Part 2

The state board should have power to prescribe forms of records and reports, to suggest uniform and efficient methods of work by the officers, and promote co-ordination among them; and, in general, it should have ample authority to supervise the probation work throughout the state. Where this central board has also authority in the matter of appointments and removals above mentioned, the organization of the probation system seems complete. In order to maintain a high standard of probation work, the executive officer of the state board should periodically investigate the work of every probation officer; and there should be frequent conferences of the judges and of the probation officers conducted by members of the state board.

As to the organization of a parole system--for the present the machinery of the probation system might well be utilized for this work. The vital point in parole work is the appointment of a suitable board to determine to whom and when parole shall be granted, and on what terms. This question is closely associated with the indeterminate sentence and state control of prisons. I have not had sufficient experience with parole problems to make specific recommendations.

We should agree upon the meaning of our terms. Probation and parole are often used synonymously, while, in fact, authorities and prison officials recognize a distinction. Probation applies to one conditionally released after conviction but before entering upon his sentence. Parole is understood to be the conditional release of a prisoner from an institution after the serving of sentence has been begun.

In Indiana the law authorizes the board of trustees acting as a parole board, or the Governor, to release on parole persons who have been confined under commitment in five institutions: the State Prison, the Reformatory, the Woman’s Prison, Girls’ School and Boys’ School; to all of these, sentences are in effect indeterminate except for murder or treason. Prisoners so released are under supervision and accurate records are kept.

The Indiana probation law applies in three different ways, respectively, to felons, to misdemeanors, to juvenile delinquents. A person who is convicted of a felony is sentenced to a state prison or a reformatory. Sentence may be suspended and he be released on probation. The committal is sent to the institution to which he is committed and he is placed under the supervision of the agents of that institution exactly the same as if he were paroled therefrom.

If the offense is a misdemeanor, the court may suspend judgment and release the offender upon such terms and conditions as in his judgment and discretion seem right and proper. The prisoner is placed under the supervision of the probation officer authorized in each county by the juvenile court law or under the oversight of some other probation officer designated by the court. In either case the law makes proper provision for such subsequent action by the court as the behavior of the convicted person merits.

The juvenile court law provides for a juvenile court in every county in the state. There is a special juvenile court in Marion County, containing the city of Indianapolis. In all other counties the judge of the circuit court is ex-officio the judge of the juvenile court. Provision is made for the appointment of at least one paid probation officer in every county and for such volunteer officers as will agree to perform the service without pay.

Juvenile delinquents may be released by the court upon probation and placed under the care of these officers. They make reports to the Board of State Charities. They should understand thoroughly that their work should properly be divided into three phases: (1) before the trial; (2) at the trial; (3) after the trial. The first contemplates a complete investigation of the child’s history. It should include everything that can be learned of it and its surroundings. The second involves presenting to the court all learned facts together with the conclusions and recommendations of the officer. The third contemplates complete supervision of the child after it is released upon probation. It is not necessary to state that in all this the best interests of the child alone should determine the action to be taken. What has been worked out in one place and another as to the best methods and practice in the case of children is being applied to adults who are subjects for probation. Our experience is now great enough to enable us to say that many men and women offenders can be reclaimed to useful lives without imprisonment, by correct probationary treatment.

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.]

_Immigration and Crime._--That lax immigration laws are to a great degree responsible for many of the criminal cases calling for the attention of the courts, is the opinion of Major Richard Sylvester, of Washington, D. C., president of the international association of police chiefs, which held its nineteenth annual convention in Rochester in June. Several years ago the association memorialized Congress to define anarchy and more carefully restrict undesirable immigration.

Referring to the large number of alien criminals, Major Sylvester said: “Many of these subjects come from climates where capital punishment does not prevail, where the least respect for law and life is had. If certificates of good character from the authorities at places of departure in foreign lands and a year’s means of support were made legal requirements for presentation at our doors by each individual, the disadvantages might not be so great or so many.”

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_Hospitals For Inebriates._--The special committee of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment has unanimously reported in favor of carrying into effect a law which provides for the establishment of a board of inebriety and a hospital and industrial colony for inebriates for New York City.

