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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Journal of Prison Discipline and
-Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 5, by Anonymous
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58)
-
-Author: Anonymous
-
-Release Date: September 17, 2017 [EBook #55568]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNAL OF PRISON DISCIPLINE, 1919 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Wayne Hammond and the Online
-Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
-book was produced from scanned images of public domain
-material from the Google Books project.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- NEW SERIES No. 58
-
- THE JOURNAL
- OF
- PRISON DISCIPLINE
- AND
- PHILANTHROPY
-
- REPORT OF ACTING COMMITTEE
-
- REPORT OF COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE
- PRISON SYSTEMS
-
- MILITARY DISCIPLINE AND PUNISHMENTS, ETC.
-
- 1919
-
- ISSUED ANNUALLY BY
- THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY
- FORREST BUILDING, 119 SOUTH FOURTH STREET
- PHILADELPHIA, PA.
-
- PRESS OF ALLEN, LANE & SCOTT, PHILADELPHIA.
-
-
-OFFICIAL VISITORS.
-
-No person who is not an official visitor of the prison, or who has not
-a written permission, according to such rules as the Inspector may
-adopt as aforesaid, shall be allowed to visit the same; the official
-visitors are: the Governor, the Speaker and members of the Senate; the
-Speaker and members of the House of Representatives; the Secretary of
-the Commonwealth; the Judges of the Supreme Court; the Attorney-General
-and his Deputies; the President and Associate Judges of all the Courts
-in the State; the Mayor and Recorders of the cities of Philadelphia,
-Lancaster and Pittsburgh; Commissioners and Sheriffs of the several
-Counties; and the “ACTING COMMITTEE OF THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR
-ALLEVIATING THE MISERIES OF PUBLIC PRISONS.” (Note: Now named “THE
-PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY.”)--_Section 7, Act of April 23, 1829._
-
-The above was supplemented by the following Act, approved March 20,
-1903:
-
-
-AN ACT
-
- To make active or visiting committees of Societies incorporated
- for the purpose of visiting and instructing prisoners official
- visitors of penal and reformatory institutions.
-
-SECTION 1. Be it enacted, etc., That the active or visiting committee
-of any society heretofore incorporated and now existing in the
-Commonwealth for the purpose of visiting and instructing prisoners,
-or persons confined in any penal or reformatory institution, and
-alleviating their miseries, shall be and are hereby made official
-visitors of any jail, penitentiary, or other penal or reformatory
-institution in this Commonwealth, maintained at the public expense,
-with the same powers, privileges and functions as are vested in the
-official visitors of prisons and penitentiaries as now prescribed by
-law: _Provided_, That no active or visiting committee of any such
-society shall be entitled to visit such jails or penal institutions,
-under this act unless notice of the names of the members of such
-committee, and the terms of their appointment, is given by such society
-in writing, under its corporate seal, to the warden, superintendent or
-other officer in charge of such jail or other officer in charge of any
-such jail or other penal institution.
-
-APPROVED--The 20th day of March, A. D. 1903.
-
-
-
-
- NEW SERIES No. 58
-
- THE JOURNAL
- OF
- PRISON DISCIPLINE
- AND
- PHILANTHROPY
-
- REPORT OF ACTING COMMITTEE
-
- REPORT OF COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE
- PRISON SYSTEMS
-
- MILITARY DISCIPLINE AND PUNISHMENTS, ETC.
-
- 1919
-
- ISSUED ANNUALLY BY
- THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY
- FORREST BUILDING, 119 SOUTH FOURTH STREET
- PHILADELPHIA, PA.
-
-
-FORM OF BEQUEST OF PERSONAL PROPERTY.
-
-
-I give and bequeath to “THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY” the sum
-of................Dollars.
-
-
-FORM OF DEVISE OF REAL ESTATE.
-
-I give and bequeath to “THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY” all that
-certain piece and parcel of land. (Here enter the description.)
-
-
-
-
- OFFICERS FOR THE SOCIETY FOR 1919
-
-
- PRESIDENT
-
- EDWARD M. WISTAR, Provident Building, Philadelphia.
-
-
- VICE-PRESIDENT
-
- NORRIS J. SCOTT, Moylan, Pa.
-
-
- SECRETARY
-
- ALBERT H. VOTAW, 119 S. Fourth Street, Philadelphia.
-
-
- ASSISTANT SECRETARY
-
- CHARLES P. HASTINGS, 119 S. Fourth Street, Philadelphia.
-
-
- TREASURER
-
- JOHN WAY, 409 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia.
-
-
- COUNSELORS
-
- FREDERICK L. CLARK, West End Trust Building, Philadelphia.
- WILLIAM DRAPER LEWIS, Law Department, University of Pennsylvania.
-
-
- GENERAL AGENT
-
- FREDERICK J. POOLEY, 119 S. Fourth Street, Philadelphia.
-
-
-ACTING COMMITTEE
-
- FOR ONE YEAR
-
- Harrison Walton John A. Duncan Fred Swarts Brink
- Charles P. Hastings Mrs. Mary S. Grigg Dr. B. Frank Kehler
- Rev. F. H. Senft William Morris Dr. J. J. Mullowney
- Isaac P. Miller Mrs. Emma L. Thompson Robert B. Haines, Jr.
- Charles McDole Rev. Thomas Latimer H. Wellington Wood
-
-
- FOR TWO YEARS
-
- Harry Kennedy George S. Wetherell Dr. Charles Williams
- Henry C. Cassel Frank H. Longshore Charles C. Simmington
- Mrs. Layyah Barakat C. Wilfred Conard Mrs. Eliza M. Cope
- Rev. J. F. Ohl Rev. M. Reed Minnich Watson W. Dewees
- Mary S. Wetherell Miss Emily Whelen George A. Coburn
-
-
- FOR THREE YEARS
-
- Frederick J. Pooley Miss Annie McFedries Joseph P. Byers
- William Koelle Dr. John Frazer Franklin S. Edmonds
- Deborah C. Leeds Dr. J. Treichler Butz Leon J. Obermayer
- Mrs. Clara Hodges Allen George W. Wilkins Miss M. N. Cochran, Jr.
- Miss Rebecca P. Latimer Mrs. Mary Ella deLong Miss Florence B. Kane
-
-
-ACTING COMMITTEE FOR THE STATE-AT-LARGE
-
-FOR ONE YEAR FOR TWO YEARS FOR THREE YEARS
-BUCKS COUNTY ALLEGHENY COUNTY ALLEGHENY COUNTY
-Mrs. Anna K. Garges Paul T. Beiswenger Rev. F. W. Beiswenger
-
-CHESTER COUNTY MONTGOMERY COUNTY CENTRE COUNTY
-Mrs. B. K. C. Marshall Capt. Nicholas Baggs Hon. J. Linn Harris
-
-YORK COUNTY LUZERNE COUNTY
-Miss Rhoda M. Starr Mrs. Anabel Wallace
-
-
-
-
-STANDING COMMITTEES FOR 1919
-
-
-_Visiting Committee--Eastern Penitentiary_:
-
-
-MEN
-
- Rev. J. F. Ohl Charles P. Hastings Edward M. Wistar
- Rev. F. H. Senft Charles McDole Fred Swarts Brink
- Harry Kennedy John A. Duncan George W. Wilkins
- William Koelle Albert H. Votaw Dr. B. F. Kehler
- George S. Wetherell Rev. Thomas Latimer Leon J. Obermayer
- Henry C. Cassel Isaac P. Miller Chas. C. Simmington
- Harrison Walton Rev. M. Reed Minnich Geo. A. Coburn
- Frank H. Longshore Dr. Charles Williams H. Wellington Wood
- William Morris
-
-
-WOMEN
-
- Deborah C. Leeds Miss R. P. Latimer Mrs. Mary Ella deLong
- Mary S. Wetherell Miss Emily Whelen Mrs. Layyah Barakat
- Mrs. Mary S. Grigg
-
-
-_Visiting Committee_--_Philadelphia County Prison_--_Moyamensing_:
-
- John A. Duncan Norris J. Scott Deborah C. Leeds
- Rev. J. F. Ohl H. Wellington Wood Mrs. Clara Hodges Allen
- Frederick J. Pooley Albert H. Votaw Miss R. P. Latimer
-
-
-_Visiting Committee_--_Philadelphia County Prison_--_Holmesburg_:
-
- Frederick J. Pooley William Koelle John A. Duncan
-
-
-_Visiting Committee_--_House of Correction_:
-
- William Koelle Robert B. Haines, Jr.
- Fred Swarts Brink Mrs. Layyah Barakat
-
-
-_Committee on Discharged Prisoners_:
-
- Dr. Charles Williams George W. Wilkins
- Miss Florence B. Kane Charles P. Hastings
-
-
-_Committee on Legislation_:
-
- Rev. J. F. Ohl Mrs. E. M. Cope Hon. J. Linn Harris
- C. Wilfred Conard Joseph P. Byers
-
-
-_Committee on Membership_:
-
- Isaac P. Miller George W. Wilkins Miss M. N. Cochran, Jr.
- John A. Duncan George S. Wetherell
-
-
-_Committee on Police Matrons_:
-
- Mrs. Mary S. Grigg Miss Emily Whelen Mrs. Mary Ella deLong
-
-
-_Editorial Committee_:
-
- Rev. J. F. Ohl Miss Florence B. Kane Joseph P. Byers
- Rev. F. H. Senft Albert H. Votaw
-
-
-_Finance Committee_:
-
- George S. Wetherell John A. Duncan
- Robert B. Haines, Jr. Fred Swarts Brink
-
-
-_Auditors_:
-
- John A. Duncan Isaac P. Miller Watson W. Dewees
-
-
-
-
-THE JOURNAL OF PRISON DISCIPLINE AND PHILANTHROPY
-
-
-ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON
-SOCIETY.
-
-
-The 132d Annual Meeting of THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY was held
-by appointment in Assembly Hall, Church Building, northwest corner
-Fifteenth and Race Streets, Philadelphia, on the evening of January 14,
-1919, President Edward M. Wistar in the Chair.
-
-Twenty-five members were present.
-
-The Minutes of the 131st Meeting were read and approved.
-
-The Report of the Acting Committee for the year 1918 was read by the
-Secretary. It was approved and directed to be printed. (See pages 7-14.)
-
-The Treasurer, John Way, presented a detailed statement of the receipts
-and payments for the fiscal year ending December 31, 1918, accompanied
-by a schedule of the securities held for the Society by the Fiscal
-Agent, The Provident Life and Trust Company. The statement had been
-audited and the securities had been examined by the auditors. (See page
-15.)
-
-On behalf of the Committee on Nominations, the Secretary presented a
-list of nominations for the Officers of the Society and for members of
-the Acting Committee to succeed those whose terms expire on February
-1. Watson W. Dewees and George S. Wetherell were appointed Tellers.
-The election being duly held the persons nominated were elected to the
-offices designated in the report of the Committee. (See page 3.)
-
-A communication was read, sent by Leonard G. Yoder, Esq., Solicitor
-for the Berks County Prison, calling attention to the fact that the
-Act of the Assembly, approved 1917, provided that prisoners in the
-county prisons could be employed at agricultural labor only during the
-continuance of the war which is now interrupted by the armistice. The
-net profit of the labor of prisoners thus employed in Berks County in
-1918 was $800, and the Solicitor recommends that this Act should apply
-permanently and requests that this Society should exert an influence
-on the present Assembly for the purpose of encouraging the continuation
-of this beneficial measure for the employment of prisoners. By motion,
-the communication was referred to the Legislative Committee of the
-Acting Committee.
-
-Dr. George W. Kirchwey of New York delivered the Annual Address. He is
-the Counsel for the Commission under appointment to investigate prisons
-and to recommend such revision of our present penal system as may seem
-advisable. While the report of the Commission was not yet entirely
-prepared, he intimated that some scheme of Central Administration would
-be proposed, not so much to take the management away from the present
-Boards of Inspectors as to exercise advisory and supervisory powers and
-to correlate our various correctional institutions. The conditions now
-obtaining in regard to the employment of prisoners were deplorable in
-this Keystone State, and it was the aim of the Commission to provide
-some form of productive labor for all able-bodied prisoners. They were
-prepared to recommend an extension of agricultural operations and
-favored the early removal of the Eastern Penitentiary to a farm in the
-eastern portion of the State. He deprecated every form of brutality in
-the treatment of delinquents and evidently thought the old repressive
-spirit and measures could still be found to have lodgment in some
-of our prisons. He was sure that a large number of our prisoners,
-possibly a majority, were mentally deficient and ought to have special
-treatment adapted to their needs, which, under present circumstances
-of incarceration, was impossible. If we wish to restore the men whom
-we confine in our prisons, we must do more than simply restrain them
-within certain limits; we must treat them as erring brothers and
-sisters, not as dumb driven cattle.
-
-To nominate to our next Annual Meeting the officers of the Society
-and members of the Acting Committee whose terms expire next year, the
-President appointed William Biddle, Robert Dunning Dripps, John A.
-Duncan, William C. Warren and Miss Emily Whelen.
-
- ALBERT H. VOTAW,
- _Secretary_.
-
-
-REPORT OF ACTING COMMITTEE FOR THE YEAR 1918.
-
-At a meeting which was held May 8, 1787, in Philadelphia, at which
-the “Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Prisons”
-was organized, provision was made for the appointment of an Acting
-Committee which should discharge the executive functions of the
-Society. It was composed of nine persons, the President, the two
-Vice-Presidents, and six additional members. The first Acting Committee
-was composed of
-
- Bishop William White, President,
- Dr. Henry Helmuth, Vice-President,
- Richard Wells, Vice-President.
-
-
-Additional members:
-
- Tench Coxe, John Kaighn,
- Dr. George Duffield, Benjamin Wynkoop,
- William Rogers, George Krebs.
-
-From time to time, on account of additional duties, responsibilities
-and opportunities for service, this Committee has been enlarged until
-at the present time it is limited to sixty persons, and at the present
-time is composed of fifty-six members.
-
-In 1886 the name of the Society was changed to “The Pennsylvania Prison
-Society”--a name indicating no change of purpose, but rather a wider
-scope of operations.
-
-In the year 1829, the Acting Committee, by Act of Assembly, were
-appointed Official Visitors of all prisons in the Commonwealth. Our
-Society was the only one having such duties until the year 1903, when,
-by another Act of the Assembly, the privilege was granted to the Acting
-Committee of the Catholic Society for the Visitation of Prisoners.
-
-
-OFFICIAL VISITATION.
-
-While many members of our Visiting Committees have been zealous in
-their endeavor to open the door of hope to the prisoners, and to
-stimulate them to higher ideals of life, the general conditions
-obtaining in the prisons have also claimed attention. It is a
-prescribed function of the Visiting Committee of any prison, whether
-State or County, to note the “condition of the buildings ... the
-discipline and management,” and to make report of their observations.
-Great discretion and a full understanding of the situation are
-essential in publishing the results of such comments and observations.
-In the early history of our organization, there were so many abuses
-prevalent in the management of prisons that by far the larger part
-of the activities of the Acting Committee consisted in the effort to
-remedy the evils of management. These efforts were eminently successful
-in those days of emergence from medieval methods; and while we all
-rejoice in the very great amelioration of conditions, it must be
-confessed that penal improvement has lagged behind all other agencies
-for betterment. If we compare our educational system, hospitals,
-transportation methods, agricultural development--any field of human
-endeavor--with our correctional institutions, we are overwhelmed by the
-extreme lack of corresponding progress.
-
-
-PERSONAL VISITATION.
-
-The reports of the Visiting Committees for the year 1918 indicate that
-there is no loss of interest or effort in seeking to restore men and
-women to their better selves. In consequence of the quarantine caused
-by the epidemic of influenza, which resulted in keeping visitors away
-from four to six weeks, the statistics do not bulk as large as usual.
-
- Number of reported visits to the Eastern Penitentiary 337
- Number of reported interviews with the inmates 6,435
- Number of reported interviews with the inmates of the
- Philadelphia County Prison 3,631
- Number of prisoners interviewed at Central Station
- by Agent 15,933
- Number of discharged prisoners receiving direct aid 590
-
-On practically every Sabbath one or more of our members take part in
-the religious services in the prisons.
-
-We are convinced that many of those with whom we meet from time to time
-are victims of circumstances, and also that many of them are defective
-in mentality and in self control. At some time, we trust the General
-Assembly will take up seriously the subject of the degenerates who need
-treatment in accordance with the most approved psychiatric methods.
-Some of them need institutional care for a much longer time than is
-indicated by the Court sentence. Here they should be restrained until
-they are deemed ready to become useful to the community.
-
-
-EMPLOYMENT OF PRISONERS.
-
-In the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the most flagrant evil of
-the prisons is the lack of wholesome employments for the inmates.
-Even some of our laws designed to help conditions have aggravated the
-evil. For instance, the law of 1913, which, with the best intentions,
-repealed other laws for employment in the State Penal Institutions,
-in order that the inmates might all be employed in making articles
-for State use, did not create a sure market for the articles thus
-manufactured, and therefore the number of prisoners profitably employed
-in the penitentiaries is not so large as under a former law when 35
-per cent. of them could be kept at work in the manufacture of articles
-or products to be sold in the open market. A simple remedy for this
-deplorable state of affairs may be found in granting the privilege
-of selling the surplus stock in the market at the prevailing price.
-Organized labor found undesirable competition with the products of free
-labor only when the prisoners were employed on the vicious contract
-system. Under the present methods, the prisoners are to receive a fair
-wage and the products are to be sold at the market price. Perhaps
-we could make a beginning by listing certain industries in which
-the convicts may be employed. Place no restrictions on agricultural
-products, including canned goods, on the work of stone crushing and in
-general the manufacture of road-making material, and also allow two or
-three indoor industries, such as the manufacture of carpets and knit
-goods. Thus the problem may be solved. When we consider the very small
-number of persons so employed in comparison with the hordes of outside
-workers, it appears very evident that the amount of real competition
-would reduce to the vanishing point. No industry would be injured, the
-tax-payers would be relieved from a large part of the expense, the
-prisoners would earn their own maintenance, and thus the demoralizing
-effects of idleness would be averted.
-
-
-DISCHARGED PRISONERS.
-
-It has sometimes been stated that for some visitors, the prisoner
-loses his charm when released from confinement. He may be decidedly
-interesting behind the bars, or perhaps he may be simply an object
-of curiosity, or a psychological specimen to be studied, like some
-abnormal freak of nature. Within the wall the visitor may show warmth,
-interest, cordiality, sympathy, a certain degree of familiarity,
-but on the outside the atmosphere is below zero. This is a species
-of charlatanism for which we have no sympathy. It is an exceedingly
-important part of our mission to set the discharged man on his feet,
-and to establish his goings. If ever any man needed sympathy and
-material aid, it is when the man released from confinement again
-becomes a member of the community. Not all the men and women who are
-released seem to require special help, but those who are in need are
-very greatly dependent upon human kindness till they have regained some
-sense of confidence and have again become self-supporting. If aid and
-good cheer are not forthcoming at this crucial time of testing, there
-is imminent danger of a relapse into former bad habits. We believe that
-all of our visitors realize the importance of maintaining our interest
-and kindly feeling for the prisoner at the time of his release.
-
-
-SECURING EMPLOYMENT.
-
-During the last two years there has been no difficulty in finding work
-for any able-bodied man. There are some disappointments, but we are
-learning not to become discouraged. Possibly we may allow ourselves to
-dwell unduly on the failures, when we should recall the many instances
-of reclamation. The saying “Once a crook, always a crook” has no
-place either in our experience or in our philosophy. If this saying
-represents a truth, we would become pessimistic regarding the human
-race. Show us the man or woman who has never erred. Please note some
-examples:--
-
-The other day we met “A” on Market Street. Accompanied by his little
-son, he was speeding away in his “flivver.” He stopped to give us a
-greeting, and indicated that happiness and prosperity were his portion.
-
-“B” is a spick and span policeman in a neighboring city. Though you may
-say “Set a thief to catch a thief,” this particular guardian of the
-public peace is discharging his duty to the community.
-
-“C” seemed particularly pleased to meet us the other day uptown. He had
-joined the church, and had attained to the dignity of usher.
-
-“D,” who was once an accomplished burglar, having served at least two
-terms in prison, has built up a manufacturing industry, and is quite
-prosperous.
-
-“E” is foreman in the jewelry department of a large department store
-“somewhere in America.”
-
-“F,” a one-armed piece of ebon jollity, is one of the handiest men
-employed on a certain prosperous truck farm.
-
-“G,” who began cooking for Blank Firm at $10 weekly wages, now reports
-with a grin that he is getting $65 a month with board and lodging.
-
-“H” is one of the most popular clerks in the office of a mammoth
-establishment. That he once fell from grace is known, but it is no
-longer reckoned against him.
-
-“I” one year ago began as a solicitor and now his business has so
-enlarged that he has taken a suite of rooms for his office.
