducting of such investigations as are provided for in the bill. It is intended also that the evidence of prisoners or ex-prisoners shall be taken when necessary to ascertain the facts about the management or condition of penal institutions.

When the interests of the inmates of any institution demand it the supervisor may order their removal to other quarters, the expenses of the transfer to be borne by the city or county. And fines for the refusal by city or county officers to obey such orders are provided for.

Special provisions are made for the assistance and rehabilitation of paroled prisoners, data in reference to whom shall be kept on file in the supervisor’s office. Local probation officers, serving without pay, shall assist in this work.

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_The Jails of Illinois._—The Chicago _Tribune_, commenting on the recent report of the Illinois board of state charities that “conditions in most Illinois jails are no better now than in 1870, when they were abominable,” says that no one will venture to question the accuracy of the report.

“These and other shameful violations of law,” continues the _Tribune_, “have been unnoticed and unchecked by successive grand juries and judges. And what is sadder yet, there has been no popular protest anywhere against the jail horrors and abominations set out in the report of the state charities commission. Even in countries where the odious jail conditions are well understood there is no public opinion which condemns them. Must we conclude that local self government as far as jails are concerned is a failure, and that some humane and intelligent central authority should take the matter in hand and enforce obedience to the laws?”

That uncivilized portions of humanity still seem to exist when jails are under consideration is evidenced by a Kansas newspaper editorial on the Illinois report, part of which we print.

“From the state charities commission of Illinois comes the latest wail about jails which are not up to Waldorf-Astoria standards. In fact, it is claimed that the jails are as bad as they were thirty years ago, when they were not suitable to the whims of any high-class jail bird, who was accustomed to all the comforts of home and modern conveniences.

“In view of the fact that a number of more or less prominent citizens of the state seem to be threatened with a sojourn in the prisons of that state, the plea for better plumbing and lace curtains is in order. But, as a general proposition, these wails for the downtrodden prisoners are overworked a good deal. While it is nice to talk about Reform, and not punishment, being the object of prison sentences, the facts are that it is hard to obtain the one result without the other.

“If all the suggestions of the prison reformers would be followed out explicitly, and to their logical conclusion, the jails would soon become such gilded palaces of sin that most of us would put up there from choice, and it would be difficult for the hotel keepers to make a living, or the waiters to get rich. And, when the jails finally were accepted as the highest standard of luxury, the kicking against them by the downtrodden prisoners who broke into a feed store in order to get a comfortable home for the winter, would continue.”

We beg to dissent from the Kansas authority, and still maintain that reform _as well as_ punishment is the purpose of imprisonment, and that torture and filth and vice are not conducive to the progress of society.

The St. Louis (Missouri) _Star_, commenting on the Illinois report, says:

“If such a board made so little impress upon the actualities of prison management in Illinois in forty years, it is discouraging indeed.

“It is no wonder that such papers as _The Star_ fail to impress upon the people of Missouri the need for a different penal system in this state and an entirely different character of prisons.

“For years we have been preaching the doctrine of the reformatory principle in prison management, of proper industry, of sanitary prisons, of segregation of prisoners into classes, of plenty of outdoor work for prisoners, of instruction in trades, of reformatory influences tending to keep men out of the penitentiary after they have been released, and of proper local jails and places of detention.

“Yet the same dark ages this commission asserts to rule in Illinois hold sway in Missouri, with little promise of abdication. Governor Hadley has recommended one reform, the establishment of an intermediate prison for first offenders, which should by all means be done, though this is but one of the many reforms necessary to take us even within sight of the outer confines of the dark ages.

“Yet, discouraging as is the progress made, sociologists and penologists will not cease their campaign of education on this subject of prison reform and the treatment of criminals as individuals and not as a class. The light will be seen in time.”

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“_Men With a Past._”—Under this title an editorial in the New York _World_ continues:

“A Brooklyn lawyer, suspended from practice, who disappeared seven years ago and was thought to have committed suicide, reappears as the leader of the minority in the Michigan Senate. The Chief of Police at Danville, Va., is recognized after many years as an escaped convict under sentence in Georgia.

“During the recent political campaign a candidate for governor in a western state was identified as one who in youth had participated in a crime of violence on the Texas border. The governor-elect of a southern state proves in infancy to have been a foundling.

“It is pleasing to note that in every one of these cases identity was admitted and that the honorable record of after-life was generally accepted as atoning for early misdeeds or obscure origin. Exposure, therefore, while painful in some instances, has not operated to discourage those who in many other places are seeking honestly and industriously to overcome the disadvantages of a bad start.

“Experiences such as these give heart to optimists, furnish prison-reformers with ever-increasing zeal and prove the genuineness of a democracy which does not dwell unduly upon the past of anybody or anything.”