The committee made an exhaustive investigation of conditions before reaching a conclusion. It found that the 29,461 persons arrested in New York last year and arraigned in the magistrates’ courts on the charge of public intoxication constituted more than one-sixth of all the arrests made for all causes. The records disclose that, of the 20,291 held for trial, about 15,600 were committed to workhouses, either directly or in default of payment of fine. Commenting on these and other statistics the report says:

Inebriety, therefore, furnishes a very large percentage of those who keep the police officers busy, clog the magistrates’ courts, and fill the workhouses and jails. It furnishes also a very large number of cases for treatment in our public hospitals. Seven thousand male drunkards are treated annually in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue and allied hospitals. Carefully compiled records show that in the one year ended May 1, 1909, 498 men were treated for intoxication more than once in that ward, and over 100 from four to twelve times, and that in the course of a few years some individuals have been treated in the alcoholic ward over twenty times and have been committed to the workhouse over sixty times.

The committee does not overlook the moral effects of the treatment of inebriates under the plan which it has approved, but it especially points out the economic features. It finds that New York is spending annually on Blackwell’s Island the amount of $80,000 for cases committed for intoxication, and in addition there is the cost of two overflow wards at Bellevue, amounting to not less than $65,000 per annum. The proportion of expenses in maintaining magistrates’ courts chargeable to intoxication is at least $125,000 a year, and a large additional expense is incurred in maintaining police officers for the city prison and for the alcoholic wards in hospitals. To use the language of the report: “As a result of all these expenses under the present system there is a complete lack of accomplishment. There is no pretense even that the individual is helped; quite the contrary, he is rather confirmed in his habits of inebriety and is permanently fastened on the community as an expense and as a bad example.”

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_A Prison Farm Proposed for Iowa._--According to the Dubuque, Iowa, Telegraph-Herald, Warden Marquis Barr of the Iowa State Reformatory, is of the opinion that it would be a wise move for the state to purchase a large farm and work the prisoners upon it, turning the money which they make over to their respective families. He declares that this age must solve the great problem of justly punishing a man for his wrongs without at the same time taking from his family its only means of support.

The logical thing for a state to do is to purchase a farm of about a thousand acres, with barracks for the prisoners to eat and sleep in. Over one-third of the men in the prisons of Iowa could be set to work upon this farm, raising grains and garden truck. They could be paid a certain wage and board in the same manner as the farmer pays his hired help, but every cent of these earnings should be turned over to the wife and children of the man who earns it. Not a penny should be given to him.

Warden Barr also said that he believed that if men knew that they would be compelled to work and work hard at a fair wage without themselves getting a penny of it, that there would be less crime. Many men during the fall commit crimes solely for the purpose of getting a warm place to stay during the winter and three good meals per day. They allow their families to shift for themselves. For the state to encourage this sort of a thing Mr. Barr says is absolutely wrong.

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_Charting Juvenile Crime._--The juvenile court of Detroit is reported to be greatly assisted in its campaign of saving girls and boys, by a chart which shows how many children are under the watchful care of the judge and his probation and truant officers, and how crime recedes and advances among the young at different seasons of the year; also what effect a big convention has on the city’s morality, and how greatly parks and playgrounds help in the fight for decency.

The 600 boys and 170 girls are represented on the chart by cloth-headed tacks of different colors: red for bad boys, blue for bad girls, and white for children who are only truants or neglected. Each tack bears a bit of cardboard with a number which refers one to a filing cabinet where may be found the entire record of the boy or girl. Little groups of dots on the chart show where the gangs are, and indicate that bad boys are more gregarious than bad girls, who usually go alone or in couples. The chart also shows more plainly than any magazine article the evil results of congestion. The probation officers are not using this chart as an interesting sort of game, but as a valuable aid in their work for good citizenship.

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_London’s Beggar Army._--Walter Weyl, a well-known writer on social and economic subjects, has the following to say in the “National Post” on London’s army of the unemployed. It is of special significance to Americans who are facing the impending problems of vagrancy and mendicancy in urban centers.

“As I started to call a cab,” writes Walter Weyl, “suddenly there arose out of the darkness, as though evoked by some Aladdins lamp, four tattered, pale-faced men of the underworld. The four sprang forward to render me this slight service. One, quicker than his fellows, tore open the cab door and received his penny. Then the men vanished, slinking into the gray mist.

“Whence come these men? What manner of city was this that wasted able-bodied men on so paltry a task?