-
-We could easily exhaust the alphabet with such cases. There are
-failures, but we try to discount our disappointments when we take
-account of those who are “making good.” The Parole Officers have
-informed us that seventy-five per cent. are becoming satisfactory
-citizens. By far the larger part of those whom we willingly assist, in
-a short time are beyond our ken. They take with them our hopes and our
-fears--our fears, that they may again yield to the manifold temptations
-on every hand; our hopes, that they have learned their lesson, and with
-courage and by the help of divine grace are performing their duty to
-the community.
-
-
-A REVOLVING RELIEF FUND.
-
-A few of those to whom we render assistance return a part, or all,
-of the funds which we have advanced to them. We do not press them
-for payment. Those who are invalids or who have families to support
-are not expected to repay us. From many years of experience, we have
-learned that it is not wise indiscriminately to make grants of cash
-in hand. Old chums are waiting just around the corner for a treat.
-Temptations of all sorts are manifold. We guarantee bills for board
-and lodging, purchase tools and clothing, furnish transportation, and
-provide outfits for those who are sent to the State Sanatoriums. But
-there are some who should feel an obligation to return the value of the
-assistance rendered. Thus we hope to create a sort of revolving fund
-which may be used for cases of need, and when returned is ready for the
-next man. Many of these released men have some natural pride or self
-respect, and do not wish to be considered mendicants.
-
-
-THE AMERICAN PRISON ASSOCIATION.
-
-On account of the epidemic of influenza so prevalent in the autumn,
-the meeting of the American Prison Association was called off. At a
-meeting of the Executive Committee held recently it was concluded to
-postpone till next year the sessions of this body. New York had been
-selected as the place, and it has been decided to meet in the same
-city, October 20-24, 1919.
-
-
-THE AGENT’S WORK AT THE CENTRAL POLICE STATION.
-
-One of the most important features of our relief work is under the
-management of our Agent, Mr. Fred J. Pooley, at the Central Station,
-City Hall. From the forty-two Police Stations throughout the city,
-there arrive almost hourly at this Central Station van loads of human
-freight which in some way or other must be quickly disposed of by the
-Committing Magistrate. Most of these are petty offenders, but also
-there are numerous cases of arrest on suspicion or for vagrancy, and
-such as these need special care in order to prevent injustice, and to
-be saved from criminal associations. Agent Pooley endeavors to have a
-brief interview with these derelicts or victims of misfortune before
-they are taken before the Magistrate. In ten months of last year he
-thus interviewed 15,933 arrested persons, and on their behalf wrote to
-their friends 1,937 letters. His experience for many years has taught
-him to distinguish the ring of the true from the sound of the false, so
-that when the cases come up before the Court, he is ready to interpose
-a word on behalf of the accused person. Often the unfortunate man or
-woman, boy or girl, is placed in the care of the agent, who sends them
-to their homes or friends, or places them in some detention home until
-he may verify their story or hear from their parents or relatives. No
-day passes with a blank record in this work of rescue.
-
-In the Agent’s report, an abstract of which is printed in the Annual
-Journal of which this report forms a part, a number of instances are
-narrated, illustrating the importance of this service.
-
-During the time of the closing of the saloons on account of the
-epidemic of influenza, the number of arrests for drunkenness and
-disorderly conduct greatly decreased, thus clearly demonstrating that a
-prohibitory law would have a decided tendency very greatly to diminish
-crime and disorder in this city.
-
-
-LEGISLATION.
-
-We have delayed the printing of our annual report in order to include
-in the JOURNAL the Report of the Commission to Investigate Prison
-Systems, of which the Secretary of the Society is a member. The
-Legislative Committee of the Society has endorsed the findings of the
-Commission and has urgently requested the General Assembly to take
-favorable action on the bills presented by the Commission. A synopsis
-of these bills presents the following desirable features.
-
-1. The enlargement of the functions of the State Board of Public
-Charities so as to include the appointment from their number of a
-Committee on Delinquency with supervisory power over all prisons of the
-Commonwealth and with authority to condemn unsanitary conditions and
-provide for betterment, and also to have especial direction over the
-prison industries. Medical and psychiatric examination of convicts is
-provided with power to transfer defective criminals to the institution
-most suitable for their care and restoration.
-
-2. The establishment of State Industrial Farms to which those sentenced
-to the county jails may be sent.
-
-3. An Amendment to the law of 1911 which deals with the imposition of
-sentences by the Courts to the extent that convicted prisoners may be
-eligible for parole when one-third of the maximum sentence has expired.
-
-4. Abolition of the fee system in county jails, a practice universally
-condemned by all who have studied the problem.
-
-5. The removal of the Eastern Penitentiary to a farm in the eastern
-part of the State. This suggestion is in line with the recommendation
-of the Commission of 1915 of which the present Warden was a member. At
-that time the purchase of a farm for the use of the institution was
-proposed.
-
-6. The provision that goods and articles made by the labor of prisoners
-shall be used whenever practicable by public institutions of the
-Commonwealth, thus insuring a market for such products.
-
-The full report of the Commission is found in the present issue of the
-JOURNAL, pages 19-46.
-
-
-THE ROLL OF MEMBERS.
-
-During the last year we have to a considerable extent enlarged the
-membership of our Society. We presented the matter to a number of our
-citizens, many of whom had been contributors to our work for some time,
-who very cordially accepted membership. Seventy-five persons have
-been added to our membership during the year 1918, and we are deeply
-gratified to place on our roll the names of so many estimable citizens.
-The number of members at the present time, including life members, is
-252.
-
-
-MORTUARY NOTICES.
-
-During the last year four of the members of the Acting Committee have
-been called away by death.
-
-In January our dear friend, Mrs. Elizabeth M. Gormly, who has
-faithfully visited for many years the prisoners in Pittsburgh, died
-at an advanced age. She had been a member since 1903. She was also
-connected with the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, being the State
-Superintendent of Evangelistic Work among Prisoners.
-
-In August, Mrs. Annie Fassitt, of Philadelphia, also of an advanced
-age, passed from works to rewards. She had been a member from 1896,
-and had given special assistance to hundreds of prisoners. She was
-one of the founders of the “Door of Blessing,” and for many years
-was prominent in the support and management of this effort for the
-restoration of erring sisters. She was a real “Angel of Mercy.”
-
-John Smallzell, a member since 1905, also passed away in the month of
-August. His visits to Eastern Penitentiary will long be remembered.
-Wherever he went, he took a message of good cheer. He was most sincere
-and devout, and carried with him everywhere the influence of a devoted
-Christian life.
-
-In April, 1919, our esteemed Vice-President Joseph C. Noblit, in the
-eighty-sixth year of his life, was called to his everlasting home.
-He was elected a member of the Society in 1899 and was made a member
-of the Acting Committee in 1900. In 1916 he was chosen as one of the
-Vice-Presidents, and on occasion presided at the meetings of the Acting
-Committee with dignity and a high sense of responsibility. He was a
-diligent attender of the meetings and his judgment on the many matters
-coming before the Committee was sound and discreet. He was a faithful
-visitor to the inmates of our prisons, earnest in the endeavor to bring
-to them a true gospel message and to induce them to choose the better
-way of living. He knew the deep principles of experimental religion,
-and was solicitous that all with whom he came in contact should know
-for themselves the consolations of a devoted Christian life. “He giveth
-his beloved sleep.”
-
-On behalf of the Acting Committee,
-
- EDWARD M. WISTAR,
- _President_.
-
- ALBERT H. VOTAW,
- _Secretary_.
-
-
-FINANCIAL STATEMENT.
-
- RECEIPTS FOR THE YEAR 1918.
-
- To Balance January 1, 1918 $1,716 94
- “ Contributions 3,439 00
- “ Dues from Annual Members 410 00
- “ Life Membership (Edw. M. Wistar) 50 00
- “ Income from Investments 2,152 60
- “ Income from I. V. Williamson Charities 720 00
- “ Income from Anna Blanchard Fund 220 50
- “ Income from Joshua L. Baily Fund 157 62
- “ Income from Henry A. Rogers Fund 25 20
- “ Income from Isaac Barton (Tool Fund) 80 33
- “ Interest on deposits 42 05
- “ Sale of Literature 90
- “ Returned by Discharged Prisoners 40 25
- “ Refund Account Wardens’ Conference 129 45
- ---------
- Total Receipts $9,184 84
-
- PAYMENTS.
-
- For Aid and Relief Discharged Prisoners $1,408 34
- “ Journal and other Publications 650 80
- “ Dues, various affiliated Associations 11 00
- “ Library, Periodicals 27 35
- “ Postage, Printing, Stationery 383 75
- “ Office Expenses, Telephone, Incidentals 275 89
- “ Traveling Expenses, Secretary and Agent 98 60
- “ Rent of Office 480 00
- “ Salaries of Officers 3,710 00
- “ Life Membership Fee Transferred to Fiscal Agent 50 00
- “ Balance, December 31, 1918 2,089 11
- ---------
- Total Payments including balance $9,184 84
-
- REPORT ON FUNDS HELD FOR HOME OF INDUSTRY.
-
- Receipts on Account of Income $361 28
- Payments to Home of Industry 361 28
-
- Respectfully,
- JOHN WAY, _Treasurer_.
-
-We the undersigned members of the Audit Committee, have examined the
-foregoing account of John Way, Treasurer, compared the payments with
-the vouchers, and believe the same to be correct.
-
-We have also examined securities in the hands of our agents, The
-Provident Life and Trust Company of Philadelphia, and find them to
-agree with the list thereto attached.
-
- Philadelphia January 1, 1919. JOHN A. DUNCAN,
- ISAAC P. MILLER,
- _Auditing Committee_.
-
-
-REPORT OF GENERAL AGENT FREDERICK J. POOLEY.
-
-During the year 1918 the Agent made daily visits to the cell-room at
-the Central Station at City Hall. Twenty thousand and thirty-nine
-men and women prisoners were detained there for preliminary trial,
-15,933 of whom the Agent visited while at the Central Station and the
-remainder after they arrived at Moyamensing Prison.
-
- Number visited at County Prisons 2,829
- Number of notices and letters written on their behalf 1,888
- Number discharged prisoners receiving financial aid 345
-
-The opportunities for helpful service are very numerous. In a large
-number of cases of suspicion or of a trivial character, the Agent has
-been instrumental in securing the discharge of the prisoners, or in
-placing them under the care of the Probation Officer, thus saving their
-family from disgrace and the County from expense.
-
-It might be of interest to mention a few cases of interest.
-
-No. 1. A young man from the west, arrested as a suspicious character,
-had been from home nine years, and was held for a hearing. The Agent
-got in touch with his relatives and he was discharged and sent home.
-
-No. 2. A young man from Pittsburgh, Pa., money all gone, while pawning
-his watch was arrested; the pawnbroker thought he had stolen it, and
-when your Agent received word from his mother that it was his own
-watch, he was discharged and sent home.
-
-No. 3. Two young men from St. Louis, with no money, were held as
-suspicious characters in order to give the Agent a chance to get in
-touch with relatives. One mother came on, and the other sent ticket,
-and they both went home.
-
-No. 4. A young man who had gone from town to town, ashamed to write
-home, until he landed in our City Hall cell. A few words from the
-Agent, brought tears to his eyes and he allowed a letter to be written.
-The magistrate discharged him and he is now at home, and he writes: “I
-am so glad you found me when you did, for your letter found my mother
-and brought her to my rescue, and now _I am free_ and expect to keep in
-the right path the remainder of my life.”
-
-With the close of the year 1918, your Agent completed 20 years of
-service at the Philadelphia County Prison and eight years of service
-at the Central Police Station, City Hall, and in all these years your
-Agent has not lost sight of the fact that it is the kind word and a
-kindly grasp of the hand, at the proper moment, that may be the means
-of turning an unfortunate from the wrong to the right path.
-
- Very truly,
- FREDERICK J. POOLEY,
- 1/15/19. _General Agent._
-
-
-PAROLE STATISTICS--EASTERN PENITENTIARY.
-
- The whole number of prisoners released on
- parole, including some who have been
- re-paroled, from September, 1910, to January
- 1, 1919 2,773
-
- Number thus released in 1918 510
- Whole number returned to the Penitentiary
- since September, 1910 515
-
-Some of those paroled have died, some have been pardoned and some have
-received final discharge.
-
- Number who should now be reporting 930
- Of these, the number actually reporting 728
- Number known to be in jail elsewhere 37
- Number whose present address is unknown 165 930
-
-Less than six per cent. of the entire number have vanished. It must
-not be considered that all of these have committed crime. Doubtless
-many of them have been in the trenches. They have broken connection
-with the parole officials in order to serve Uncle Sam, who has stated
-that he will not accept those who have been guilty of felony. From
-outside sources, we have known that a large number of former convicts
-have thus endeavored to expiate their former offenses. Much praise
-has been given to ex-convicts in Canada and Great Britain from which
-countries many were released in order to join the army or navy. In
-fact very few of these absconders are supposed to have again committed
-crime. Nearly every penal institution of the country receives notice of
-these decampers accompanied by their photographs, so they are easily
-identified. The few who again committed some crime have thus been
-detected and either returned whence they came or held with detainers.
-Probably nearly all of them desire to get entirely away from any
-restraint or semblance of authority. They make a grievous mistake for
-they are liable at any time to be apprehended and to be brought back
-in disgrace. They live the life of hunted animals. Never for one hour
-can they feel secure. We believe that a penalty should be levied upon
-those who abuse the privilege of parole. They have violated their word
-of honor, and should serve additional time.
-
-There are some persons who will argue against the granting of parole
-because some eight and one-half per cent. of these obtaining this
-privilege have again been guilty of violations of law and order. Nearly
-all these violations are of the nature of misdemeanors. Comparatively
-few have been guilty of felonies. The problem involves a deep study
-of human psychology. In order to determine who shall be released,
-there are many elements to be considered. Mistakes are made both
-within and outside the prison walls. Those on the inside often give
-the applicant the benefit of their doubts when the logic of the case
-seems to urge further detention. When the man is on the outside he is
-often disappointed in the attitude of the community of which he really
-desires to become a law-abiding citizen. The members of the community
-assume a serious responsibility when they put stumbling-blocks in the
-way of the man who is endeavoring to make good. “Woe to that man by
-whom the offense cometh.”
-
-But the conclusion is irresistible that an argument against release on
-parole, based on the fact that about eight per cent. have again become
-lawbreakers, is a stronger argument against release at expiration of
-sentence.
-
-For a much larger percentage than eight per cent. of those who are
-released because their terms have expired and therefore can not longer
-be detained, become recidivists. Often one-half of the prisoners at a
-penal institution have served previously, and yet a comparatively small
-percentage are parole violators. In other words, the same argument
-which is used against release on parole will apply more strongly to any
-release whatever. Again, it must be remembered that the paroled man or
-woman is under watchful care, while the person absolutely released is
-subject to no restraint.
-
-Out of every 100 persons reported January 1, 1919, as being on parole,
-74 were making good. Of the remaining 26, barely two have committed
-felonies. This record is better than Boards in some other States have
-reported. Our Parole Officials are giving deep study to this subject
-with a view to increasing the percentage of successful effort.
-
- A. H. V.
-
-
-
-
-COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA.
-
-REPORT OF COMMISSION TO INVESTIGATE PENAL SYSTEMS.
-
-
- _To the General Assembly_:
-
-Your Commission duly appointed pursuant to Act of the Legislature, No.
-409, 1917, “to investigate the prison systems and the organization
-and management of correctional institutions within this Commonwealth
-and elsewhere; to recommend such revision of the existing prison
-system within this Commonwealth, and the laws pertaining to the
-establishment, maintenance and regulation of State and County
-correctional institutions within this Commonwealth as it shall deem
-wise, and to report the same to the General Assembly at the session of
-1919,” respectfully submits the following report of its proceedings,
-together with its conclusions and recommendations and proposed bills
-for carrying the same into effect.
-
-The Commission was constituted as follows:
-
- Fletcher W. Stites, Narberth, Chairman,
- Alfred E. Jones, Uniontown,
- Mrs. Martha P. Falconer, Darling P. O.,
- Louis N. Robinson, Swarthmore,
- Albert H. Votaw, Philadelphia.
-
-On November 1, 1917, the members of the Commission met in the City
-of Philadelphia, for the purpose of organization and assigned the
-work of investigation which had been committed to it to the several
-members thereof. On July 1, 1918, the Commission retained Dr. George
-W. Kirchwey, of New York City, as its counsel to direct the subsequent
-course of the investigation and to aid the Commission with his counsel
-and advice.
-
-
-I.
-
-SCOPE OF INVESTIGATION.
-
-The Commission was fortunate in having in its personnel as thus
-constituted four members, including its counsel, who had through
-long experience and previous investigations acquired considerable
-information as to penal institutions and their management in this and
-other States. The investigation covered:--
-
-(1) A careful study and analysis of the laws governing penal conditions
-and institutions in this Commonwealth;
-
-(2) An examination of the six correctional institutions directly
-controlled by the State, namely:
-
- The Eastern Penitentiary, at Philadelphia;
- The Western Penitentiary, at Pittsburgh;
- The New Central Penitentiary, at Bellefonte;
- The State Industrial Reformatory, at Huntingdon;
- The Pennsylvania Training School, at Morganza;
- The State Industrial Home for Women, at Muncy;
-
-(3) A similar examination of the Glen Mills Schools--the Girls’
-Department, Sleighton Farms, at Darlington, and the Boys’ Department at
-Glen Mills;
-
-(4) A similar examination of the Philadelphia House of Correction and
-of the County Convict Prison at Holmesburg, Moyamensing Prison in
-Philadelphia, the Allegheny County Workhouse at Hoboken and many other
-county institutions;
-
-(5) A study of the constitution, organization and functions of the
-State Board of Public Charities, and specifically of those of its
-Committee on Lunacy;
-
-(6) A study of the powers and activities of the Prison Labor Commission
-instituted under the Act of June 1, 1918;
-
-(7) A careful survey of the entire history of the penal system of the
-Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from the colonial period down to the
-present time, based on the historical research of Professor Harry E.
-Barnes of Clark University, Massachusetts;
-
-(8) An investigation of significant correctional institutions in
-several other States, notably in New York, New Jersey and Ohio.
-
-To supplement and enlarge the range of these inquiries and studies, the
-Commission was permitted to avail itself of the results of previous
-investigations conducted by two of its members; on the Employment
-and Compensation of Prisoners in Pennsylvania, by Professor Louis N.
-Robinson, as Secretary of the Penal Commission of 1913-1915, and on the
-county jails and workhouses, made periodically from 1914 to 1918 by
-Albert H. Votaw, as Secretary of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.
-
-The Commission desires to express its sense of deep obligation to
-the officials and inspectors of prisons in this Commonwealth for the
-courtesy and hospitality extended to its members in the course of their
-investigations. It also acknowledges its indebtedness to the Secretary
-and members of the Board of Public Charities and to the Secretary of
-the Public Charities Association for their helpful co-operation.
-
-The Commission has heretofore submitted to the Governor two preliminary
-reports, one a Special Emergency Report on Prison Labor, bearing date
-September 1, 1918, and a special report on the State Industrial Home
-for Women, under date of September 15, 1918, both of which are hereto
-appended.
-
-While both these reports were called out by war emergencies, the
-former by the dearth of labor power to man the war industries of
-the Commonwealth, the latter by the need of providing a place for
-the detention and treatment of the large number of dissolute women
-convicted of offenses against Federal and State laws enacted for the
-protection of the soldiers in the training camps--the Commission
-believes that they are still pertinent and that the recommendations
-which they contain should form a part of any constructive scheme for
-the improvement of the penal system of the Commonwealth.
-
-
-II.
-
-DEVELOPMENT OF PENAL SYSTEM OF PENNSYLVANIA.
-
-The most inspiring and significant chapter in the history of penology
-is not the achievement of John Howard in redeeming the common gaols
-of England from the degradation into which they had fallen, nor of
-Lord Romilly in his lifelong struggle against the barbarities of the
-English penal laws, but the leadership which for more than a century
-the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania gave to the world both in prison
-reform and in the amelioration of the penal code. The two former were
-the revolt of sensitive and humane natures against hoary abuses;
-but the latter was all this and something more. It was a bold and
-imaginative reconstruction of the whole basis of penal discipline. As
-far back as the last quarter of the seventeenth century the Quaker
-colonists of Pennsylvania introduced for the first time the practice
-of employing imprisonment at hard labor as the ordinary method of
-punishing anti-social action. After the reversion of the American
-colonies for fifty years to the barbarous criminal jurisprudence of the
-mother country, Pennsylvania was the first State, the first community
-in the world, to break with this system and to substitute imprisonment
-for the various brutal and degrading types of corporal punishment.