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_Tramps, Stop Tramping!_—The following article is making the rounds of the local newspapers in Pennsylvania, evidently “accelerated” by the tramp nuisance:

“The damage done by tramps to the railroad property every year is estimated at $25,000,000. The damage to private property which the tramps reach by railroad is probably far greater. If it were not for ‘ride stealing’—this is the assertion of men who have spent years studying the vagrancy problem—the ‘hobo’ could be practically put out of business. Free transportation is an absolute necessity of the profession.

“The ‘hobo’ may seem highly amusing to the readers of comic papers; and he is a valuable source of income to joke-smiths and the artists who draw fantastic pictures of the ‘Weary Willie’ begging a piece of pie. But he is no joke to railroad men. For he is continually breaking into cars, assaulting employes, or tampering with equipment in a way to endanger the lives of passengers.

“The Lehigh Valley has been one of the most active among railroads attempting to end the abuse, but the leniency of local magistrates has operated in the tramps’ favor. To put a tramp in jail is expensive for a small community; the authorities usually content themselves by telling the offenders to ‘move on.’ Thus he is merely dumped upon some other community. The practice works as an endless chain—each town passing on its tramps and in turn receiving the tramps that have been passed on by other towns.

“Some charity organizations have interested themselves in the problem, and seek to co-operate with the railroads in bringing trespassers to justice. Compulsory labor of some kind it is thought would be the most powerful deterrent, but that remedy meets the opposition of the labor unions; they say it would be putting ‘convict labor’ into competition with honest workingmen. A helpful move would be for the state to relieve local governments from the expense of punishing offenders, as the cost of keeping a tramp supplies the most powerful motive for the magistrate to let him go.”

In this connection, the annual report of the New York State Board of Charities is significant. It renews its recommendation, made to the legislature of 1910, for the establishment of a farm colony for tramps and vagrants. It points out that these classes are now kept practically in idleness in the penitentiaries, jails and workhouses at an annual cost of $2,000,000, whereas, following the example of a number of the countries in Europe, they could be humanely maintained and cared for in farm colonies, which could be made self-supporting through their labor.

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_Public Defenders Wanted in Cleveland._—The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, Ohio, is reviving a plan for the appointment of assistants to the county prosecutor, whose work shall be the defense in common pleas court of persons unable to employ counsel. Under the present system the judges of the common pleas court appoint counsel for impecunious defendants in criminal cases. The ground that better talent will be thus. The appointment of special public defenders is urged on the ground that better talent will be thus secured, and the interests of accused persons better safeguarded.

A plan for the appointment of such public defenders for impecunious persons tried in the police courts was recently rejected in Cleveland. The ground taken was that the so-called prosecutor is theoretically charged not with prosecuting the accused, but with bringing out all the facts in his case, both those favorable and unfavorable. The “prosecutor” was, therefore, held to be both prosecutor and defender.

_A “Going Concern.”_—According to the Detroit (Mich.) _Journal_, the city of Detroit has derived $399,000 profit from the House of Correction in the last twelve years. The newspaper account reads as follows:

Net Book Paid City Year Profits in Cash 1900 $ 42,759 $ 60,000 1901 36,478 48,000 1902 26,179 26,000 1903 32,016 22,000 1904 25,533 28,000 1905 27,587 25,000 1906 42,905 25,000 1907 39,182 35,000 1908 32,663 35,000 1909 38,577 30,000 1910 24,355 40,000 1911 25,000 —————— —————— Totals $ 368,234 $ 399,000

In 12 years the Detroit House of Correction has turned $399,000 into the coffers of the city treasurer. This amount represents the profits from the industrial work which the prisoners turn out.

Brooms, chairs and other articles are manufactured in the workhouse, most of the work being done by prisoners who are sentenced to serve from ten days to six months in the “works” for minor offences.

This splendid showing of profits is due largely to the excellent business management of the house of correction.

It will be noticed that the book profits shown are often larger than the amounts turned into the city treasurer, but this is due to the fact that minor items of maintenance are charged against the book profits from one end of the year to the other. The fiscal year at the house of correction ends on Dec. 1, therefore the net book profits shown in the table above must be checked against the amounts paid to the city the year following.

“The reason that the house of correction profits are not so large in the years following 1900 is due to the fact that beginning with 1901 we started a system of paying part of the earnings to the prisoners.” said Supt. John L. McDonnell.

“This week we turn over $20,000 to the city from the fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 1910. Last July, the poor commission needing funds, we were asked to turn over $5,000 from the probable profits of 1910. We did so, and that sum added to the $20,000 to be paid over this week constitutes the $25,000 profit to the city for 1910.”