“Later that evening, when in the crossing currents of the streets, my cab came to a halt, I caught another fleeting glance at London misery. A naked, dirt-caked arm, thrust from a sleeveless coat, touched my shoulder; a haggard face peered into the cab window, and a voice harsh with anxiety asked, ‘Can I ’ave the luggage, sir?’ As the cab wound through the mazes of the London traffic, I saw this tattered man doggedly running behind us. Not once did he lose sight of the cab. At the hotel he was waiting, breathless.

“‘It’s mine, sir,’ he panted. ‘You promised me the luggage, sir.’

“For the chance of earning a shilling at work which did not need him, this wretched man had followed me through tortuous miles of London streets. What a city it was!

“I did not wish to see deeper into this abyss,” writes Mr. Weyl. “I had not come to England to view bottomless misery. But what is everywhere cannot be hid. On the following days I saw in street after street workless, homeless miserable men with broken shoes and dropping rags of clothes. I saw abject women, with trailing, bedraggled skirts, and with a flat sterile vacancy of expression, more tragic than despair. There were drunken men, too, and sodden women, and files of men--or of what had once been men--waiting outside bakers’ and butchers’ shops for crusts and refuse. The halt, the blind, the unemployed, the shifty beggars, and the wretches too timid to beg, passed in an unending procession. Long before sunset the lines had been formed for admission to the casual wards of the almshouses.

“‘It’s deplorable,’ commented my English friend (he was a doctor with a fashionable practice and aristocratic pro-possessions), ‘still every country has its poverty. Even in the States----’

“‘Yes,’ I admitted, ‘It is not for us to throw stones.’

“Later, however, as on our silent homeward walk I summed up all the dismal impressions of the day. I began to feel that after all there was a difference. American poverty was overwhelming, but it was not everywhere, and it was not so hopeless. Men did escape from American slums, and their children escaped.

“But the English slum was a prison, in which the fallen man and his children and grandchildren rotted. There was a droop, a sagging to these people; an inexpressible indifference to surroundings, an utter self-abandonment. You could seek out poverty anywhere, but in London it obtruded itself--stark, menacing, unescapable, like the naked, dirt-caked arm of the superfluous wretch who had followed my hansom.”

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_Prisoners to Build Roads._--It is an assured fact, according to the New Orleans Picayune, that a model road built by convict labor will be constructed connecting New Orleans with Kenner. This will take off four miles from the present railroad and other routes to this thriving section.

The state board of engineers will make the surveys as soon as possible and once started the work will be rapidly pushed.

Nothing but the best material will be used, and the drainage of the roadway will be given attention. It is expected either shells or some other substantial “topping” will be put on the thoroughfare.

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_New Jersey Adopts the State-Use Plan._--By the signing by Governor Wilson, the bill abolishing the present system of convict labor at the termination of the existing state prison contracts, all convict labor in the state and county prisons in New Jersey may be employed in the manufacture of articles for use in the institutions of the state and its subdivisions. The convicts are to be employed for nine hours, except on Sundays and public holidays. They may be employed in the construction or repair of prison institutions, and the labor of the convicts must be so directed as to produce “the greatest amount of actual product of articles and supplies” for all state and local institutions, the buildings and departments or offices of the state, “or in any public institution or department owned, managed and controlled by the state or public sub-division thereof.” Convicts may be employed in agriculture, horticulture and floriculture, and “all surplus product of this convict labor is to be disposed of at public sale to the highest bidder.” The new law extends the prison labor system from the state prison to all county prisons, and makes city and county departments, offices and institutions, as well as the state institutions, its beneficiaries. The sum of 50 cents a day is to be paid to the families of the convicts.

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_Parole in Maryland._--That Maryland will save at least $5,000 a year in earnings through the institution of the modern practice of paroling prisoners is stated by Charles D. Reid, of the Maryland Prisoners’ Aid Society. Heretofore in Maryland the practice has been but seldom resorted to in this state, with the result, says Mr. Reid, of failure to suppress crime, loss to the state and failure to encourage right living among the criminal class.

“Last year,” said Mr. Reid, “the amount of money taken in by fathers of families who have been paroled and thus saved in resource to the state was only $600. The parole system was then started by arrangement between Judge Duffy and myself. Already in one month $400 has been saved and the prospects are that at least $5,000 will be saved during the year.”