-The Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, in 1790, was the earliest
-institution in America in which these more enlightened principles were
-put into practice. From this second beginning, for a period of forty
-years, Pennsylvania was elaborating and perfecting the first of the two
-great systems of penal administration which were destined to dominate
-the penology of the civilized world during the nineteenth century--the
-separate confinement of malefactors. Visited, admired and imitated
-by large numbers of eminent and enthusiastic European penologists,
-the Eastern Penitentiary at Cherry Hill was the pivotal point linking
-American and European penology for more than a generation after 1830.
-
-Then followed that long period of inertia, of lassitude, of marking
-time, which is so apt to succeed to a period of ardent reforming energy
-and which to this very day has maintained its spell over the State and
-the Nation.
-
-Not that there have not in the last half century been notable
-improvements in the theory and practice of penal administration,
-some of them bold enough to bring America from time to time into the
-forefront of interest and example to the penologists of the Old World,
-but in most of these the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been content
-to play a secondary role. Throughout this era of slackened energy she
-has not cared or dared to initiate, to lead, to “carry on,” but has
-followed belatedly and afar off the progress of other States. Examples
-of this are the Auburn congregate system, which divided with the
-Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement the interest of European
-as well as of American penologists, and which was adopted in the
-Western Penitentiary in 1869, a full generation after its establishment
-in New York State, and which has only recently conquered the parent
-institution on Cherry Hill; the justly famous Elmira experiment
-of progressive classification and industrial training of inmates
-embodied in the Huntingdon Reformatory in 1889, and the long-promised
-reformatory for women at Muncy, which, six years after its creation by
-legislative action, has not yet been rendered available for the purpose
-for which it was designed.
-
-The first step in the development of an intelligent conception of
-delinquency and its treatment came not in an accurate conception of
-the nature of crime and its causes, but in a clearer and more correct
-notion of the function of punishment. By 1790 the element of deterrence
-in punishment was recognized and emphasized. The element of reformation
-was a cardinal point in the theory and practice of the Philadelphia
-Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, and this
-Society did its best to infuse this doctrine into the Pennsylvania
-system of prison administration. Before 1830 it was very generally
-asserted that reformation, as well as deterrence and social revenge,
-was to be regarded as a chief aim of punishment, though the offender
-was still regarded as an unregenerate free moral agent.
-
-This theory of crime received a severe shock in the “forties” from the
-investigations of Dorothea L. Dix and others, who showed the great
-prevalence of insanity and idiocy among the delinquent classes. It
-could scarcely be denied even by the traditional jurists that the
-exercise of free will was likely to be seriously impeded by insanity or
-feeble-mindedness. From 1850 to the beginning of the present century
-the most notable advances toward a more intelligent conception of crime
-and its treatment consisted in the gradual but definite triumph of the
-notion of detention and punishment as agencies for reformation rather
-than as instruments of social revenge.
-
-For more than a century of its history the penal, reformatory and
-correctional institutions of Pennsylvania were limited to the county
-jails and the few and scattered workhouses, which were erected mainly
-in conjunction with the almshouses. In the jails there could be no
-approach to anything like a differentiated treatment of delinquents.
-In them were herded promiscuously those imprisoned for debt, those
-convicted of crime and those accused or held as witnesses; those of all
-ages and both sexes; those convicted of all categories and grades of
-crime punishable by imprisonment; those of all mental states--normal,
-feeble-minded, neurotic, psychotic, epileptic. The few colonial
-workhouses were employed as little more than an agency for suppressing
-vagrancy.
-
-The first step in a differentiated treatment of crime and criminals
-came with the erection of a semi-state prison in the Walnut Street
-Jail in 1789-90. This provided for a partial differentiation between
-those convicted of the more serious crimes and those convicted of
-petty offenses or awaiting trial. It did not however, attempt any
-scientific differentiation on the basis of age, sex or mental state.
-Children and adults, male and female, sane and insane, were confined
-in contiguity. The opening of the State penitentiaries at Allegheny
-and Philadelphia in 1826 and 1829, with their fundamental principle of
-solitary confinement, carried further the process of differentiation,
-but still continued to apply the same general type of treatment to all
-incarcerated inmates. It was a system of separation rather than of a
-differentiated treatment of special types of prisoners.
-
-The second important development in the direction of specialization
-in the provision of institutional treatment of delinquents appeared
-in the establishment of a House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents in
-Philadelphia in 1828. Though this was at first a private rather than
-a State institution and was of very limited capacity, it marked an
-epoch in the progress of Pennsylvania penology by making possible some
-elementary differentiation on the basis of age, degree of criminality
-and relative susceptibility to reformation. The next attempt at further
-differentiation came with the erection of the State Hospital for
-the Insane at Harrisburg between 1841 and 1851, chiefly as a result
-of the agitation initiated by Dorothea L. Dix. This and the other
-State hospitals for the insane, subsequently erected, provided for a
-treatment of the more important types of mental disorder, though no
-adequate provision was made for removing the insane from the prison.
-Not until 1905 was an act passed providing for the erection of a State
-hospital for the criminal insane at Fairview which was opened in 1912.
-
-During the quarter of a century following 1850 there was an active
-agitation to provide a means of differentiating the treatment of
-criminals on the basis of age, sex and degree of criminality. The first
-important achievement in this direction was the further development
-of reform schools for juvenile delinquents through the removal and
-enlargement of the Philadelphia House of Refuge in 1850-54 and the
-erection of the Western House of Refuge at Allegheny during the same
-period. Juvenile delinquents, if petty offenders, could thereafter be
-removed from their degrading confinement in the state prison or worse
-county jails and receive the properly specialized treatment which their
-circumstances demanded. No provision for the differentiated treatment
-of the less definite and confirmed types of adult delinquents was made
-until the opening of the reformatory for men at Huntingdon in 1889
-and the authorization of the State Industrial Home for Women at Muncy
-in 1913. The provision of reformatories and juvenile correctional
-institutions marked a double process of differentiation, in that these
-institutions not only called for a diversity of treatment according to
-age, sex and degree of criminality, but also from the fact that they
-were clearly differentiated from the State prisons and the county jails
-in making reformation rather than punishment or detention their chief
-aims.
-
-Along with this development of a properly differentiated system
-of treating the delinquent population, has gone the growth of
-specialized institutions for dealing with the closely related class
-of defectives, which was once treated indiscriminately along with the
-delinquent classes when its members were guilty of criminal action.
-The State institution for feeble-minded at Polk, opened in 1893, and
-at Spring City, provided by an act of 1903, and the State Village
-for Feeble-minded Women at Laurelton, not yet available for use, are
-designed to furnish scientific treatment for large numbers of those
-who would today be confined in the state prisons or county jails, if
-the ideas and institutions of 1840 prevailed. Even an institution for
-inebriates was contemplated in an act of 1913.
-
-But this vital and all important process of the differentiation,
-classification and specialized treatment of the delinquent and
-defective classes has now proceeded far beyond that most elementary
-stage of furnishing separate institutions for dealing with the most
-general classes of delinquents and defectives. It has been found
-that the terms defective, insane and criminal have only a legal
-significance and are practically useless when involving the problem
-of exact scientific analysis and treatment. Each general class of
-delinquent boys, of defective girls or of criminal adults, for
-instance, is made up of distinguishable and distinct types which demand
-specialized treatment in the same way that it is required for one
-general class as distinguished from another. Though it is as yet very
-imperfectly developed, the present tendency is for each institution to
-differentiate into a number of specialized departments, each designed
-to provide the proper treatment for one of these types.
-
-Finally, within the last decade beginnings have been made in
-what is likely to be an important future development, namely the
-non-institutional care of the less pronounced and confirmed types of
-delinquents, particularly of delinquent minors. The developments along
-this line have, up to the present, consisted chiefly in the adoption
-of parole systems in all the State penal, reformatory and correctional
-institutions and in a more liberal use of the suspended sentence
-and probation. The recently established Municipal Probation Court
-of Philadelphia is a pioneer in Pennsylvania in this promising new
-development in the preventive treatment of the less confirmed type of
-delinquents.
-
-Looking at the whole matter as it stands today, it cannot be said
-that conditions in Pennsylvania are in any material respect either
-better or worse than in other progressive States, except in the one
-matter of the useful employment of the convict population. Here, as
-elsewhere, some lucky chance has placed a man or a woman of exceptional
-qualifications at the head of an institution, one who has by his strong
-personal initiative made the best of a bad situation, as in the case of
-the Eastern Penitentiary, or who has, with something akin to genius,
-seized upon a new opportunity, as in the case of the Girls’ School at
-Darlington and the new Penitentiary foundation at Bellefonte. But these
-are sporadic and exceptional developments and have furnished no new
-principle of a revolutionary character to mark the dawn of a new era in
-penal administration.
-
-Meanwhile the hopeless and demoralizing idleness to which most of
-the inmates of the Eastern Penitentiary and of most of the county
-institutions of the Commonwealth are doomed, is a spectacle in which
-the people of Pennsylvania can take nothing but shame. But even if this
-is remedied, as it should be at once by drastic legislative action,
-Pennsylvania will have done no more than reach the level of penological
-theory of the Quaker innovators of the seventeenth and eighteenth
-centuries. The step is an imperative one, but it will not restore to
-the Commonwealth the proud position of leadership which once was hers,
-which is still, by virtue of past achievements and by common fame,
-attributed to her.
-
-While we have thus been dreaming, tardily and ineffectually putting
-into effect the aspirations of a long-distant past, a new penology has
-come into being, based not on humanitarian sentiment or on “the common
-sense of most,” but on the scientific study of the delinquent and his
-environment. New sciences of psychology, psychiatry and sociology
-have been forged to meet the conditions of the new day and these have
-furnished us with a new basis for penological experimentation. We
-have learned that the criminal is not merely a person who has in the
-exercise of an unfettered will chosen the evil rather than the good,
-but a person of complex personality shaped by heredity and environment
-to what he is, none the less a menace to society than the older
-conception made him, not the less requiring restraint and correction,
-but demanding and deserving individual treatment according to the
-nature which has been developed in him. We have learned from recent
-scientific study of the most rigorous and trustworthy sort that from
-50 to 60 per cent. of the inmates of our correctional institutions
-are abnormal--feeble-minded, insane, psychopathic--to the point of
-irresponsibility, to all intents and purposes the same kind of people
-that fill our hospitals for the insane and institutions for the
-feeble-minded. We have also learned, from sociological case studies,
-that a very large proportion of those that the psychiatrist would class
-as normal are the victims of neglected childhood and of the depraving
-influences of the institutions in which they have spent a great part of
-their young lives.
-
-It seems clear that this new knowledge makes for a new classification,
-based not, like that of the Elmira system, on behavior in confinement,
-nor, like that of the current penology, on the character of the crime
-committed, but on the exact study of the individual and that the
-treatment accorded him must be adapted to the results of such study.
-
-Here, then, is the new opportunity for a further advance out of this
-slough of despond--an opportunity not inferior to that which this
-Commonwealth so superbly grasped in its heroic youth--to bring its
-penal administration into conformity with the newer conceptions of
-delinquency. Tinkering the old machine is not enough. It must be
-remodeled altogether. Adding to the powers of a board of inspectors
-here, curbing them there, setting up new boards and commissions to
-direct the doing of this, to restrain the doing of that--all these
-are but a part of the old game, which will after all continue to be
-played in very much the old perfunctory way. What is demanded is a
-genuine reconstruction of the penal system of the Commonwealth, one
-which shall, with as little disturbance to the existing management of
-the several institutions as possible, put at their service all the
-resources of the new knowledge of crime and its treatment. It is the
-purpose of this report to suggest the lines of this future development
-of our penal system.
-
-
-III.
-
-GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF PRESENT PENAL SYSTEM.
-
-As the foregoing outline indicates, the several State institutions of
-a penal, correctional and reformatory character, with the two Glen
-Mills Schools (which, though largely under private management, are
-essentially public institutions) have been developed at different
-times, under the influence of changing conceptions of social
-responsibility for different types of offenders. As a result of this
-circumstance each is separately managed by a board of inspectors or
-managers, which exercises complete control over the policy of the
-institution to which its authority extends. This Board appoints the
-Warden or Superintendent, fixes his or her compensation, determines
-the industrial and educational policy of the institution and, under
-the authority of the Legislature, disburses the funds appropriated
-for its maintenance. The disciplinary policy of the institution is
-almost invariably entrusted to the Warden or Superintendent and,
-as is natural, if that official happens to be a person of strong
-individuality and initiative, his policy in practice, if not in theory,
-governs the entire administration. Nowhere is there a centralized
-authority exercising a general control or an effective influence. The
-only approach to such a general agency is the State Board of Public
-Charities, which may investigate and require the submission of an
-annual report, and the Prison Labor Commission, which exercises a
-general supervision over the industries of the two penitentiaries and
-the Huntingdon Reformatory, but which has no effective power to carry
-its plans into execution. There is, accordingly, no uniform policy,
-even in the case of institutions like the two Glen Mills schools,
-which have a similar type of inmates and an identical aim, nor in the
-case of all the institutions under consideration in matters where
-their problems and needs are the same. That there are advantages in
-this policy of separate control cannot be denied. It gives to an
-energetic and progressive superintendent or board of managers a degree
-of initiative in reform and experimentation which, under a highly
-centralized control of all the institutions, it would be difficult to
-secure. On the other hand it may have the effect of depriving the
-individual institution, because of its poverty or because of the
-reactionary character of its administration, of the benefits of an
-advance which may have been made elsewhere. There could not be a better
-illustration of the unevenness of development resulting from this lack
-of co-ordination in the Pennsylvania prison system than the fact that
-the Eastern Penitentiary was compelled to wait for the initiative of
-its present Warden for the partial adoption of the congregate system,
-which had for forty years existed in the Western Penitentiary, and
-which had everywhere demonstrated its superiority over the system of
-solitary confinement.
-
-Upon the whole, however, what strikes the thoughtful observer is not
-the diversity of policy and management among these institutions,
-even where they have avowedly different aims, but their conformity
-to a common type, and that the prison type. With only two
-exceptions--Sleighton Farms and the Training School at Morganza--the
-persistent shadow of the Penitentiary rests upon them all. It is true
-that in the new Central Penitentiary on its broad acreage at Bellefonte
-and in the Eastern Penitentiary, so far as the physical and industrial
-conditions render possible, the shadow has been lifted, but it is safe
-to say of the penal system of the State as a whole, that it is still
-too much dominated by the ancient ideal of demonstrating to the inmates
-that “the way of the transgressor is hard.” Even in institutions of a
-purely reformatory character, while they leave little to be desired
-in the way of healthful conditions of living, orderly administration
-and educational opportunities, the reformation of the wrong-doer is
-still too much sought through a system of stern repression, of “iron
-discipline”--a system which, as all experience shows, defeats its end
-by crushing out the finer elements of character on which the redemption
-of the individual must depend. An almost invariable incident of this
-type of disciplinary control is the persistence of the policy of
-securing good conduct through punishment--often severe punishment
-for trivial offenses--rather than by the more enlightened and humane
-method of holding out incentives to good behavior, either by the grant
-of special privileges or by putting on the inmates themselves the
-responsibility for the good behavior of all.
-
-Other instances of the persistence of the traditional attitude toward
-the offender are the almost complete lack throughout our penal system
-of a scientific, balanced ration, such as has in the experience of
-prison administrators in other States, as notably at Sing Sing Prison
-in 1916, and more recently in our army camps, demonstrated the value
-both for health and efficiency and from the point of view of economy
-of a scientific management of the problem of food supply for large
-masses of men; the general indifference to outdoor recreation and
-exercise, so essential to the health and morale of the inmate body;
-the meagre provision for any education worthy of the name; the all but
-complete lack of comprehensive and well rounded systems of vocational
-or industrial training, on which the efficiency of prison labor and the
-ability of the inmates to “make good” in the world of industry after
-their release so largely depends; the demoralizing idleness which is
-still after three decades of effort the most marked characteristic of
-our prison system; and, finally, the insufficient care for the physical
-and mental health of the inmates of our correctional institutions,
-which still for the most part mingle indiscriminately together the
-tuberculous and syphilitic with those who are sound in body and the
-insane, psychopathic and defective with those who are sound in mind.
-
-Many of these conditions which continue to put the brand of the prison
-on the inmates of our correctional institutions are doubtless due to
-the survival of the Bastille type of prison architecture, which is
-exemplified in the Eastern and Western Penitentiaries and in such
-structures as Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia, the Convict Prison at
-Holmesburg, the Philadelphia House of Correction and many others. It is
-scarcely too much to say that no human being is vile enough to deserve
-confinement in such a place or dangerous enough to need it. Even the
-most unbending of the old type of prison official will concede that
-80 per cent. of the inmates neither need nor deserve to be confined
-behind triple bars of steel or in cells like catacombs or within walls
-like those of Egyptian tombs. Keepers and inmates alike lose half their
-humanity by confinement in these grim and forbidding structures. No
-reforming influence however humane and generous, can long survive in
-their atmosphere.
-
-Public opinion is at last moving away from this antiquated type of
-prison architecture to the newer type represented in the honor prison
-at New Hampton Farms in New York and in our Commonwealth in the cottage
-colonies at Sleighton Farms, Glen Mills, Morganza, and Muncy. The
-change which comes over the men who are transferred from the Western
-Penitentiary to the new prison site in Centre County is a sufficient
-commentary on the older type of prison, and demonstrates beyond
-peradventure the duty of affording to all of our convict population a
-similar life of freedom and opportunity. This result, so desirable from
-every point of view, could in large measure be attained in a short time
-by equipping the Eastern Penitentiary with a suitable area of farm land
-in the Eastern Section of the State and by making immediate provision
-for the institution of State industrial farms for the convicts confined
-in the county prisons, as is recommended elsewhere in this report.
-
-
-IV.
-
-PRISON LABOR.
-
-The conditions existing in the penal institutions of the Commonwealth
-with respect to the employment of the inmates in useful industry
-have been so fully set forth in the Emergency Report submitted by
-the Commission to the Governor in September last (a copy of which is
-annexed to this report) and in the comprehensive study of the problem
-by the Penal Commission of 1913-1915 (submitted to the General Assembly
-under date of February 15, 1915) that it is not deemed necessary to go
-into the matter at length in this place. It suffices to call attention
-to the fact that the conditions described in those reports have not in
-any material respect been improved. Of approximately 10,000 inmates
-in the penal and correctional institutions of the State, less than
-one-half are usefully employed, not more than one-fourth in productive
-labor. The economic waste of such a system extended over a century is
-scarcely less appalling than its inhumanity. By the law a large part of
-this interminable procession of offending and suffering humanity has
-been condemned to hard labor. In actual practice nearly all of it has
-been doomed to wasteful and demoralizing idleness.
-
-The law of June 1, 1915, “providing a system of employment and
-compensation for the inmates of the Eastern Penitentiary, Western
-Penitentiary and the Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon”
-and creating a Prison Labor Commission to carry its provisions into
-effect, has proved almost wholly inoperative, owing primarily to the
-failure of the Legislature to provide for the compulsory purchase
-of prison-made goods by the Commonwealth or the political divisions
-thereof or by public institutions. As a consequence, out of a total
-population of 3200 in the three institutions to which the authority of
-the Commission extends, at the close of the year 1918 only 169 were
-employed under the direction of the Commission. These were distributed
-as follows:--
-
- Eastern Penitentiary, population 1,371
- Caning chairs 16
- Cigarmaking 11
- Shoemaking 42
- Knitting hosiery 38
- ----- 107
- Absolutely idle 839
-
- Western Penitentiary, population 720
- Broommaking 10
- Brushmaking 2
- Weaving 18
- ----- 30
- Absolutely idle 393
-
- Huntingdon Reformatory, population 579
- Auto-tagmaking 32
-
-Whether considered as a relief from the crushing burden of expense
-that our penal establishments entail, or as a remedy for the physical
-and moral degeneration resulting from enforced idleness, or as a means
-to equip the inmates for lives of industry and usefulness after their
-release, a system of prison labor which produces the results set forth
-in these figures stands self condemned.
-
-To make the plan embodied in the law of 1915 effective, it should
-further provide:
-
-(1) That municipalities as well as the Commonwealth and the political
-divisions thereof and all public institutions shall be required, as
-far as may be practicable, to supply their needs from the labor of the
-penal and correctional institutions;
-
-(2) That the authority of the Commission or of any body in which its
-powers may be vested shall extend to the reformatory institutions at
-Darlington, Glen Mills, Morganza and Muncy and to all State, county
-and municipal institutions of a penal or correctional character;
-
-(3) That the power of such Commission or body to regulate prison
-industry be extended to all forms of labor activity of the inmates of
-such institutions, including farming, roadmaking, land reclamation,
-forestry, etc.;
-
-(4) That such Commission or body be empowered to determine the
-compensation of prisoners for industrial and other work performed by
-them and the method of applying such compensation to the use of such
-prisoners or their dependents;
-
-(5) That the strict “State use” plan be modified by permitting the sale
-in the open market, at not less than the market price, of any surplus
-product resulting from the labor of the inmates over and above the
-product disposed of as provided in the act.
-
-
-V.
-
-THE COUNTY PRISONS.
-
-In Pennsylvania, as in most, if not all, of the other States of the
-Union, the county jail is the despair of those who look for a better
-day in the treatment of the wrong-doer. The admiration which our
-experiments in the reformatory treatment of the young have excited
-in eminent foreign penologists has turned to loathing when their
-attention was directed to the county jails. Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise,
-the distinguished head of the English prison system, in an article
-published a few months after his visit to this country in 1910,
-described them in the following terms:
-
- “In these gaols it is hardly too much to say that many of the
- features linger which called forth the wrath and indignation
- of the great Howard at the end of the eighteenth century.
- Promiscuity, unsanitary conditions, absence of supervision,
- idleness and corruption--these remain the features in many
- places. Even the ‘fee’ system is still in vogue. The gaolers are
- still paid by fees for the support of prisoners, and commitments
- to gaol are common when some other disposition of the case would
- have been imposed had not the commitment yielded a fee to the
- sheriff, who is usually in charge of the gaol. In many gaols
- there are not facilities for medical examination on reception,
- for ventilation, for exercise, or for bathing.... The foreign
- delegates were amazed at this startling inconsistency between the
- management of the common gaols and that of the State prisons and
- State reformatories. The evils to which I refer are well known
- and deplored by that body of earnest and devoted men and women in
- all sections of American society with whose lofty ideals on the
- subject of prison reform and generous aspirations for the humane
- treatment of the prisoner, the Washington Congress made us every
- day familiar, but they seem helpless and almost hopeless....
- I was appealed to by leading men in more than one State, as
- British representative, to publicly condemn the system, and this
- I did, at a risk of giving considerable offense. Until the abuses
- of the gaol system are removed, it is impossible for America to
- have assigned to her by general consent a place in the vanguard
- of progress in the domain of ‘_la science penitentiaire_.’”
-
-Your Commission desires to submit as its considered judgment that the
-foregoing statement does no injustice to many of the county prisons of
-this Commonwealth, and that the Legislature can do no greater service,
-nor one that will reflect more credit on the Commonwealth, than to
-sweep away the entire county jail system without delay.
-
-Attention has been called elsewhere in this report to the deplorable
-conditions of idleness which prevail in the prisons of our
-Commonwealth. These conditions are at their worst in the county
-institutions. In the last six years the average daily number of
-prisoners in the county jails of the Commonwealth has been about 6500.
-Only about one-fourth of these have some form of employment other than
-domestic service. But when all of the returns are in with regard to the
-work accomplished, the number of days spent in complete idleness in the
-course of a year will average more than one million. If we regard the
-labor of the prisoners as worth fifty cents a day, the amount of waste
-thus exceeds $500,000 annually.
-
-In order to obviate this condition of affairs, the General Assembly
-in 1917 passed an Act (No. 337, P. L. 1917), vesting in the officers
-in charge of county prisons the privilege of allowing the prisoners
-to work on county and poorhouse farms. Although only twenty-seven
-counties have taken advantage of this Act, its results have been very
-beneficial. The workers have improved in health, strength and morale,
-and the produce of their labor has been of material help in the
-up-keep of the institutions. Unfortunately, the operation of this Act
-terminates with the close of the war.
-
-A more comprehensive Act was proposed by the Penal Commission of
-1913-1915, which recommended the establishment of six industrial farms
-to be controlled by the State, to which all persons convicted of crime
-or misdemeanor, and now committed to county institutions, should
-hereafter be sent. This admirable measure was, however, amended in such
-a way as to leave the initiative in the creation of such farms and
-the control thereof to the County Commissioners of the nine groups of
-counties into which the State was divided for the purpose (No. 399, P.
-L. 1917). This legislation has fallen flat, not one of the industrial
-districts having carried the scheme into effect.
-
-Your Commission submits that there is no remedy for the condition of
-affairs above described other than the complete assumption by the
-State of the custody and care of the offenders, whether felons or
-misdemeanants, who are now committed to the county institutions.
-
-Farming for prisoners, as our investigations in other States have
-clearly shown, has passed beyond the experimental stage. The State
-of Massachusetts, some years ago, established a penal farm for
-misdemeanants at Bridgewater. A large tract of ground was purchased,
-consisting largely of swamp and abandoned land, which, by the use of
-fertilizers and by drainage, has been brought to a high degree of
-cultivation. This enterprise has been so signally successful that it is
-now proposed to move the State Prison at Charlestown to this same farm
-at Bridgewater.
-
-Perhaps the most successful experiment of the kind has been made in
-Indiana, where the State has taken over the custody of misdemeanants
-on the plan which was recommended by the Pennsylvania Penal Commission
-of 1913-1915, a recommendation which is renewed in this report. The
-Superintendent of the Indiana State Farm makes the following report:--
-
- “The farm had an average daily population, in 1918, of four
- hundred and sixty-two prisoners. All institution buildings and
- outbuildings, the sewer system, power plant, heating and water
- systems, land reclaiming, farming and gardening, has been done
- with the labor of misdemeanants at a surprisingly low cost for
- guards. The Indiana State Farm is allowed fifty-five cents per
- man per day for its entire maintenance, while the same man in
- jail, at the present time, will cost more than one dollar per
- day for the gross maintenance. The fifty-five cents per man per
- day pays the entire pay roll, subsistence, fuel, light, heat,
- medical services, clothing, transportation, field and garden
- seeds, fertilizers, common labor, tools and all other items of
- maintenance....
-
- “The effect that the Indiana State Farm has had on the jail
- system of the State is indicated by the following figures: In
- the year 1914 there were 18,130 commitments to county jails, in
- 1915, 14,644, and in 1916, 9,896. The doors of the State Farm
- were opened April 12, 1915, and the full effect of the State Farm
- was not noticeable until the close of the year 1916. The moral
- effect of the institution on the misdemeanant class was one very
- important factor in reducing the jail commitments.”
-
-During the year ending September 30, 1918, this penal farm was
-two-thirds self-supporting, and it is confidently expected that the
-institution will soon be entirely self-supporting.
-
-New York City has established a reformatory farm of 630 acres at New
-Hampton, N. Y., to which boys and men from sixteen to thirty years of
-age are committed. They have no bars, no wall, no restraining thing,
-except supervision. They have no cell for punishment. From the farm
-they secure most of their provisions. In handling 2000 prisoners, they
-have lost only five. The health of the inmates is greatly improved. It
-is estimated that 45 per cent. of the prisoners there were addicted to
-the drug habit. Most of them were sent away restored. What they needed
-was to be built up by fresh air, good food and exercise, and to be
-employed in wholesome work. In fact, they have been taught the dignity
-of labor--a thing to which most of them had hitherto been strangers.
-
-But we need not go beyond the limits of our own State to prove the
-benefit and success of farming for misdemeanants. The administration of
-the Allegheny County Workhouse illustrates the economy of providing
-employment for prisoners on an industrial farm. Here the average daily
-number of inmates in 1918 was 722. The daily average cost of each
-inmate was 81 cents, but after deducting the earnings of the inmates,
-the net cost was only 32 cents. This means that the inmates earned 49
-cents a day toward their own maintenance. Their bookkeeping indicates
-merely the cost of raising the crops. If the institution had charged
-itself with the produce used by it at the prevailing market price, the
-net cost would have been much less. The farm has 670 acres, of which
-560 acres are farmed and used as pasture. The inmates are continually
-coming and going. Many of them are committed for ten days or less, and
-a large part are sentenced for 30 days, while comparatively few of them
-remain longer than one year. This shows that a great deal of efficient
-work can be secured, even from those who serve for short terms.
-
-A similarly striking result has been attained in Delaware County under
-the law of 1911, empowering the judges of the Courts of Common Pleas
-to release on parole convicts confined in county jails or workhouses
-under the supervision of designated probation officers. Acting under
-this law, the President Judge of that county has during the year 1918
-paroled a number of inmates of the county jail to work on farm lands
-rented for the purpose with the remarkable result that only two of
-the men so paroled made their escape (both being afterwards retaken)
-and that nearly $14,000 worth of crops were sold for cash in addition
-to the vegetables used and stored in the prison. The net profit is
-estimated at $7,000.
-
-Logically, we cannot avoid the conclusion that the State ought to
-assume the care of all offenders. The laws are made by the State, and
-the indictments charge the accused with offences against the “peace
-and dignity of the Commonwealth,” not against the peace and dignity of
-the county, municipality or borough. The conclusion is inevitable that
-the Commonwealth should assume the responsibility for the protection
-of the community from both felons and misdemeanants. And since such
-an arrangement as has been proposed will result in reduced taxation,
-uniformity of management and in greater facilities for the education
-and reformation of the delinquent, we feel that the establishment of
-State industrial farms to receive the delinquents now committed to the
-county prisons should receive your favorable consideration.
-
-The bill submitted to carry this recommendation into effect omits the
-counties of Philadelphia and Allegheny from its operation. Allegheny
-County already has a prison farm which in many ways may be considered
-a model of its kind. Philadelphia has a farm in connection with the
-House of Correction which furnishes employment to many prisoners and
-supplies much produce for the institution. We recommend that at some
-early date the City of Philadelphia may, by the purchase of more land,
-extend the advantages of a penal farm to its convict prison and in
-some way combine under one management the entire penal system of the
-municipality.
-
-The fee system, whereby the sheriff or warden receives a stipulated
-sum each day for the board of prisoners, is so liable to abuse that
-we submit a proposition to abolish the practice in all our prisons.
-Whenever the profits from boarding the prisoners is a part of the
-remuneration of the officer in charge, the tendency is doubtless to
-exploit the prisoners, or to reduce to a minimum the supply of food, in
-order to derive the greater profit.
-
-In 1915 a comprehensive study of the cost of boarding the prisoners in
-the largest 25 counties of the Commonwealth indicated that the average
-daily cost of food per prisoner in the 15 prisons where the food was
-purchased on the contract system was 12 cents, and in the 10 counties
-where the fee system was in vogue 33.7 cents, the difference in favor
-of the contract system being 21.7 cents per day for each prisoner.
-
-We estimate that in these 10 counties alone the saving to the taxpayers
-by the adoption of the contract system will be at least $50,000
-annually. The economy of the proposition is evident, making due
-allowance for providing in some counties additional compensation for
-the official in charge of the prison. In all cases where a change has
-been made from the fee system to the contract system, the food has
-improved in character, thus tending to the betterment of the health and
-morale of the inmates.
-
-Moved by these considerations, the General Assembly in 1909 provided
-that in all counties having a population of 150,000 or more, the food
-for the prisoners must be purchased by contract. We are now proposing
-to extend this principle to all the counties of the Commonwealth, with
-the understanding that no such change is to take place during the
-incumbency of the officials who are at the present time in charge of
-the prisons.
-
-
-VI.
-
-PROBATION AND PAROLE.
-
-(_a_) Under the law of May 10, 1909, the several courts of criminal
-jurisdiction are invested with the power of suspending sentence on
-certain classes of convicted offenders and of placing such offenders
-on probation instead of committing them for definite or indeterminate
-periods of imprisonment. Probation officers, charged with the duty of
-supervising the behavior of such probationers, are appointed by the
-judges to serve in their respective counties. In this Commonwealth,
-as in many others, experience has demonstrated that there is little
-uniformity in the practice of the courts in suspending sentence or of
-the probation officers in exercising their powers.
-
-Conceived as a mere incident of the sentencing power, to be exercised
-only in exceptional cases, the suspended sentence and probation
-are beginning to disclose themselves as a momentous, not to say
-revolutionary step in the progress of penology, not less important
-in its ultimate consequences than the substitution a century ago
-of imprisonment for the death penalty and other forms of physical
-punishment. Like the older forms of punishment which it superseded,
-imprisonment too has proved a failure, so far at least, as the newer
-aim of punishment, the reformation of the wrong-doer is concerned. And
-we are coming to see that the protection which society enjoys through
-the imprisonment for a few months or years of a small proportion of
-the criminal class is dearly purchased by a system which returns the
-offender to society less fitted than before to cope with the conditions
-of a life of freedom. More and more, as we develop a probation service
-worthy of the name, will the courts be reluctant to commit men, women
-and children to the demoralizing associations and discipline of
-institutional life and will give them their chance to redeem themselves
-under competent guidance and supervision among the associations and
-activities of everyday life.
-
-Even under existing conditions it is safe to say that far too
-many adult and youthful offenders convicted of criminal offences
-are committed to prison and far too many delinquent children to
-reformatories and other correctional institutions. Your Commission
-believes that the suspended sentence should be more liberally employed
-by the courts of the Commonwealth under strict conditions requiring a
-life of useful industry under careful supervision; that children under
-12 years of age should never be committed to penal or correctional
-institutions but rather, where institutional care is deemed necessary,
-to parental schools such as have been established in other States as
-a part of the regular educational system; and that children of larger
-growth, say from 12 to 16, should, wherever possible, be placed on
-probation or put under private guardianship.
-
-Those considerations have led the Commission to the conclusion that
-the whole subject of the suspended sentence and probation in this
-Commonwealth should be thoroughly studied in order that the principles
-that should govern it may be carefully defined and its procedure
-worked out, supervised and put on a uniform basis. New York and other
-States have for this purpose created a permanent probation board or
-commission and the success which has attended their labors suggests the
-institution of a similar body in this Commonwealth.
-
-(_b_) The indeterminate sentence, which made its appearance in this
-Commonwealth in the law of May 10, 1909, has passed through several
-phases to a state in which its purpose is almost completely defeated.
-In its original form it provided that the maximum term to be imposed
-upon a convict who should be sentenced to imprisonment in either the
-Eastern or the Western Penitentiaries should not exceed the maximum
-time prescribed by law and that the minimum term when not fixed by law,
-should not exceed one-fourth of the maximum time. This law was amended
-by an Act approved June 19, 1911, striking out the restriction as to
-the minimum sentence, thus leaving to the courts complete discretion
-to fix the minimum to be served at any period short of the maximum.
-Many of the courts have in frequent instances virtually nullified the
-indeterminate sentence principle by imposing minimum sentences so
-excessive as to bring the judicial office into disrepute. Sentences of
-from 18 years to 20 and from 19 years to 20 have been common, and there
-have been cases so grotesque as sentences of 19 years 11 months, or of
-19 years, 11 months and 29 days to 20 years, of 23 years and 3 months
-to 25 years and of 27 to 28 years. These are only the more extreme
-illustrations of a practice which has been common enough to justify a
-demand for a law which will result in greater uniformity in the matter
-of imposing sentences for crime.
-
-At its best the maximum-minimum form of the indeterminate sentence is
-an unsatisfactory compromise between the ideal aim of penologists and
-the traditional attitude of the courts, which cling tenaciously to
-their ancient prerogative of “making the punishment fit the crime.”
-That the power of determining the period of imprisonment requisite to
-meet the demands of justice and the interests of society may safely be
-confided to other than judicial hands has been conceded in the case
-of all offenders entitled to commitment to reformatories, who are
-sentenced to an indeterminate term limited only by the maximum fixed by
-law, or, in the case of minors, to the attainment of their majority,
-and who may be released on parole in the discretion of the boards of
-managers of the institutions to which they are committed. It is only
-in the case of hardened offenders or of those guilty of certain major
-offenses that a minimum sentence is imposed.
-
-For more than a generation prison reformers have urged the extension of
-the pure indeterminate sentence to this class of offenders also. Their
-logic is sound; it is the facts that are against them. The argument
-runs like this: The offender should be kept in confinement only until
-he is fitted by his prison experience to lead an honest and useful
-life; when this end is attained he should be released. The answer
-is that the prison doesn’t in fact reform the wrong-doer; that good
-behavior under the conditions of prison life is no assurance of the
-intention or capacity of the prisoner to lead an honest and useful life
-after his release, and that the inspectors or other paroling authority
-have no other guide to go by in determining the inmates’ fitness for
-a life of freedom than his prison record. If the reformer makes the
-obvious retort--“then reform your prison so that it shall reform its
-inmates, and reform your paroling authority so that it shall make
-its determination on all the facts of the inmate’s personal history
-including a study of his mental conditions, his heredity and the social
-influences that have shaped his character,” he is admitting that we are
-not yet ready for the complete acceptance of the indeterminate sentence
-in all classes of cases.
-
-But there is a middle ground between the position of the extreme
-reformer and that which has been assumed by the courts of this
-Commonwealth. If there is to be anything short of a fixed sentence,
-declared by law, it should be a reasonable minimum which should also
-be declared by law. The policy of the indeterminate sentence is that
-the delinquent shall be supervised and guided and his capacity to lead
-an honest and useful life tested by actual experience under normal
-conditions of living for a period of years long enough to try out
-his capacity to readjust himself to a life of freedom in society. For
-this reason an adequate interval between the expiration of his minimum
-sentence, when he becomes eligible to parole, and the expiration of his
-maximum sentence, when he becomes free from judicial control, should be
-guaranteed by law.
-
-There is great diversity of opinion as to the best form of paroling
-authority. Generally, as in this Commonwealth, this power is lodged
-in the inspectors or managers of the several institutions or, in the
-case of commitments to county prisons, in the courts of criminal
-jurisdiction. In some States, as in New York, a distinct Board of
-Parole is constituted which visits the convict prisons at intervals and
-hears and determines all applications for parole that may be awaiting
-determination. Neither system has worked with complete satisfaction.
-Under both the grant of parole is largely a perfunctory matter, the
-inmates who have served their minimum sentences being generally
-admitted to parole at once, except in those cases, comparatively rare
-in number, where the applicant has been penalized for misconduct while
-in confinement. It would seem, therefore, that the first step toward a
-reform of the paroling system is not to set up a new paroling authority
-but to devise some more effective machinery to put before the existing
-authorities all the essential facts as to the applicant’s mental, moral
-and physical capacity to conduct himself as a self-respecting, useful
-member of the community. A second, but not less necessary step, is such
-a change in the spirit and method of prison discipline as will develop
-in the inmates by actual practice the qualities of self-respect and
-self-reliance, the sense of honor and of responsibility and the habit
-of co-operative action so essential to fit them for a life of freedom
-and responsibility, and at the same time to equip them with the habits
-of industry and the vocational skill which will enable them to make
-good in the life that awaits them beyond the prison-wall.
-
-
-VII.
-
-GENERAL CONCLUSIONS.
-
-In the foregoing analysis of the penal system of this Commonwealth, the
-Commission has endeavored not only to present a picture of the existing
-conditions in the light of modern conceptions of penology but to point
-out, also, the lines of a sound and progressive development of the
-system. Most of the suggestions thus made have already been embodied
-in the penal systems of other states and of enlightened communities
-beyond the seas. Especially is this the case in such matters as the
-general employment of the prison population in useful and productive
-labor and in the substitution of farm and cottage colonies for the old
-type of prison. In a few of the larger cities and in some institutions
-promising beginnings have been made in the mental examination of
-delinquents with a view to the provision of specialized treatment for
-those found to be mentally afflicted or seriously defective. But in
-no State or country, as yet, have all these improvements been welded
-into a comprehensive system which makes them available for the entire
-delinquent population. The inertia or indifference which leaves the
-extension of these benefits to chance or to the slow contagion of
-example is unworthy of a great and progressive Commonwealth which has
-in the past more than once demonstrated its capacity for leadership in
-penal reform.
-
-It is evident that the general adoption in this State of these modern
-improvements in the treatment of the criminal problem can be effected
-only through the institution of a central agency adapted to secure a
-co-ordination of effort and a uniformity of development which under
-the present system of separate control has been demonstrated to be
-impossible. It seems equally evident, however, that the system of
-separate management of the several institutions with their diverse
-aims and problems possesses advantages which we would not willingly
-sacrifice to an ideal unity. For this reason the Commission has not
-deemed it wise to recommend the example of other States which have
-committed the management of all their correctional establishments to
-a central board of control. Moreover, with such a body as the Board
-of Public Charities already vested with a certain authority over the
-penal institutions of the State, it has not been deemed desirable to
-recommend the creation of a new and independent body to exercise a new
-jurisdiction over such institutions. It seems better to utilize the
-authority which already exists, to enlarge its range of functions to
-meet the needs of the proposed development and to commit the exercise
-of these functions to a standing committee analogous to the existing
-Committee on Lunacy. Through such a committee of the Board of Public
-Charities your Commission believes that the desired co-ordination and
-future development of the penal system of the Commonwealth can best be
-secured.
-
-
-VIII.
-
-RECOMMENDATIONS.