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_Uncle Sam and His Delinquents._--According to the Meriden (Conn.) Journal, modern and advanced ideas upon penology will be introduced into the army method of handling garrison prisoners, according to orders just issued by Major General Leonard Wood, chief of staff. The new regulations will not apply to military convicts, but only to those sentenced to confinement and hard labor without being discharged from the service.

The purpose behind the new regulations is to give the prisoner every opportunity to make good, instead of discouraging all effort toward good behavior. Under the new orders, garrison prisoners will be allowed an abatement of five days of their terms of confinement for each period of twenty-five days of good conduct, when serving sentences of one month and not more than three months. On sentences exceeding three months they will be allowed the five days’ abatement for the first month, and thereafter ten days abatement for each period of twenty days’ good conduct. Abatements thus authorized may be forfeited wholly or in part by subsequent misconduct.

A garrison prisoner who has served one half of a sentence of ten days or more, according to the new orders, may submit a request to be put on probation for the remainder of the sentence, and if his request is granted, may be restored to duty on condition that if his conduct is not good while on probation he will be required to serve the remainder of his sentence.

The new orders also make important changes in the methods of working garrison prisoners at military posts. These changes have been outlined in the following letter, sent to the commanders of the several departments:

“The present system of working prisoners under sentinels conveys a false impression as to the character of the prisoners, gives the public the erroneous idea that the army is full of bad characters requiring forcible handling, is injurious to the self-respect of the prisoners, discourages enlistments, and lowers the military service in public opinion. In addition to these objections, the system constitutes a heavy drain upon the command furnishing the necessary guard.

“It is deemed advisable and in the interests of the service, to adopt a different method of handling these garrison prisoners who are confined for comparatively short periods of time, to the end that the fewest practicable number of prisoners may be required to work under guard.

“It is therefore directed that as far as is practicable, as may be determined by post commanders in accordance with the above policy, garrison prisoners will be paroled for work under the general supervision of the officer or non-commissioned officer in charge of prisoners; and that prisoners whose character of offenses are of such a nature as to require that they be kept under armed guard shall be assigned tasks, as far as practicable, which will make the presence in the service of this class of men as little conspicuous as possible.”

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_Convicts to Build Road._--“The State of Utah,” according to a statement of Major M. P. Hackett, of Ogden, “is going to build an improved highway, 500 miles in length, stretching clear across Utah to Idaho at one end, and to the Arizona boundary at the other. The road is to be built entirely _with_ convict labor, in accordance with a late law authorizing such use of the felons.

“But there is a humane side to the enterprise, that may well be copied by other states. For every day’s work performed by the men each will have one day subtracted from his sentence. To a convict who is in for a long time this deduction is of big importance and it will be a great inducement for them to toil cheerfully and to the best of their ability.”

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_A Report From Texas Prisons._--A statement has been recently made by Ben. E. Cabell, chairman of the board of prison commissioners of Texas, that at this time Texas has between 600 and 700 prisoners at Huntsville and Rusk within the walls, and about 1,100 on her own state farms. About 1,000 are on share farms, where the state supplies the labor and gets part of the crop.

“At the beginning of the year about 800 convicts were being worked on farms and railroads. Within the last thirty days the railroad contracts have expired and have not been renewed. Some of the men were moved within the walls and others sent to the farms owned by the state. The present commissioners are in thorough harmony with Gov. Colquitt, who made it known that he wanted the contract and share farm system abolished as soon as practicable, and that all the convicts should be worked on state account. To this end the prison commissioners gave notice to all whose contracts expired with the end of this year that the contracts would not be renewed. This will leave very few men on share farms and none on contracts at the end of this year.

“The state has about 10,000 acres of land beside the 17,000 now in cultivation. This 10,000 acres will be put in cultivation for the year 1912. It is the intention of the prison commission (and has already been done) to put the farms and farm buildings in first-class condition, to make the buildings comfortable and healthful, to have good sanitation and wholesome conditions and all reasonable arrangements for the comfort of the convicts.”

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_New York’s Campaign For a Farm Colony._--The “farm colony plan” has progressed further toward success in this year’s session of the legislature than ever before. For several years charitable and correctional organizations have urged the state legislature to establish a farm and industrial colony for tramps and vagrants. At the present writing the bill has passed the lower house and is now in the order of third reading in the senate. Governor Dix is reported to have stated frequently his interest in this bill.