-
-Upon the foregoing facts and conclusions the Commission submits the
-following recommendations, which are herewith submitted for such action
-as the General Assembly may deem proper:--
-
-_First._--The Commission recommends that the General Assembly provide
-for the enlargement of the Board of Public Charities by the addition
-of two members thereto, at least one of whom shall be a woman, and by
-the institution of a standing committee of five members of such Board,
-at least one of whom shall be a woman, such committee, which shall be
-chosen annually by a majority vote of the Board, to be known as the
-“Committee on Delinquency” and to be vested with the following powers:--
-
-(_a_) To inspect and investigate the condition and management of
-all penal, correctional and reformatory institutions within the
-Commonwealth and inquire into all complaints against the same and
-report thereon, with recommendations of appropriate action, to the
-Board of Public Charities, the Governor, the General Assembly, or the
-Courts, as the circumstances may require;
-
-(_b_) To institute, maintain and supervise a medical service adapted
-to the examination of the inmates of such institutions and the proper
-professional treatment of all such as are mentally or physically
-afflicted or deficient;
-
-(_c_) To make recommendations to the governing authorities of all
-such institutions for the improvement of the sanitary and hygienic
-conditions, the medical and hospital equipment, and the medical service
-thereof;
-
-(_d_) To transfer inmates of institutions within its jurisdiction to
-other institutions owned, managed or controlled by the Commonwealth or
-any political subdivision thereof, or, if suitable arrangements can be
-made, to other institutions, where such inmates may receive treatment
-more suitable to their mental and physical condition;
-
-(_e_) To institute, maintain and supervise in institutions within its
-jurisdiction a system of correctional and reformatory education;
-
-(_f_) To institute, maintain and supervise a system for the employment
-of the inmates of institutions within its jurisdiction;
-
-(_g_) To prepare and submit to the Board of Public Charities not later
-than the first day of December of each even-numbered year, a biennial
-budget for the Committee and such of the institutions within its
-jurisdiction as are wholly or partly supported by the Commonwealth, and
-for that purpose to require of such institutions such reports from time
-to time as the Committee shall deem necessary; and
-
-(_h_) To make rules and regulations establishing a uniform system of
-accounting and bookkeeping in all institutions within its jurisdiction.
-
-It is also recommended that the Committee on Delinquency be authorized
-and directed to choose a Secretary, not a member of the Board of
-Public Charities, at a salary of $7500 per annum, who shall be the
-executive officer of the Committee and an expert in the care and
-treatment of delinquents, and who shall be known as the “Commissioner
-of Delinquency.”
-
-_Second._--The Commission further recommends that the General Assembly
-provide by appropriate legislation for the employment of all the
-able-bodied convicts of the Commonwealth in useful and, so far as
-possible, in productive labor, and especially, that it vest in the
-Committee on Delinquency the powers of the Prison Labor Commission and
-the functions of the Business Agent of such Commission and enlarge such
-powers and functions as suggested on page 15 of this report.
-
-_Third._--The Commission further recommends the enactment of a law
-establishing four State Industrial Farms, to receive, care for and
-provide for the useful employment of the inmates of county prisons and
-jails and of persons hereafter convicted of any offense punishable
-by imprisonment in any county jail or prison who have been or shall
-hereafter be sentenced for a term of thirty days or more.
-
-_Fourth._--The Commission further recommends that the Act of Assembly
-approved July 17, 1917 (No. 337), providing for the employment, during
-the continuance of the war, of inmates of county jails at agricultural
-labor on any county or almshouse farm, be amended so as to continue its
-operation indefinitely after the conclusion of peace.
-
-_Fifth._--The Commission further recommends that the General Assembly
-provide for the purchase of a tract of land, of not less than 600
-nor more than 1200 acres, to be used for the benefit of the Eastern
-Penitentiary as a prison farm.
-
-_Sixth._--The Commission further recommends that a law be enacted
-prohibiting fees or allowances and contracts for furnishing meals
-to the inmates of county jails or other penal institutions of the
-Commonwealth.
-
-_Seventh._--The Commission further recommends that the Act approved
-June 19, 1911, authorizing the courts in the case of a person sentenced
-to a penitentiary to fix as the minimum term of imprisonment any period
-less than the maximum prescribed by law for the offense of which such
-person was convicted, be amended by a provision that the minimum limit
-of the sentence imposed shall never exceed one-third of the maximum
-prescribed by the Court.
-
- * * * * *
-
-In the foregoing recommendations the Commission has confined itself
-to matters requiring legislative action and to such only as seem
-to it to be essential to a consistent, integrated policy of penal
-administration. All other matters with respect to which the Commission
-has given expression to its views are either subsidiary to those on
-which immediate legislative action is recommended or are such as
-may be properly referred to the wisdom of the proposed Committee on
-Delinquency for consideration and action. The greatest abuse of the
-prevailing prison system--the lack of imagination and of understanding
-which keeps alive in most of our penal establishments the methods of a
-severe and repressive discipline--cannot be abolished by legislative
-decree. The greatest reform of which the system is capable--the
-awakening in the inmates of the new life which comes from active,
-responsible participation in the life of the prison community--is
-equally beyond the reach of legislative action. These will be the
-fruits of a keener intelligence and of a deeper understanding than
-have yet, except in a few rare instances, been brought to bear on
-the problem. But your Commission believes that the plan of penal
-administration which it has recommended, and which provides for the
-most thorough-going study and the most intelligent treatment of the
-individual delinquent which has yet been attempted, will gradually
-prepare the way for these and other reforms in the penal system of the
-Commonwealth.
-
- Respectfully submitted,
-
- January 1, 1919.
-
- FLETCHER W. STITES, _Chairman_,
- ALFRED E. JONES,
- MARTHA P. FALCONER,
- LOUIS N. ROBINSON,
- ALBERT H. VOTAW,
- _Commissioners_.
-
- GEORGE W. KIRCHWEY,
- _Counsel to the Commission_.
-
-
-COMMITTEE ON DELINQUENCY ACT.[1]
-
-SECTION 1. _Be it enacted, etc._, That the Board of Public Charities
-shall appoint a standing committee of five of its members to be known
-as the Committee on Delinquency. Such Committee shall be chosen within
-thirty days after the approval of this Act, and annually thereafter, by
-a majority vote of all of the members of the Board, and at least one
-member of such Committee shall be a woman. Vacancies in the membership
-of the Committee shall be filled in like manner. Within thirty days
-after their selection, the Committee shall each year elect one of its
-members as chairman.
-
-The members of the Committee shall serve without compensation but shall
-receive all of their travelling and other necessary expenses incurred
-in the performance of their official duties.
-
-
-SECTION 2. The Committee selected under the provisions of this
-Act shall appoint a secretary, who shall not be a member of the
-Committee or of the Board of Public Charities. The secretary shall
-be the executive officer of the Committee and shall be known as the
-Commissioner of Delinquency. He shall be a person having expert
-knowledge respecting delinquency, and the care and treatment of
-delinquents and shall devote his entire time to the duties of his
-office. He shall be appointed for a term of five years and shall
-receive a salary of seven thousand, five hundred dollars per annum. The
-Committee shall have the power to remove the Commissioner at any time
-for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or misconduct in office, and shall,
-whenever a vacancy occurs either by death, resignation, or removal from
-office, appoint a Commissioner to fill the unexpired term.
-
-
-SECTION 3. Subject to the approval of the Committee on Delinquency,
-the Commissioner of Delinquency shall appoint a medical director,
-an educational director, a director of industries, and such other
-directors, experts, agents, and employees for such terms and at such
-compensation as shall be fixed by the Committee on Delinquency. The
-Commissioner with the approval of the Committee shall have the power at
-any time to remove any director, or any expert, agent, or employee, so
-appointed.
-
-
-SECTION 4. The Board of Commissioners of Public Grounds and Buildings
-shall provide the Committee on Delinquency with suitable rooms in the
-State Capitol, and elsewhere if necessary,....
-
-
-SECTION 5. The Committee on Delinquency shall have jurisdiction for the
-purposes of this act over all institutions within this Commonwealth
-of a penal, correctional, or reformatory character now existing,
-or which may hereafter be established including industrial farms,
-workhouses, and reformatories, and reformatory institutions for minors
-or women, whether managed by the Commonwealth, or any political
-sub-division thereof or otherwise; _Provided_, That this act shall not
-be interpreted to deprive any warden, superintendent, or other officer,
-or board of inspectors, managers, or trustees, of any such institution
-of the right to manage its affairs, but every such institution shall
-make such reports to the Committee on Delinquency as the Committee
-shall be authorized by this Act to require and shall obey the rules and
-regulations established, and follow the recommendations made, by the
-Committee as authorized by this Act.
-
-
-SECTION 6. The Committee on Delinquency shall have the power and its
-duty shall be:--
-
-(_a_) To inspect and investigate the condition and management of
-all institutions within its jurisdiction, and inquire into all
-complaints against the same, and report thereon with recommendations of
-appropriate action to the Board of Public Charities, the Governor, the
-General Assembly, or the courts, as the circumstances may require;
-
-(_b_) To institute, maintain, and supervise a medical service to
-accomplish the purposes enumerated in this Act;
-
-(_c_) To make recommendations to institutions within its jurisdiction
-for the improvement of the sanitary and hygienic conditions, the
-medical and hospital equipment, and the medical service thereof;
-
-(_d_) To transfer inmates of institutions within its jurisdiction to
-other institutions owned, managed, or controlled by the Commonwealth or
-any political sub-division thereof, or if suitable arrangements can be
-made, to other institutions, where such inmates may receive treatment
-more suitable to their mental and physical condition:....
-
-(_e_) To institute, maintain, and supervise in institutions within its
-jurisdiction a system of correctional and reformatory education to
-accomplish the purposes enumerated in this Act;
-
-(_f_) To institute, maintain, and supervise a system for the employment
-of the inmates of institutions within its jurisdiction as provided in
-this Act;
-
-(_g_) To prepare and submit to the Board of Public Charities, not
-later than the first day of December of each even-numbered year, a
-biennial budget for the committee and such of the institutions within
-its jurisdiction as are wholly or partly supported by the Commonwealth.
-Such budget shall set forth the expenditures of the Committee and such
-institutions during the preceding two years, their estimated financial
-needs for the succeeding two years, and such other information as the
-Committee shall deem appropriate.
-
-To enable it to prepare such budget, the Committee shall have the
-power to require of institutions within its jurisdiction, and such
-institutions shall prepare and submit, such reports from time to time
-as the Committee shall deem necessary, but to the extent that reports
-shall be required by the Committee for the purpose of preparing such
-budget; institutions within the jurisdiction of the Committee shall not
-be required to report to the Board of Public Charities; and,
-
-(_h_) To make rules and regulations establishing a uniform system of
-accounting and bookkeeping in all institutions within its jurisdiction.
-
-
-SECTION 7. The medical service which the Committee on Delinquency is by
-this Act required to institute, maintain, and supervise shall include:--
-
-(_a_) The prompt and thorough examination of all the inmates of
-institutions within its jurisdiction with a view to the proper
-diagnosis, classification, and treatment of all such persons;
-
-(_b_) The prescription and maintenance of standards in diagnosis
-and treatment in all institutions within its jurisdiction and the
-determination of the qualifications of those selected as physicians,
-psychiatrists, stewards, or nurses, in such institutions;
-
-(_c_) The furnishing of instructions in personal and social hygiene
-to the inmates of all institutions within its jurisdiction, and of
-instruction in professional training to such officials, employees,
-or inmates of such institutions as may be called upon to serve
-as assistants, nurses, or otherwise, in the medical or hospital
-departments thereof;
-
-(_d_) The frequent inspection of the institutions within its
-jurisdiction with respect to their sanitary and hygienic condition, the
-adequacy of their medical and hospital equipment, and the competency
-and efficiency of their medical service; and,
-
-(_e_) The installation and supervision of a proper dietary adequate to
-the maintenance of the health, efficiency, and morale, of the inmates
-in all institutions within its jurisdiction.
-
-SECTION 8. The system of correctional and reformatory education which
-the Committee on Delinquency is by this Act required to institute,
-maintain, and supervise shall include:--
-
-(_a_) The prescription and maintenance of standards of correctional and
-reformatory education in all institutions within its jurisdiction and
-the determination of the qualifications of those selected as teachers;
-and,
-
-(_b_) The education in elementary branches of illiterate and
-undeveloped inmates of such institutions; the instruction of all
-inmates of such institutions in the principles, organization, and
-practice of American government; and the furnishing of a thorough
-industrial training to any of the inmates of such institutions for whom
-such training shall be deemed useful and desirable.
-
-
-SECTION 9. With respect to the labor of the inmates of any institutions
-within its jurisdiction to which persons are committed for crime or
-delinquency, the Committee on Delinquency shall have the power and its
-duty shall be:--
-
-(_a_) To require every such institution to afford to the inmates
-thereof, who are physically capable, an opportunity to perform useful
-labor in such institutions;
-
-(_b_) To determine what industries shall be established in such
-institutions and to regulate and supervise the installation of
-machinery and equipment therein;
-
-(_c_) To establish rules and regulations for the employment of inmates
-of such institutions at road-building, quarrying, or crushing stone,
-agricultural work, land reclamation, or forestry, or other suitable
-work outside of such institution; and,
-
-(_d_) To establish rules with regard to the number of hours per day
-during which such inmates shall be employed; Provided, That except in
-agricultural work such inmates shall not be employed for more than
-eight hours in any one day.
-
-
-SECTION 10. With respect to the labor of inmates of such of the
-institutions within its jurisdiction as are owned or managed and
-controlled by the Commonwealth or any political sub-division thereof,
-the committee shall, in addition to the powers and duties enumerated in
-the preceding section of this act, have the power and its duty shall
-be:--
-
-(_a_) To maintain a manufacturing fund for the purposes specified in
-this section. The original manufacturing fund of the committee shall
-be the manufacturing fund paid to the committee by the Prison Board
-Commission, as provided in this act, together with any and all sums
-due and owing to such Commission, and the unexpended balance of any
-appropriation made for the use of such commission. To such fund there
-shall be added from time to time such amount or amounts as shall be
-appropriated by the General Assembly;
-
-All receipts from the sale of the products, manufactured or produced
-by the labor of the inmates of any such institution, shall be credited
-to the manufacturing fund and used for the purchase of machinery,
-equipment, raw materials, and supplies, and for the payment of wages to
-such inmates;
-
-(_b_) To sell to the Commonwealth or to any political sub-division
-thereof, or any institution, owned, managed, or controlled by the
-Commonwealth, or any political subdivision thereof, at not more than
-the prevailing market price the products of the labor of such inmates;
-_Provided_, That institutions within the jurisdiction of the Committee
-owned, or managed and controlled by the Commonwealth, or any political
-subdivision thereof, shall have the privilege of selling directly such
-of their agricultural products as they do not consume, but every such
-institution selling agricultural products shall account for and pay to
-such committee the proceeds of the sale of such products.
-
-Any surplus of the products of the labor of such inmates which cannot
-be sold to the Commonwealth, etc., shall be sold in the open market,
-but any such product sold in the open market shall not be sold for less
-than the prevailing market price.
-
-Should any institution desire to use the products of the labor of its
-inmates, other than agricultural products, it shall purchase the same
-from the Committee on Delinquency;
-
-(_c_) From time to time to fix the compensation of such inmates for
-labor performed by them; _Provided_, That the rate of compensation to
-such inmates shall be based both upon the pecuniary value of the work
-performed and on the willingness, industry, and good conduct of the
-inmate performing the same;
-
-(_d_) To make rules and regulations governing the payment of
-compensation earned by such inmates. Such rules and regulations may
-provide for the payment of a part of their compensation to inmates
-during their term of confinement to be used for such purchases as such
-rules and regulations shall permit. They shall also provide for the
-bi-monthly payment of such part of the compensation of such inmates
-as the committee shall determine to the dependents of such inmates,
-and for the payment of the unpaid balance of such compensation to such
-inmates at the time of their discharge, or at periodic intervals on and
-after their discharge; and,
-
-(_e_) To establish rules and regulations for the keeping of records and
-accounts by all such institutions, showing the labor performed by the
-inmates thereof, the value of the products thereof, and the wages paid
-to inmates, or their dependents, or both.
-
-
-SECTION 11. All wages paid to the inmates of institutions within
-the jurisdiction of the Committee on Delinquency owned, or managed
-and controlled by the Commonwealth, etc., shall be paid out of
-the committee’s manufacturing fund upon the order of the warden,
-superintendent, or other proper officer of the institution in, or in
-connection with, which the labor shall have been performed.
-
-
-SECTION 12. The Prison Labor Commission created by the act approved
-the first day of June one thousand nine hundred and fifteen, ... is
-hereby abolished, and shall cease to exist, thirty days after the
-chairman of the committee on delinquency shall have notified the
-Prison Labor Commission in writing that the Committee on Delinquency
-has been duly organized as provided in this act. Within such period of
-thirty days the Prison Labor Commission shall transfer and set over
-to the Committee on Delinquency all books, papers, and records, and
-all moneys and evidence of debt, in its possession, and the Auditor
-General is hereby authorized and directed to draw a warrant on the
-State Treasurer for the payment to the Committee on Delinquency of the
-unexpended balance of any appropriation made for the use of the Prison
-Labor Commission.
-
-
-SECTION 13. For the purpose of inspecting any institution within the
-jurisdiction of the Committee on Delinquency, such committee, the
-Commissioner of Delinquency, and any director, expert, agent, or
-employee, deputized by the Commissioner of Delinquency for the purpose,
-shall have free access to the grounds, buildings, and all books,
-papers, and records of such institution, and all persons, connected
-with any such institution, are hereby directed and required to give
-such information and to afford such facilities for inspection as the
-person making such inspection may require....
-
-
-SECTION 14. ...
-
-Should any institution within the jurisdiction of the Committee on
-Delinquency which is not owned, or managed and controlled by the
-Commonwealth, etc., fail to obey such rules and regulations, or make
-such report, such institution shall not be entitled to receive any
-financial assistance from the Commonwealth, and it shall be unlawful
-for the Auditor General, after having received notice in writing from
-the Committee on Delinquency that any such institution has failed to
-obey such rules or regulations, or to make such report, to issue a
-warrant for the payment of any money appropriated to such institution
-so long as such institution shall continue to refuse to obey such rules
-and regulations, or to make such report.
-
-
-SECTION 15. All salaries, compensation, and expenses, payable under
-this act, except wages for labor performed by inmates shall be paid by
-the State Treasurer on the warrant of the Auditor General.
-
-
-SECTION 16. To carry out the purposes of this act the sum of two
-hundred thousand dollars, ($200,000), or such part thereof as shall be
-necessary is hereby appropriated to the Committee on Delinquency.
-
-
-SECTION 17. All acts and parts of acts inconsistent herewith are hereby
-repealed.
-
-
-STATE INDUSTRIAL FARMS ACT.[2]
-
-
-SECTION 1. _Be it enacted, etc._, That this act shall be known and
-may be cited as “The State Industrial Farms Act of one thousand nine
-hundred and nineteen.”
-
-
-SECTION 2. There are hereby established four state industrial farms for
-the first, second, third, and fourth districts respectively.
-
-
-SECTION 3. The first district shall comprise the counties of Berks,
-Bucks, Chester, Dauphin, Delaware, Lancaster, Lebanon, Lehigh,
-Montgomery, Northampton, and York; and the state industrial farm
-therein located shall be known as the “Southeastern Industrial Farm.”
-
-The second district shall comprise the counties of Bradford,
-Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Lycoming, Monroe, Montour,
-Northumberland, Pike, Schuylkill, Snyder, Sullivan, Susquehanna, Tioga,
-Union, Wayne, and Wyoming; and the state industrial farm therein
-located shall be known as the “Northeastern Industrial Farm.”
-
-The third district shall comprise the counties of Armstrong, Butler,
-Cameron, Centre, Clarion, Clearfield, Clinton, Crawford, Elk, Erie,
-Forest, Jefferson, Lawrence, McKean, Mercer, Potter, Venango, and
-Warren; and the state industrial farm therein located shall be known as
-the “Northwestern Industrial Farm.”
-
-The fourth district shall comprise the counties of Adams, Beaver,
-Bedford, Blair, Cambria, Cumberland, Fayette, Franklin, Fulton, Greene,
-Huntingdon, Indiana, Juniata, Mifflin, Perry, Somerset, Washington, and
-Westmoreland; and the state industrial farm therein located shall be
-known as the “Southwestern Industrial Farm.”
-
-
-SECTION 4. Upon the approval of this act a board of managers for each
-district shall be appointed by the Governor. Each board shall consist
-of either five or seven reputable citizens, one or two of whom shall
-be women. The members of such boards shall serve without compensation,
-but all of their expenses actually and necessarily incurred shall be
-paid by the State Treasurer on the warrant of the Auditor General,
-which shall be issued upon the order of the board, countersigned by the
-secretary of the Committee of Delinquency of this Commonwealth. The
-members of the various boards shall serve for a term of five years and
-their successors for the same period. The Governor may remove any of
-the managers for misconduct, incompetency, or neglect of duty, and in
-case of a vacancy for any cause shall fill such vacancy by appointment
-for the unexpired term.
-
-
-SECTION 5. The board of managers of each district is hereby authorized
-by a majority vote to select a suitable site for the state industrial
-farm of the district. Such site shall be within the district, and
-shall either be chosen from lands donated to the Commonwealth for the
-purpose or purchased by the board with moneys appropriated or donated
-for the purpose; _Provided_, That any such site shall not contain
-more than two thousand (2,000) acres. The title to land donated or
-purchased as herein provided shall be taken and held in the name of
-“The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” and shall be examined and approved
-by the Attorney General prior to the acceptance or purchase of the
-land. In the selection of a site the board of managers shall take
-into consideration the objects and purposes of the institution, the
-accessibility of any proposed site to the counties included in the
-district, and all or as many as practicable of the following enumerated
-advantages and resources. The land selected and purchased shall be of
-varied topography with natural resources and advantages for many forms
-of husbandry, fruit growing, and stockraising; for brick-making, and
-for the preparation of all other road and paving material; and shall
-have good railroad drainage, sewage, and water facilities. Waste land
-or land requiring drainage may be selected if deemed susceptible of
-profitable cultivation after its improvement.
-
-
-SECTION 6. All buildings constructed in pursuance of this act shall be
-plain and inexpensive in character and the labor in constructing such
-buildings, improvements and facilities shall be supplied by persons
-committed to the state industrial farm or confined in State or county
-penal, reformatory, or correctional institutions so far as found
-practicable.
-
-The board of managers shall procure all necessary materials; erect and
-equip such buildings; employ such skilled labor as cannot be furnished
-by the persons committed to their respective industrial farms or by
-persons confined in State, or county penal, reformatory or correctional
-institutions and provide all proper facilities for their use and for
-the practical use of the institution.
-
-When the board of managers of any State industrial farm shall have made
-all preliminary arrangements for the construction of the buildings and
-equipment therein, they shall notify the Governor who shall issue a
-proclamation announcing such fact, and thereafter prisoners having more
-than thirty days to serve shall be transferred to such State industrial
-farm from any jail or workhouse in that district on the order of the
-Governor.
-
-
-SECTION 7. The boards of inspectors of the State penitentiaries,
-and of the Pennsylvania Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon, upon
-the request of a board of managers of a State industrial farm, are
-hereby authorized to transfer to such State industrial farm from their
-respective institutions any prisoners of special or mechanical ability
-therein who may be found in the judgment of such board and the board
-of managers of such State industrial farm suitable for the purpose,
-and provide transportation and proper guards for such prisoners and
-while such prisoners remain at such State industrial farm they shall be
-subject to the orders of the inspectors of the institution from which
-they were transferred as to their return, and in all other respect,
-except as to discipline and government. While at such State industrial
-farm they shall be under the control, discipline, and government,
-and subject to the orders, of the board of managers of such State
-industrial farm and its executive officers.
-
-The expense of transporting and transferring prisoners used in
-the construction of buildings and equipment to and from any State
-industrial farm shall be paid by the State Treasurer upon the
-warrant of the Auditor General out of any moneys appropriated for
-the establishment of such State industrial farm. The Auditor General
-shall issue warrants for such purpose upon the order of the executive
-officers of the board of managers of such State industrial farm.
-
-The maintenance of such prisoners as are transferred from a State
-penitentiary or reformatory shall be paid by the institution from
-which they are transferred, but the cost of such maintenance in
-excess of the average per capita cost of maintaining prisoners at the
-institution from which such prisoners shall have been transferred shall
-be refunded to any such institution out of any moneys appropriated for
-the establishment of the State industrial farm.
-
-
-SECTION 8. When any State industrial farm shall have been established
-and ready for operation, a superintendent and matron and such other
-officers as may be deemed necessary shall be appointed by the
-proper board of managers. Any persons so appointed shall hold their
-offices respectively during the pleasure of the board of managers.
-The compensation of all such persons shall be fixed by the board of
-managers.
-
-
-SECTION 9. When in any district the arrangements for the reception of
-inmates shall have been completed, the Court of quarter sessions of
-every county embraced in such district shall transfer from the county
-prisons and jails respectively to the State industrial farm of the
-district all persons who shall have been sentenced to any of said
-county prisons and jails for any crime, misdemeanor or felony, murder
-and voluntary manslaughter excepted, or who shall have been committed
-to any of such county prisons and jails for non-payment of any fine
-or penalty, or for non-payment of costs, or for default in complying
-with any order of court entered in any prosecution for desertion or
-non-support, and any other persons legally confined in any of said
-county jails or prisons except persons confined awaiting trial or
-detained as witnesses; _Provided_, That any person whose term will
-expire within thirty days shall not be transferred.
-
-Thereafter, when any person is convicted in any of the said courts
-of any offense, crime, misdemeanor, or felony, murder and voluntary
-manslaughter excepted, the punishment of which is or may hereafter be
-imprisonment in any county jail or prison, the said court shall, if
-sentence of imprisonment for thirty days or more be imposed upon such
-person, commit such person to the State industrial farm of the district
-in which said court may have jurisdiction. If sentence of imprisonment
-for more than ten but less than thirty days be imposed, the court may
-in its discretion commit such person to the State industrial farm for
-the district.
-
-Courts of record and courts not of record of the counties included
-in any such district shall hereafter commit to the State industrial
-farm of the district all persons who might be lawfully committed to
-the county jail or prison on charges of vagrancy, drunkenness, or
-disorderly conduct, or for default or non-payment of any costs, fine,
-or penalty, or for default in complying with any order of court entered
-in any prosecution for desertion or non-support, where in any such
-case the commitment will be for a period of thirty days or more. If the
-commitment be from ten to thirty days the committing authority may in
-its discretion commit any such person to the State industrial farm.
-
-The superintendent may under the direction of the court of quarter
-sessions remove any inmate to the county jail for the unexpired term
-of his or her term of commitment, or to the poorhouse of the proper
-city or county, or to any hospital or lunatic asylum in such county as
-circumstances may require.
-
-
-SECTION 10. The cost of transporting any persons committed to a State
-industrial farm shall be paid by the county from which the prisoner
-is committed, and the sheriff of the county shall receive the same
-mileage, and fees for prisoners committed to a State industrial farm
-as are now allowed by law for transporting prisoners committed to the
-State penitentiaries. When any prisoner is discharged from a State
-industrial farm the superintendent thereof shall procure for him a
-railroad ticket to any point to which said prisoner may desire to go
-not farther from such State industrial farm than the point from which
-he was sentenced, and it shall be the duty of the superintendent, or
-his duly authorized agent, to accompany the prisoner to the railroad
-station, deliver the ticket to the proper railroad conductor, and
-formally release the prisoner on the train which he takes for his
-destination.
-
-
-SECTION 11. It shall be the purpose of every State industrial farm to
-employ the prisoners committed, or transferred thereto, in work on
-or about the buildings and farm, and in growing produce and supplies
-for its own use, and for the other institutions of the Commonwealth,
-in the preparation of road materials and in making brick, tile,
-paving material, and such other products or materials as may be
-found practicable for the use of the Commonwealth, or any political
-subdivision therein, and in other industries which may be approved by
-the board of managers of the State industrial farm and the Committee
-on Delinquency of this Commonwealth. Should any State industrial farm
-produce supplies or materials in excess of its needs and demands, or
-in excess of the demands of the Commonwealth, or of any political
-subdivision thereof, such surplus may be sold by the Committee on
-Delinquency at the prevailing market price.
-
-
-SECTION 12. Any State industrial farm shall make such reports and keep
-such accounts as are now or may hereafter be required by law, and shall
-in all such matters be subject to the rules and regulations established
-by the Committee on Delinquency.
-
-
-SECTION 13. The original cost of the site and buildings of any
-State industrial farm, and all additions thereto, and all fixed
-overhead charges in conducting the institution, shall be paid by the
-Commonwealth out of moneys appropriated for the purpose by the General
-Assembly.
-
-The cost of the care and maintenance of the inmates of such institution
-shall be certified monthly to the counties from which inmates shall
-have been committed. Such cost shall be paid by the counties in
-proportion to the number of days spent by the inmates committed from
-each county. All payments shall be on requisition of the board of
-managers and on warrants of the county commissioners countersigned by
-the county controller.
-
-
-SECTION 14. (Provides for transferring prisoners from one institution
-to another, if deemed advisable.)
-
-
-SECTION 15. All the property real and personal authorized to be held by
-virtue of this act shall be exempt from taxation by the Commonwealth or
-any political subdivision thereof.
-
-
-SECTION 16. The rules and regulations governing State industrial farms
-shall be uniform and shall be made by the Committee on Delinquency.
-They shall be general in character and the respective boards of
-managers of each institution may add local rules not inconsistent with
-the spirit and substance of the regulations adopted by the Committee on
-Delinquency.
-
-
-SECTION 17. To carry out the purposes of this act the sum of two
-hundred thousand dollars ($200,000), or so much thereof as shall be
-necessary, is hereby appropriated but not more than fifty thousand
-dollars ($50,000) shall be expended for the purchase and equipment of
-the State industrial farm of any district.
-
-
-SECTION 18. (Repeals the Act of 1917, authorizing the establishment of
-nine Industrial Farms.)
-
-
-AGRICULTURAL PRISON LABOR.
-
-HARRY R. CAMPBELL.
-
-An article prepared for the County Commissioners’ Convention,
-Pittsburgh, August 7, 1918.
-
-Agricultural prison labor is strongly advocated by prison authorities
-and has been in general use in the penal institutions of Pennsylvania
-for many years. The movement for outdoor work for prisoners has
-grown rapidly, and as a result, the Pennsylvania legislature, at its
-1917 session, extended the scope of agricultural work for prisoners,
-and authorized by an Act approved July 17, 1917, the employment of
-prisoners, undergoing sentence in county jails, on county or poor farms.
-
-There is no greater curse than idleness. An unemployed prisoner is a
-future menace to society, and no effort should be spared to keep him
-busy--to impress upon him the dignity and necessity of work, and to
-make him know that he is stronger physically and better morally if he
-is regularly employed.
-
-Prison labor should be approached with a desire to help the prisoner
-and restore him to society cured of his criminal ailment. If the only
-purpose in the minds of the authorities is to make a profit for their
-district, they are in grave danger of reverting to the old convict
-labor system, which at best was only a modified form of slavery.
-
-Agricultural prison labor offers the opportunity of a direct profit
-to the district, and places the prisoner in an environment peculiarly
-adapted to his own physical and mental betterment. I am informed that
-it is used with great success in several counties, including Delaware,
-Montgomery, Chester, Berks, Lehigh, Beaver, Bucks, Cambria, Fayette and
-Westmoreland.
-
-Another important measure enacted by the Pennsylvania legislature and
-approved July 20, 1917, requires the erection of an Industrial Farm,
-Workhouse and Reformatory in each of nine districts created by the Act.
-Each institution is to be built and managed by a Board of Trustees,
-consisting of one County Commissioner from each county in the district,
-appointed by the President Judge of the proper Court.
-
- * * * * *
-
-It is the purpose of the institution to keep all persons employed
-about the farm and buildings, in growing all kinds of farm produce,
-raising live stock and in manufacturing supplies for its own use, or
-for the use of the several counties in the district, or any public or
-charitable institution owned or managed by any of the district counties.
-
-Prisoners may also be employed in the making of brick, tile, and
-concrete, or other road building supplies for the use of the several
-counties. All material manufactured shall be sold at prices fixed
-by the Trustees, preference being given in the sale to the counties
-comprising the district, and to the cities, boroughs and townships
-therein.
-
-The cost of the site, buildings and additions thereto, and all fixed
-overhead charges are to be paid by the counties comprising the
-district, in ratio to their population. All moneys received from the
-sale of produce or manufactured articles or supplies shall be credited
-to the overhead expenses.
-
-This, in brief, is a digest of the law which is designed to inaugurate
-agricultural prison labor on a large scale in Pennsylvania.
-
-The Trustees were promptly appointed by the Courts of the State. The
-Fourth district, organized in March with the election of Mr. George
-W. Deeds, of Westmoreland County, as president. This board has been
-actively engaged in inspecting proposed sites, a number of which have
-been offered, but no selection has, as yet, been made.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Another phase of prison labor that must be taken into full
-consideration in the establishment of industrial farms, is the
-attitude of the Courts in reference to the parole law now in effect.
-If the Judges believe that the ends of justice are best served by
-paroling convicts, rather than committing them to some institution,
-the necessary capacity of the proposed buildings would be materially
-affected. In most of the counties but little has been done toward a
-general use of the parole law, but in a few of them the Courts are
-evidently giving it a trial.
-
-The parole law is regarded with especial favor in Washington County,
-where the Courts have at the present time, 672 prisoners under parole.
-Every one of this number is employed in the county and must report
-monthly to the parole officer, who is also the Court’s employment
-agent, and who places every paroled prisoner in a job suitable to his
-ability and inclination.
-
-This might be called another phase of prison labor, as industry is one
-of the conditions of the parole, and the labor is done by the paroled
-prisoners for their own profit and advancement--with freedom to enjoy
-their homes and pursue their own inclinations after working hours. So
-far has the system been carried, that the Court House, once cleaned
-entirely by prison labor, is now necessarily cared for by a paid force
-of men outside the draft age. You may better understand why the Court
-is going to this apparent extreme, when you know that practically every
-industry in Washington County is engaged in war work, and that these
-paroled men are placed on farms, and in mines, mills and factories,
-where they are helping win the war, though only a small percentage of
-them are American citizens and very few are native born.
-
-About 90 per cent. of these men are faithfully complying with all
-the conditions of their paroles, 95 per cent. are paying in monthly
-installments, the fine and costs imposed upon them by the Court,
-and less than five per cent. are proving themselves unworthy of the
-confidence reposed in them.
-
-Clearfield County has 10 paroled prisoners; Clinton, 25; Indiana 40;
-Lycoming, 8; Lehigh, 104; Center, 6; McKean, 47; Butler, 35; and
-Somerset, 64. It is doubtful if the entire number in all the other
-counties in the State would equal the number paroled in Washington
-County.
-
-Montgomery County has taken a unique step in the employment of prison
-labor and uses the 80 inmates of its county jail in knitting socks, on
-knitting machines, for the Red Cross. Many other counties employ their
-prisoners, in their jails, in useful occupations.
-
-Agricultural prison labor has been tried out in many States with
-gratifying success. Down in Alabama there are 325 men at work on State
-farms, where they raised 2300 bushels of wheat last year, which is an
-excellent record for a section where wheat is not supposed to grow.
-Convicts down there are also worked in the Alabama coal mines, and
-are producing 4500 tons of coal daily. Their farm prison labor is not
-satisfactory, but in the mines it is pronounced superior to free labor.
-
-Nebraska is using agricultural prison labor in a small way outside
-State institutions and is meeting with splendid success. Maryland is
-having the same experience with about 75 convicts who are helping to
-relieve the farm labor shortage. Georgia’s male convicts are employed
-on the public roads, and the women prisoners are now engaged in light
-farm work.
-
-Michigan is farming 4000 acres, but still found sufficient prison labor
-to help the farmers with their harvest last year. Wisconsin has about
-100 prison labor farmers and is of the opinion that their work is as
-productive as free labor.
-
-New Hampshire objects to agricultural prison labor because it gives
-the prisoners no winter employment, and continuous work is regarded
-as desirable. Mississippi is meeting with good success on her State
-controlled farms, but the law does not permit the use of prison labor
-except at State institutions.
-
-Massachusetts is utilizing prison labor on farms, to relieve the
-scarcity of farm labor caused by the war, successfully employing about
-100 for that purpose. They regard convict labor, properly directed, as
-efficient as free labor.
-
-Vermont believes that its present experience justifies a more extended
-use of agricultural prison labor.
-
-Kansas uses its prison labor mostly in prison coal mines, but is
-diverting some of its convicts to help the farmers during the war. Six
-hundred convicts are employed in Florida on State owned farms. They are
-meeting with great success and their prison labor is in considerable
-demand. Tennessee has a number of convicts employed in agricultural
-labor. The men have gained in health and earned a profit for the State.
-
-Connecticut uses her prison labor on roads and farms. They think it
-is better and more efficient than available free farm labor, and the
-farmers of the State are well satisfied with the results obtained.
-
-Minnesota uses prison labor on roads, and is conducting State
-agricultural farms with success. Nevada uses prison labor to harvest
-crops on shares. They report the cost disappointing and think their
-best results are obtained with agricultural prison labor on State
-farms. Virginia uses its prison labor for grinding agricultural lime
-for fertilizer. The State employs about 250 convicts on its own farm,
-in agricultural work, and finds the work beneficial to the prisoner as
-well as to the State.
-
-Illinois is making a special effort to utilize its prison labor, not
-only to relieve the scarcity of farm workers, but to help in all other
-war industries. About 100 men have been paroled especially for farm
-labor, and 350 are successfully employed in factories where equipment
-for the government is being manufactured.
-
-The great war has brought forth one outstanding fact in
-criminology--no matter what his instincts may be in times of peace,
-the convict is a patriot, according to his lights, in time of war, and
-in all my investigations, covering practically every eastern, southern
-and middle western State, I have not learned of a single prisoner who
-violated a parole given him to engage in work that would help win the
-war.
-
-Iowa is operating nearly 3000 acres by agricultural prison labor, and
-is making a wonderful success, not only from a financial viewpoint but
-also in fitting the convicts to regain their place in society.
-
-Indiana has done wonders with prison labor along agricultural lines,
-having established one large Industrial Farm for misdemeanants. In
-addition, the State is utilizing its prisoners to a considerable
-extent to relieve the scarcity of farm labor caused by the war. About
-100 convicts built sidings to coal mines to get out fuel for the war.
-At the time of a disastrous flood they worked day and night, without
-guards, saving by their efforts thousands of dollars worth of private
-property. They were also successfully used at the time of a severe
-tornado, recovering the lost, and clearing away the debris. Indiana
-does not favor the use of prison labor on public roads.
-
-North Carolina is working 500 prisoners on State owned farms with
-excellent success, and in addition is helping out the farmers to some
-extent. The State also employs about 100 men on the highways, but
-believes road work by prison labor is good for the roads but bad for
-the men.
-
-New York thinks that every available prisoner should be employed, but
-because of constitutional limitation cannot use its convicts on private
-farms. Practically every penitentiary and county jail in the State
-is employing its prisoners either at gardening or farm work on State
-or county owned or leased farms. Food production has been materially
-increased by these concerted efforts towards agricultural products,
-and the prisoners themselves are benefited by the outdoor work. Prison
-labor is also extensively used on the public roads.
-
-A notable example of the successful employment of agricultural prison
-labor, that is coming into more than local prominence, is in our own
-State of Pennsylvania, where Warden Francies is working wonders with
-his advanced methods at the new penitentiary at Bellefonte.
-
-WASHINGTON, PA., August 7, 1918.
-
-
-THE FINANCIAL ARGUMENT FOR A COUNTY PRISON FARM.
-
-It will be generally granted that useful employment in the open air
-will be beneficial, but let us also consider the financial side of
-the proposition. It will be remembered that the General Assembly of
-1917 passed a bill providing for the establishment of nine Industrial
-Farms, to which convicts usually sent to the county jails may be
-sent for discipline and employment. I am indebted to Mr. Harry J.
-Campbell, of Washington, Pa., for some statistics from nine counties
-in the southwestern part of the Commonwealth, constituting one of the
-Districts in which an Industrial Prison was to be located. In order
-to determine whether such a Prison Farm would be remunerative, Mr.
-Campbell collected the statistics from these nine counties which afford
-fairly conclusive proof of the economy of the proposition.
-
-These nine counties in 1917 sent:--
-
- 179 prisoners to the Allegheny Co. Workhouse at a cost of $20,869
- 532 “ “ “ Western Penitentiary “ “ “ “ 102,401
- 313 “ “ “ Morganza (Boys & Girls) “ “ “ “ 60,267
- 122 “ “ “ Huntingdon Reformatory “ “ “ “ 13,742
- 409 “ “ “ County Prison “ “ “ “ 81,381
- ---- --------
- 1555 “ “ “ various prisons at a total cost of $278,660
-
-If a Prison Farm were established, they would send none to the
-Allegheny County Workhouse.
-
-It is estimated they would send to this farm one-fourth of those sent
-to the Penitentiary.
-
-They would send to the Farm one-tenth of those sent to Morganza.
-
-Likewise, one-third of the number sent to the Reformatory (some have
-estimated the number to be one-half).
-
-The number of prisoners held for trial at the County Jail varies from
-one-tenth to one-half of the whole number imprisoned. However, we will
-estimate those convicted at one-half of the number. Hence, to this
-Penal Agricultural Institution a minimum number of 587 may be sent,
-according to the last available statistics.
-
-The funds available for such Institution may be computed as follows:--
-
- Money heretofore paid to the Allegheny County Workhouse $20,869
- One-fourth the cost of prisoners at the Western Penitentiary 25,600
- One-tenth the cost of prisoners at Morganza 6,026
- One-third the cost of prisoners at Huntingdon Reformatory 4,580
- At the County prisons there are certain overhead expenses
- which must be taken into account. Estimating that one-half
- the number in the County Jails would be removed to
- the District Farm, and that the cost of maintenance
- amounts to 50c daily for each prisoner, the saving would
- amount to 30,782
- -------
- Total estimated sum available for the District Farm in one
- year from nine counties $87,857
- Let us be entirely fair in our estimate. The 587 prisoners
- are expected to earn a large part of their maintenance;
- but should we estimate the net cost of maintenance at 25c
- daily per prisoner, the cost amounts to 53,563
- -------
- Balance $34,294
-
-This balance would go far toward meeting the expense of purchasing
-and stocking the farm and providing the temporary buildings which
-may be constructed by the prisoners themselves. The saving to these
-counties in two or three years would suffice to purchase and equip the
-plant, and with efficient management, the Penal Farm ought soon to
-be self-supporting--a result not only satisfactory to taxpayers but,
-what is far more important, in the highest degree beneficial to the
-delinquent in whose restoration the community is vitally interested.
-
-These facts have been gleaned from a study of nine counties, but it
-must be remembered that the bill now before the General Assembly
-provides for the establishment of such an Institution by almost double
-the number of counties, hence it is apparent that within two or three
-years the entire expense of the farm and its equipment will be returned
-to the managers and with self-support practically assured, the future
-expense of caring for such delinquents will be reduced to a minimum or
-will entirely vanish.
-
- A. V. H.
-
-
-STATE BOARD OF PUBLIC CHARITIES AND PRISON LABOR.
-
-We gladly present the following facts which have been gleaned from
-interviews with Edward Wilson, Esq., one of the agents of this Board.
-
-So far as prison labor is involved, the Board of Public Charities has
-been deeply interested in developing the possibilities of an Act which
-on their initiative was passed and approved in 1917. This allows the
-employment of prisoners on lands belonging to any county.
-
-In 1915 Judge Isaac Johnson, in Delaware County began a system of
-employing prisoners which the Board desires to extend. In the year
-1918, the receipts from the crops produced by the labor of prisoners
-amounted to $14,000, in addition to a large amount of vegetable
-products consumed at the prison. The net profit is near $7000. Report
-comes that Berks County will be able to supply the prison with
-vegetables for the winter. Northampton County employed fifteen to
-twenty prisoners on a small farm recently purchased. Dauphin County had
-a few prisoners at work on the almshouse farm. In Montgomery County
-from fifteen to twenty prisoners have been employed on the Poor farm.
-In Columbia County seven Italians are engaged in operating a war garden
-which it is said has been very profitable. In one or two counties with
-large population, there is no land available for such purpose. Mr.
-Wilson states that little or nothing has been accomplished in this
-direction in those counties whose jail population is small. At one time
-in the year 1918, there were 13 counties without a prisoner. In some
-counties prisoners have worked on the roads. A few counties have been
-willing for selected prisoners to be paroled to farmers.
-
-Mr. Wilson is inclined to the belief that in some of our counties, the
-prevailing type of prisoner is too vicious to be allowed the freedom
-which belongs to the cultivation of the soil. From observations
-elsewhere we are inclined to the belief that the vilest man or woman,
-unless defective in mentality, will respond when treated with kindness
-and made to feel that he or she is trusted. Granted, however, that it
-may be considered unwise to send all prisoners without reservation
-to work on the farm, under the system proposed by the Commission to
-investigate Prison Systems, and whose Report to the General Assembly is
-found elsewhere in this number of the Journal, all the State Industrial
-Prison Farms are to foster some industry or industries aside from the
-horticultural and agricultural employments. On these farms there will
-be found opportunity for the employment of all prisoners, whatever may
-be their character or temperament.
-
-Last year in a casual inspection of the prison at Wilkes-Barre, the
-secretary announced that he considered 46 out of the 75 prisoners would
-be available for an Industrial Farm. Mr. Wilson after a very careful
-study of the situation concluded that 11 could be sent to work on the
-outside. Now something depends on the viewpoint. If the State should
-own an Industrial Farm fully equipped for the permanent accommodation
-of prisoners with diverse industries, Mr. Wilson probably would add
-materially to the number which might be sentenced to the penal farm
-instead of to the county prison affording so little opportunity for
-continuous profitable labor. The secretary consents to some reduction
-of his estimates, if real employment with some remuneration can be
-supplied at the county jail. The tendency of this practical age is to
-give regular employment to all those whom we for a time exclude from
-community freedom, and to place over them officials who will direct
-these industries.
-
-
-HOME OF INDUSTRY.
-
-This Institution which we allowed some 30 years ago to pass beyond our
-control, perhaps to its advantage, has just issued a Report of its work
-for the year 1918. There was some honest difference of opinion in 1890
-as to the value of this enterprise, but we believe the principal reason
-for the abandonment of the project by The Pennsylvania Prison Society
-was the lion in the way in the shape of a financial bugaboo.
-
-During the last year this institution cared for 275 men, keeping
-them on an average of 32 days for each man. Their industries have
-contributed $9,422 toward its own support.
-
-We have always thought that the institution should be removed to a
-farm. In 1917 some of the men did work on land which they secured
-and the results were very favorable. In 1918 they entered upon the
-same work with high expectations, but from a variety of causes the
-agricultural operations have not been prosperous. Labor went elsewhere.
-We hope for better results next year.
-
-We recommend this Home as worthy of continued support.
-
-
-MILITARY DISCIPLINE AND PUNISHMENTS.
-
-The Committee on Public Information acting under the authority of the
-United States Government have from time to time published and issued
-pamphlets giving some extremely valuable facts and explanations with
-regard to the Great War and dealing with its causes and results. Not
-the least valuable among these circulars is No. 113, issued March,
-1918, and devoted to “German Militarism and its German Critics.” This
-handbook contains forty pages and is compiled from sources which the
-Government regards as sufficiently reliable to justify extensive
-circulation. It may be obtained by any one who will send request,
-and refer to it by title, from the Committee on Public Information,
-Washington, D. C.
-
-From this document we quote a few instances of brutality which have
-been presented by credible witnesses:--
-
- 1. “A Polish recruit was maltreated so fearfully by an officer
- that he finally hanged himself. The officer induced the soldiers
- to certify that they had seen nothing.
-
- 2. “An officer struck a sick recruit repeatedly on the chest so
- that he screamed with pain and soon thereafter died in a hospital.
-
- 4. “Soldiers were struck in the face during instruction....
- Witness saw hundreds of times helmets pressed down and the bands
- which held them under the chin pulled so that the soldiers grew
- red in the face. Alsatians and Lorrainers particularly were
- maltreated and frequently called ‘French Skulls’ and worse. The
- officers warned the men against complaining, promising worse
- treatment if they dared to report these outrages.
-
- 5. “During the maneuvers no day passed without brutality....
- Boxing of ears, blows, even with the sword and riding-whip, were
- daily occurrences.... Complaints were omitted for fear of the
- consequences.”
-
-Enough. In the circular it is stated that at a certain military trial
-in Germany, held in 1914, 922 men from all parts of Germany had
-signified their willingness to give testimony and were ready to report
-some 30,000 separate instances of brutal treatment of soldiers.
-
-Hence it seems apparent that the spirit of dominant militarism is
-arrogant, ferocious, brutal. It harks back to the time of medieval
-tortures. By the circulation of Tract No. 113, the Government of the
-United States has indicated its abhorrence and utter condemnation of
-such cruel and inhuman methods of enforcing discipline. Naturally we
-expected that our army officials would not for a moment countenance
-such arbitrary and tyrannical treatment of offenders.
-
-When we take into consideration the inexperience of this nation with
-large armies, there is cause for congratulation that the instances of
-cruelty and unwarranted severity have been proportionately so few. And
-yet there have been some instances of pitiless malevolence inflicted
-upon a class of offenders who least deserve it. We are aware of the
-penalties for disobedience to orders which naturally belong to a
-military system. In accordance with the military code, disobedience is
-a heinous crime. So when the officials were confronted with refusal to
-obey orders, even though the offenders were of the highest character,
-the mind of the militarist could view the offense from only one angle.
-We are referring to the treatment accorded to some--not all--of the
-“conscientious objectors.” They constituted an exceedingly small
-proportion of the American Army which at the time the armistice was
-signed numbered 3,665,000. The number altogether of those conscripted
-whose religious convictions forbade them to use carnal weapons was
-about 3,900--less than one-ninth of one per cent. of the vast American
-Army.[3] Of these 1,300 accepted non-combatant service and 1,500 were
-allowed to be employed on farms or to aid France and Belgium in the
-work of reconstruction of their ruined homes and devastated lands.
-Our latest advices inform that 527 of these “conscientious objectors”
-have been court-martialed and sent to the Military Prison at Fort
-Leavenworth. A majority of these belong to religious bodies whose
-creeds are opposed to war. These men were not hunting for trouble.
-Conscription brought them from their peaceful homes and from their
-farms where they were so much needed to aid in increasing the food
-supply of the nation. They were living inoffensively and were brought
-into difficulties by no overt act. It is not our intention to uphold
-or combat their interpretation of “The Sermon on the Mount.” They were
-men who were regarded as useful, upright members of the communities
-where they resided. Some of them belonged to bodies whose members
-have been foremost in every philanthropic effort for the last two
-centuries. We may attach no special virtue to works of superogation,
-yet we venture to suggest that men and women who in times of peace have
-been foremost in honest industrial pursuits, who have been prominent
-in all movements to advance the best interests of the community, who
-have devoted their time and their means lavishly to social betterment,
-should in time of war be entitled to some consideration on account of
-their past services in the uplift of humanity. Between the ages of 21
-and 31, less than one to every 36,000 were found who claimed immunity
-from military service on account of their creed, and as many of these
-accepted some form of non-combatant service, the number absolutely
-refusing to comply with any military command was less than one out of
-60,000 conscripts. Would it not have been wiser to allow these men
-to continue their lawful avocations on the farm, in the shop, in the
-mills, than to support them in idleness, to detail a special force to
-guard them, and to ruin their health by harsh treatment?
-
-The Hofers case is an authentic instance of an infliction of tortures
-by methods which acknowledge no obligation outside of military
-authority. Jacob Wipf and the three Hofer brothers were members
-of the Huttrian sect, a small body residing in California, “They
-believed, with an intense conviction, that their duty to their God
-utterly precluded any submission to military command.... It must be
-remembered that this was no degenerate whim, nor yet the stubbornness
-of criminals--it was the highest spiritual conviction of deeply
-religious men.” They refused to wear the uniform. A mere outline of
-the penalties will suffice. Thrown into the “Hole,” 30 feet below
-the base of the building at the level of the sea. Murky atmosphere.
-Stripped to underwear. Handcuffed to an iron bar so that their feet
-barely reached the floor. Remained strung up for 36 hours. No food;
-one glass of water. Repeatedly beaten with clubs. Then for five days
-exempted from “hanging up,” but confined without food, or sufficient
-clothing. The authorities were finally broken, not these God-fearing
-men. It seems like a tale from the “Book of Martyrs,” not an event in a
-civilized nation. They were released from the dungeon broken in health,
-afflicted with scurvy, and after suffering a lot of petty persecutions,
-were transferred to another prison in a colder climate. Here they
-were placed in “Solitary,” with diet of bread and water, strung up
-for nine hours a day, forced to sleep on the floor. The cold draughts
-had a natural effect. When it was learned that they were ill, they
-were removed to a hospital where two of them died in a few days from
-pneumonia. The surviving brother, though scarcely able to walk, was
-mercifully released to accompany the dead bodies of the two brothers
-to their homes. Military vengeance was satiated. It is incredible to
-believe that such methods in this enlightened age are used.
-
-From the New York World, we note the following instances of treatment
-accorded to “objectors” at Camp Funston. Sleeping on bare floor. No
-food all day. Kicked repeatedly. Beaten with rifle butts, pricked with
-bayonets, dragged over filth, choked till they are breathless, placed
-under a cold shower at midnight, clothes and all, hung temporarily by
-the neck, some rendered insane for the time. It is hard to realize
-that such things could happen in America. Do we not speak of civilized
-warfare? Does war necessarily make fiends of men prematurely? It is a
-pleasure to report that the officers at Camp Funston responsible for
-these outrages were either dismissed or removed to a different field.
-
-The larger proportion of those imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth belong to
-the peace-loving, inoffensive, industrious Mennonites. Take the case
-of the Amish Mennonites. Last summer 45 of these quiet people were
-sentenced to life imprisonment for refusing to obey the orders of their
-inferiors in many points of view except that of military rank. This
-sentence was commuted to an imprisonment of 25 years. Twenty-seven of
-the same sect were sentenced from 10 to 20 years each for a similar
-offence. Virtually in every one of these 72 cases, the crimes consisted
-in a refusal to don uniforms. Most of them have longer sentences than
-are usually dispensed for manslaughter.
-
-The length of these sentences and also of many other sentences
-pronounced upon others who have broken the regulations of the military
-code has been made the special object of investigation by Congress.
-The excuse that some of these excessively long sentences were military
-bluff for the deterrent effect and were never intended to be carried
-out in full is irrational. If such statement is correct, our system
-of military court procedure ought to be overhauled and renovated. We
-are not contending that offenders should go unpunished, we are merely
-insisting that the penalties prescribed shall be commensurate with the
-offense, and shall be consistent with modern jurisprudence.
-
-Let us be thankful that the instances of cruelty and preposterous
-punishments have been so few. Grant that some of the reported instances
-are a species of brutal hazing, that some few bone-headed young
-officials “drest in some brief authority,” with an overweening sense
-of their importance, have taken a narrow view of military discipline,
-still there have been sufficient complaints to elicit the following
-editorial in the sober Public Ledger of Philadelphia.
-
-
-TORTURE FOR MILITARY PRISONERS?
-
- “If any branch of the Government’s military activities calls
- for an instant and searching investigation, it is certainly the
- treatment accorded the “conscientious objectors” in the military
- prisons to which they have been sent by court-martial. Even if
- half the allegations contained in the complaints concerning the
- prisoners of this type, at Governor’s Island, New York, and
- at Fort Leavenworth, are true, the conditions demand instant
- correction and those responsible therefor summary punishment.
-
- “In times of war severity of treatment, within the limits of
- humanity, is to be expected by those who refuse to fulfill
- their obligations to the nation; but the term ‘severity of
- treatment’ is an euphemism when used to describe the experiences
- of conscientious objectors, shackled, unclothed, for hours to
- cell doors, kept for days in dark cells, and forced for weeks to
- subsist under physical conditions which the law would not permit
- in the case of animals. If these charges are substantiated, and
- the outraged sense of justice of the nation demands that they be
- either substantiated or disproved, then the drastic revision of
- military law and practice is an imperative duty of Congress which
- it dare not ignore or neglect.
-
- “There is abundant reason to believe, in the severity of the
- sentences permitted to be imposed by army courts-martial, that
- there is lacking in the military mind that sense of fitness and
- of humanity which is in accordance with the age in which we live.
- The United States cannot with clean hands ask the nations with
- which it is allied in the war to humanize the laws of war while
- it tolerates inhumanity in the enforcement of its own military
- regulations at home. Recalcitrant soldiers offer a difficult
- problem, of course; but the fact is a greater reason for dealing
- with such offenders with tact and, above all, with humanity.
- Torture has no place in the penology of the day, and least of all
- in the service which prides itself on its patriotism.”
-
-The Acting Committee of The Pennsylvania Society, having been informed
-of some instances of punishment which seemed to resemble soulless
-European autocratic methods, sent the following remonstrance to
-Secretary Baker:--
-
- “The Pennsylvania Prison Society learns with astonishment and
- a profound sense of sorrow of the brutal methods of punishment
- employed in some of our Federal Prisons upon military
- offenders--especially upon so-called “Conscientious Objectors”
- whose only offense is a consistent adherence to their sense of
- duty. The studied attempt to break the spirit of prisoners at
- Fort Leavenworth and elsewhere by unspeakable cruelty suggests
- the practices of a barbaric past rather than those of a civilized
- and enlightened people. Granting that a Nation must at times deal
- firmly with political offenders, can any crime ever justify the
- employment of cruel and inhumane treatment? If such barbarous
- punishment has the sanction of law, then an outraged sense of
- justice demands the immediate revision of our Military Code.”
-
-The following note was received, which indicates that the War
-Department at Washington has taken measures to relieve the harsh
-conditions.
-
- “FEBRUARY 6, 1919.
-
- “... The War Department immediately upon having conditions at
- the Disciplinary Barracks called to its attention, instituted an
- investigation. The report of that investigation disclosed the
- fact that the trouble at Leavenworth was due, not at all to the
- administration of the prison, but to the regulations which were
- ill-adapted to the unusual type of prisoner that the Selective
- Service Act brought to military prisons. The Secretary at once
- made some appropriate modifications of those regulations and has
- called a conference to consider further changes in disciplinary
- regulations, not only to meet this unusual condition but to bring
- the Army’s disciplinary methods up to the most modern penological
- standards, in case they shall be found to be deficient. The
- conference will also consider ways of meeting the immediate
- emergency of the overcrowding of disciplinary barracks due to the
- increased size of the Army during the war. The conference will
- come to its conclusions in the near future and you may be assured
- that action leading out of its conclusions will be promptly
- taken.”
-
- “Very truly,
- “F. P. KEPPEL,
- “_Third Assistant Secretary_.”
-
-Confidential orders, recently made known, of the War Department,
-issued in October, 1918, prescribed that those conscripts, refusing
-on account of conscientious scruples to perform military service,
-should not be treated as traitors or as guilty of rank insubordination.
-The Government thus in some form recognized the validity of their
-scruples. As a rule such persons were entirely segregated from the
-other men. For a time solitary confinement was discontinued, but we
-regret to report that at the military prison at Leavenworth some 25 of
-these objectors have recently been remanded to cellular isolation. One
-of these men has for some time been engaged in Christian work under
-the auspices of the Y. M. C. A. Very recently he received a visit
-from a gentleman in whose office he had often been a visitor, but his
-mind seemed a blank, as he did not appear to recognize his visitor
-who called to offer services. This mode of punishment was having its
-logical effect.
-
-We fully endorse the attitude of the U. S. Government as indicated in
-its Official Bulletin, No. 113, page 5:--“Accustomed as these leaders
-have been for many years to universal military service, to a large
-standing army, ... to marked class distinctions, they have absorbed,
-and are now wedded to, certain notions which to us, who have grown
-up under very different conditions, seem like worship of constituted
-authority and the unwarranted surrender of individual responsibility.
-The gradual development of these very notions has brought about an
-inordinate influence of the military group in public affairs.”
-
-We rejoice that our Government so clearly sets forth the evils of a
-military authority, the spirit of which is so manifestly opposed to the
-genius of our free institutions.
-
- On behalf of the Editorial Committee,
-
- J. F. OHL,
- FLORENCE BAYARD KANE,
- ALBERT H. VOTAW.
-
-
-PRISON EXPERIENCES.
-
-Within the last few years the general public has been informed of the
-real life of the convict by intelligent observers who have suffered a
-few days of incarceration in order to gain an insight into the actual
-effects of imprisonment. The accounts were interesting and instructive,
-but we now have another opportunity to acquire knowledge of prison
-conditions from some intelligent and conscientious persons who have
-been imprisoned without resorting to a fake process in order to have
-such experience. We refer to a class of offenders who from religious
-scruples and in some cases for other reasons have disobeyed the
-military requirements. We hold no brief for these offenders, but the
-observations of some of these persons are a decided contribution to the
-science of penology. Making due allowance for hasty conclusions arrived
-at from a brief period of incarceration, and also after insufficient
-opportunity to grasp the subject in its entirety, nevertheless, the
-facts related, and the arguments and deductions derived from their
-experiences should appeal to all who have interest in the reformation
-of criminals.
-
-Rev. Evan Thomas, a young man of deep religious conviction, and of a
-keen sense of injustice, has recently published in _The Survey_ some
-details of prison life in the Federal Prison at Leavenworth, Kansas.
-
-We quote some portions of his article.
-
-“The burden of prison life as I experienced it, however, was not the
-physical hardships but the unspeakable moral filth and vice to which
-one is constantly exposed. I could not have believed many of the things
-I heard and witnessed at Fort Leavenworth had they been reported to me
-before going there. No sexual vice or moral depravity is too low for
-some of the men confined there. The Disciplinary Barracks have been
-called the ‘cess pool for the dregs of the army.’ But many a fine young
-soldier whose only offense was to overstay his leave or be the helpless
-victim of the antiquated military law in this country, has found his
-way among the ‘dregs’ of the army; and as for the others, the great
-majority are the products of our reform schools, orphan asylums and
-jails. These men are indiscriminately grouped together in the prison.
-It is true that there are two so-called honor wings for prisoners
-in the Disciplinary Barracks, but I was never able to discover just
-what was necessary to be assigned to these wings. The information
-generally given me by other prisoners was that it was necessary to do
-‘some hand-shaking’ first. As a matter of fact, as nearly as I was
-able to learn, the power lay very largely in the hands of a group of
-prisoners, who through clever politics and the holding of certain
-important jobs in the executive office and elsewhere, were able to
-control things to a large extent. I was told that even in these honor
-wings moral conditions were bad, but in the other wings where men were
-indiscriminately alloted, it often happened that diseased men were
-assigned to the same cells with others who had to share the same toilet
-facilities. The sixth wing, composed of eight tiers of open cells, each
-of which contains three double-decked cots and six occupants, is known
-as the ‘mad-house’ by the prisoners. Any thoughtful reading, writing or
-study in this wing is next to impossible. Before going into solitary
-confinement as a protect against the severe treatment accorded to such
-conscientious objectors as refused to work, I spent one day in this
-wing and the thought of ‘solitary’ lost much of its dread for me.
-
-“It is certainly possible for the man of wide interests or strong
-character to live in such surroundings without any great degree of
-moral harm to himself, but for the young, the weak, the very immature,
-such conditions are nothing short of ruinous. The conversation is
-confined largely to sex, ‘booze’ and the personal daring of the
-prisoners. No crime is too terrible and no feat too desperate for most
-of these men in their talk. The menace of this sort of thing to those
-whose interests are almost entirely within the prison walls is the
-most insidious and destructive thing imaginable. Yet no real effort
-is made by the authorities to group the prisoners so that at least
-some of the men could be spared a great deal of temptation. Much more
-serious is the fact that the prison life itself is not calculated to
-give a man any interests but those of the basest sort. Self-government
-is practically unknown at Fort Leavenworth except in the honor wings,
-where I believe the occupants are allowed to elect their own orderlies.
-
-“At the Disciplinary Barracks there is a department of psychiatry which
-takes a very careful record of every prisoner’s history and this record
-is faithfully verified by the authorities through letters and other
-means of information. But once this record is completed and on the
-files, apparently everything has been done that is required. So far as
-I was able to observe, at least, no really constructive efforts were
-made to relieve the conditions in the wings which I have spoken of,
-where a man of refined sensibilities is often quartered in the same
-double-decked bunk with a degenerate or a moral pervert.
-
-
-“THE FAILURE OF PUNISHMENT.
-
-“The condition of affairs which I have been attempting to describe
-is greatly aggravated by the fact that the idea of punishment and
-discipline reigns supreme in the prison. Much is said in the rules and
-regulations about the aim of the institution being to improve every
-prisoner and turn each man out a better and more useful individual than
-when he came in. That is one of the standing jokes of the prisoners
-and not without reason, for one has only to read the book of rules
-itself to see that the military tradition of punishment and discipline
-is the medicine which is expected to work this great transformation.
-But unfortunately most of the occupants of a military prison are there
-because of their failure or refusal to accept this military tradition.
-They are there because they are weak, mentally and morally, or too
-independent for the army or because they object to it on principle.
-
-“So far as I have had experience in life I have yet to observe anything
-more absolutely negative in its purpose and effects than this method
-of discipline. The prisoner who has the distinction of having been
-longest at Fort Leavenworth, had only two more days of his sentence to
-complete when a guard called him a vile name, and utterly regardless of
-the inevitable consequences this prisoner knocked the guard down with
-a brick. He has since received several extensions of sentence because
-of other defiant acts. The ball and chain, solitary confinement and
-all the other repressive measures of the prison system have some way
-not succeeded as yet in turning this man out of prison a ‘better man
-than when he came in.’ There unquestionably is a criminal element in
-prison that is a menace to society, but depraved or vicious as some
-of these men may be, there is yet some good in every one of them and
-possibilities of truly chivalrous conduct in all of them when properly
-treated. But the ball and chain, the iron rule, the cursing and foul
-threats by guards do not seem to bring out the good side of these men.
-
-“Not long before I was released two men were caught fighting in the
-corridor of the wing near my cell. These two men were not equally
-guilty. To go into the details of the case would require more space
-than I have, but the point I wish to bring out is that they both were
-at once taken to the executive officer of the prison and in ten minutes
-were back, sentenced alike, to ten days in the ‘hole’ on bread and
-water. The great object of such prison punishment is to break a man,
-make him humble, meek and obedient. When this is done the process of
-making a man of the prisoner seems to be considered completed. A guard
-once told me while I was in solitary that when he chained a man up
-backwards as punishment for talking in solitary, as used to be done, he
-was generally kind-hearted enough to let the man down if he repented
-and asked for it in the ‘right spirit,’ but if the man was too ‘damned
-proud to show how much it hurt him he would let him take his medicine.’
-I mention this because to my mind it is typical of the punishment and
-discipline idea of the prison. Actually what happens in this process of
-breaking is that the prisoner in the great majority of cases is shoved
-still further down the scale of degradation and lack of self-respect.
-He becomes either flabby or vicious. This is especially true of such
-criminal types as need the helpful, sympathetic and human advice and
-correction of trained men above everything else.
-
-“It is my belief that at the bottom of all that I have been trying to
-tell, lies not the dishonesty or cruelty of individual officials but
-a state of mind shared largely by us all, even prisoners themselves
-oftentimes, viz., the idea that the convict is something apart,
-something taboo, a person who has forfeited all the rights of normal
-human beings, and with this idea goes that of punishment, the ingrained
-belief that the only way to deal with viciousness or wrong-doing is to
-keep the big stick constantly at hand. This certainly is the theory
-of our prisons if one is to judge from the products of our reform
-schools and jails whom I met at Fort Leavenworth. These men very
-largely had grown up with no other idea of life than that of the big
-stick. Put one of these prisoners in authority over others and in the
-majority of cases he can be more dictatorial and cruel than any guard.
-The supposition is that to make this outcast--the prisoner--bow to
-authority will make a man of him.
-
-“Prison reform is no easy matter. It must be the work of devoted and
-expertly trained men and women. Sentimentalism can play no part in it
-and certainly discipline, properly understood, will always have its
-place, but it will be discipline in which mutual responsibility, human
-sympathy and understanding will replace autocracy and indifference to
-the individual and personal element at stake. It is, perhaps, only
-fair to say that with the arrival of Major Adler at Fort Leavenworth
-at the beginning of this year certain very important reforms have been
-started. But it is going to be a long, uphill fight which will require
-the enlightened support of the public if prisons are ever to cease
-being a degrading influence in the prisoner’s life to say nothing of
-becoming the constructive help that they should be and can be.”
-
-
-PROHIBITION AND ARRESTS.
-
-HARRY M. CHALFANT.
-
-... We have a detailed report of the number of arrests in Detroit
-during the last eight months of license as compared with the first
-eight months under prohibition. Detroit became dry May 1, 1918, and
-this report covers the two periods of eight months each, preceding and
-following that date. It is issued by George H. Walters, deputy police
-commissioner. Detroit is the largest city in the world to experiment
-with prohibition, it having close to 1,000,000 people.
-
-We have grouped kindred offenses to secure brevity. The first column
-shows the number of arrests during the wet period and the second column
-shows arrests for the same offenses during the dry regime. In the third
-column we have worked out the percentage of reduction. Under the dry
-period there were 1511 arrests for violation of the prohibition law
-and 550 convictions resulted. These are omitted from the list because,
-obviously, no comparison on this offense could be made. The following
-figures tell their own story:
-
-
-NUMBER OF ARRESTS.
-
- Under Under Percentage
- license. prohibition. reduction.
- 28,156 10,543 64
-
-It is worthy of note that these results are not materially different
-from what happened in the cities of Denver and Seattle, which became
-dry January 1, 1916. They afford a hint of what may be possible, at
-least to a degree, in Philadelphia after the 1st of next July.
-
-PHILADELPHIA, February 20, 1919.
-
-
-HONORARY MEMBERS.
-
- Maud Ballington Booth (1909) New York City.
- Judge Ben B. Lindsey (1909) Denver, Colo.
- [4]Frederick Howard Wines (1909)
- Judge McKenzie Cleland (1909) Chicago, Ill.
- [4]Gen. R. Brinkerhoff
- Z. R. Brockway (1909) Elmira, N. Y.
- [4]Prof. Charles Richmond Henderson (1910)
- Dr. Hastings H. Hart (1914) New York City.
- [4]James A. Leonard (1914)
- Timothy Nicholson (1915) Richmond, Ind.
- Amos W. Butler (1915) Indianapolis, Ind.
-
-
-LIFE MEMBERS.
-
- [4]Ashmead, Henry B., [4]Lewis, Howard W.,
- [4]Bailey, Joel J., Lewis, Mrs. Sarah A.,
- [4]Baily, Joshua L., Longstreth, W. W.,
- [4]Bartol, B. H., [4]Love, Alfred H.,
- [4]Benson, E. N., [4]Lytle, John J.,
- [4]Bergdoll, Louis, [4]Maginnis, Edw. I.,
- [4]Betts, Richard K., [4]Manderson, James,
- Bonham, Eleanor M., [4]Milne, Caleb J.,
- [4]Bonsall, E. H., [4]McAllister, Jas. W.,
- [4]Brooke, F. M., [4]Nicholson, Robert P.,
- [4]Brown, Alexander, [4]Osborne, Hon. F. W.,
- [4]Brown, T. Wistar, Patterson, Robert,
- Brush, C. H., [4]Pennock, George,
- Buckley, Daniel, [4]Perot, Joseph,
- Carter, John E., Perot, T. Morris, Jr.,
- [4]Cattell, Henry S., Pooley, Fred. J.,
- [4]Childs, George W., [4]Potter, Thomas,
- Cochran, Miss Mary N., Jr., [4]Powers, Thomas H.,
- Coles, Miss Mary, [4]Price, Thomas W.,
- [4]Collins, Alfred M., Randolph, Miss Anna,
- Coxe, Eckley B., Jr., Rhoads, Joseph R.,
- [4]Downing, Richard H., [4]Roach, Joseph H.,
- [4]Dreer, Edw. G., [4]Saul, Rev. James,
- Dreer, Ferd. J., Jr., [4]Santee, Charles,
- [4]Douredore, B. L., [4]Seybert, Henry,
- [4]Duhring, D. D., Rev. H. L., [4]Sharpless, Townsend,
- Duncan, John A., [4]Steedman, Rosa,
- [4]Elkinton, Joseph S., Stephens, Emily J. I., M. D.,
- Elwyn, Alfred, [4]Stokes, Wm. C.,
- [4]Elwyn, Mrs. Helen M., [4]Sulzberger, David,
- [4]Fotterall, Stephen G., [4]Thomas, Geo. C.,
- Frazer, Dr. John, Thompson, Emma L.,
- Frazier, W. W., [4]Tracey, Charles A.,
- [4]Goodwin, M. H., [4]Townsend, Henry T.,
- Grigg, Mary S., Tyler, W. Graham,
- [4]Hall, George W., Votaw, Albert H.,
- Harrison, Alfred C., [4]Waln, L. Morris,
- Harrison, Chas. C., [4]Walk, Jas. W., M. D.,
- [4]Hockley, Thomas, Warren, E. Burgess,
- Ingram, Wm. S., [4]Watson, Jas. V.,
- [4]Jeans, Joshua T., Way, John,
- Jenks, John Story, [4]Weightman, William,
- [4]Jones, Mary T., [4]Weston, Harry,
- [4]Jordan, John, Jr., Wetherell, William Henry,
- [4]Justice, W. W., Whelen, Emily,
- [4]Kinke, J., [4]Whelen, Mary S.,
- [4]Knight, Reeve L., [4]Williams, Henry J.,
- [4]Laing, Anna T., [4]Williamson, I. V.,
- [4]Laing, Henry M., [4]Willits, Jeremiah,
- Lea, M. Carey, [4]Willits, Jeremiah, Jr.,
- [4]Leaming, J. Fisher, Wistar, Edward M.,
- Leeds, Deborah C., Wood, Walter.
- [4]Lewis, F. Mortimer,
-
-
-ANNUAL MEMBERS.
-
- Adger, Miss Willian, Kaufman, John G.,
- Allen, Clara Hodges, Kehler, Dr. B. Frank,
- Allen, H. Percival, Keith, Elsie Wister,
- Arrison, Anna D., Kennedy, Harry,
- Ashton, Tabor, Koelle, William,
- Baggs, Nicholas, Capt., Lamartine, Rev. Phillip,
- Baily, Albert L., Landis, Dr. H. R. M.,
- Baird, John E., Latimer, Emilie T.,
- Baldwin, Harriet H., Latimer, George A.,
- Barakat, Layyah, Latimer, Rebecca P.,
- Barnes, Rev. R. Heber, Latimer, Rev. Thomas,
- Bartram, T. E., Leeds, Austin C.,
- Beiswenger, Paul F., Lewis, William Draper,
- Beiswenger, Rev. F., Longshore, Frank H.,
- Belfield, T. Broom, Lovett, Louisa D.,
- Biddle, Miss Christine W., Lowry, Wm. C.,
- Biddle, Mrs. Clement M., McCord, Rufus,
- Biddle, William, McFedries, Miss Annie.
- Boggs, Samuel R., Magee, George W.,
- Bok, Mrs. Mary Louise, Maier, Paul D. I.,
- Booth, Henry D., Mallery, Otto T.,
- Borden, G. W., Marshall, Bertha K. C.,
- Bowers, Virginia R., Martin, Hon. J. Willis,
- Bradford, Miss Annie, Mayer, Mrs. Henry C.,
- Brewer, Franklin N., Mellor, Alfred,
- Brink, Fred Swarts, Miller, Isaac P.,
- Brinton, Joseph Hill, Miller, Mrs. Benj.,
- Brown, Ellis, Y., Minnich, Rev. M. Reed,
- Browning, Mrs. G. G., Montgomery, Henry S.,
- Buckley, Mrs. Edward S., Morris, Anna Wharton,
- Burnham, George, Jr., Morris, C. Christopher,
- Butterworth, Elizabeth W., Morris, Marriott C.,
- Butz, J. Treichler, M. D., Morris, William,
- Byers, Joseph P., Mullowney, John J., M. D.,
- Canby, W. Marriott, Murphy, William T.,
- Carpenter, Mrs. E. Payson, Newkirk, John B.,
- Cassell, Henry C., Newlin, Sarah,
- Chichester, S. E., Nichols, Carroll B.,
- Clark, Frederic L., Niles, Henry C.,
- Clark, E. W., Obermayer, Leon J.,
- Coale, Thomas E., Oetinger, Albert,
- Coburn, George A., Ohl, Rev. J. F,
- Collins, Henry H., Paisley, Harry E.,
- Collins, Henry H., Jr., Palmer, T. Chalkley,
- Colton, Mrs. Mary R., Pancoast, Linda H.,
- Colton, Mrs. S. W., Jr., Park, Richard G.,
- Comfort, Henry W., Patterson, T. H. Hoge,
- Conard, C. Wilfred, Perot, Mary William,
- Cope, Mrs. Edward, Platt, Miss L. N.,
- Cope, Mrs. Eliza M., Purves, G. Colesbury,
- Cope, Miss Margaret, Rakestraw, Frederick A.,
- Daniel, C. A., Randolph, Mrs. Evan,
- de Benedetto, Rev. A., Reeves, Francis B.,
- De Haven, Miss Clara B., Reilly, Anna L.,
- De Haven, Miss Sarah Cole, Rhoads, William E.,
- deLong, Mary Ella, Richardson, Charles,
- Develin, James Aylward, Roberts, Charles C.,
- Dewees, J. H., Roberts, Owen J.,
- Dewees, Watson W., Robinson, Anthony W.,
- d’Invilliers, Charles E., Robinson, Louis N.,
- Disston, Albert H., Rosengarten, Joseph G.,
- Disston, Jennie C., Roser, William,
- Drexel, Mary S. Irick, Rouse, Wm. M.,
- Dripps, Robert Dunning, Schaeffer, Paul N.,
- Ecroyd, Charles E., Schoch, Mrs. Parke,
- Edmonds, Franklin S., Schwarz, G. A.,
- Elkinton, Joseph, Scott, Norris J.,
- Emlen, Samuel, Scull, E. Marshall,
- Emlen, Miss Dorothea, Senft, Rev. F. H.,
- Fernberger, Henry, Shoemaker, Comly B.,
- Fisher, Geo. Harrison, Simmington, Charles C.,
- Fleisher, Samuel S., Snellenburg, Samuel,
- Fleisher, Moyer, Starr, Miss Rhoda,
- Frick, Esther, Steele, Joseph M.,
- Funk, Lawson C., Stewart, Henry C.,
- Galenbeck, Louis C., Stone, Mrs. Virginia G.,
- Garges, Anna K., Tatum, Joseph W.,
- Garrett, Elizabeth N., Thesen, Oluf,
- Gerhard, Luther, Thomas, Mrs. George C.,
- Gerhard, Arthur H., Tomkins, Rev. Floyd W.,
- Gerhard, Mrs. Arthur H., Turner, Mrs. Charles P.,
- Gillingham, Anna H., Vaux, Miss Meta,
- Graff, Charles F., Wallace, Mrs. C. Jaquins,
- Greene, Sallie H., Walton, Harrison,
- Haines, Dr. H. I., Warren, William C.,
- Haines, Henry E., Wentz, Catharine A.,
- Haines, Robert B., Jr., Wetherell, George S.,
- Hallowell, William S., Wetherell, Mary S.,
- Haney, Rein G., Wetherill, Rev. Francis Macomb,
- Harding, Miss M. W., White, Elias H.,
- Harris, Rev. J. Andrews, White, Elizabeth W.,
- Harris, Mrs. J. Campbell, Wilkins, George W.,
- Harris, J. Linn, Williams, Charles,
- Hastings, Charles P., Williams, Ellis D.,
- Heller, Clyde A., Williams, Henry S.,
- Henderson, George R., Wilson, James L.,
- Hill, Miss Elizabeth A., Wing, Asa S.,
- Hodge, Mrs. Lydia B. Penrose, Wood, H. Wellington,
- Hoffman, Jacob, Yarnall, William S.,
- Howe, Mrs. Mary W. F., Yarrow, George R.,
- Hutton, George S., Yarrow, Mrs. George R.,
- Jenkins, Theodore F., Ziegler, J. W.
- Kane, Miss Florence Bayard,
-
-
-
-
-INDEX.
-
-
- PAGE
- Acting Committee, report of, 7
-
- Agricultural Prison Labor, 60
-
- Annual Meeting, minutes of, 5
-
-
- Board of Public Charities and Prison Labor, 67
-
-
- Commission to Investigate Penal Systems, 19
-
- Committee on Delinquency, act providing for, 47
-
- Committees, standing, 4
-
- County Prisons, 33
-
-
- Financial Argument for Prison Farms, 65
-
-
- General Agent, report of, 16
-
-
- Home of Industry, 68
-
-
- Industrial Farms, act providing for, 54
-
-
- Members, lists of, 81
-
- Military Discipline and Punishments, 69
-
-
- Obituaries, 14
-
- Officers, list of, 3
-
- Official Visitors, Page 2 of cover
-
-
- Parole Work, Eastern Penitentiary, 17
-
- Penal Systems, report of Commission, 19
-
- Prison Experiences, 76
-
- Probation and Parole, 39
-
- Prohibition, effect of, on arrests, 80
-
-
- Treasurer, report of, 15
-
-The Pennsylvania Prison Society was founded under the name
-“Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,”
-May 8, 1787.
-
- It was incorporated under same name April 6, 1833.
-
- The objects named in the Charter were three:
-
- 1. Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.
-
- 2. Improvement of Prison Discipline.
-
- 3. Relief of Discharged Prisoners.
-
-By order of the Court, the corporate title was changed January 27,
-1886, to “THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY.”
-
- * * * * *
-
-Copies of this JOURNAL will be forwarded on request to any address
-without charge.
-
-Financial contributions are needed to carry on the work of this Society.
-
-All correspondence and contributions should be addressed to The
-Pennsylvania Prison Society at 119 South Fourth Street, Philadelphia,
-Pa.
-
-
-
-
-FOOTNOTES:
-
-
-[1] Approved and proposed by the Commission on Penal Systems.
-
-[2] Approved and proposed by the Commission on Penal Systems.
-
-[3] Information taken from Major W. S. Kellog’s “The Conscientious
-Objector,” 1919.
-
-[4] Deceased.
-
-
-[Transcriber’s Note:
-
-Dialect, obsolete and alternative spellings were left unchanged.
-Printing errors, such as backwards or upside down letters, were
-corrected; duplicate words were deleted; missing punctuation was added.]
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Journal of Prison Discipline and
-Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 5, by Anonymous
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNAL OF PRISON DISCIPLINE, 1919 ***
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