VOLUME IV, No. 4.APRIL, 1914

THE DELINQUENT

(FORMERLY THE REVIEW)

A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE
NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION
AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

WHAT IS A CRIMINAL?

By A Man in Prison

[The American Magazine recently offered prizes for the best replies. Here is one of the winning answers.]

What is a criminal? To-night I pace the narrow confines of my steel-barred cell and ask myself for the hundredth time—What is a criminal? Is he, as Lombroso claims, a moral degenerate? Is he the mental imbecile that metaphysicians in learned verbiage assert? Is he the hardened, desperate malefactor, the sinking, murderous beast that penologists would have us believe? Is he the victim of adverse circumstances, unsavory environment, and changing social conditions? Or does he wage war on organized society for adventure’s sake? Why is he a criminal?

Garbed in the vestment of dishonor and disgrace, I myself am what the world terms a criminal. Should I not know the meaning of the appellation far better than the casual observer? For many years my life has been the life of an habitue of the underworld. Criminals, so called, have been my associates and my friends. I have known them in the moments of their success, I have known them in the hours of their failure. Failure that spells oblivion, the oblivion of cold gray walls and heart-breaking, monotonous, man-killing routine. I have seen how recklessly they can live, and I have also seen how gamely they can die. I have known them intimately, and well, and never have I been able to discover any difference between them and their more fortunate brethren. They entertain in their hearts the same ideas, the same hopes, and the same ambitions as do average men.

Those who commit crime as a matter of choice are few indeed. Many follow it as a means of livelihood because it is the only vocation open to them; and they must be men of stamina, courage, and brains, if they would survive. Those who match their wits against the vast resources of the Powers Who Rule must be clever rogues indeed. They are, in short, just such men as those who attain success in other walks of life—no different. The[2] same ability to think and plan, the same nerve and determination, the same unswerving loyalty, the same persistent application that diverted into legitimate channels would have won for them recognition in any sphere of endeavor. These are the men who have chosen crime as a vocation, because their talent and training equipped them for that career, just as you may have chosen the law or the field of high finance for similar reasons. And these men in some degree succeed as law breakers, but even they must pay the cost of their success. And the toll is not light, my friend.

There are others, men who were born a hundred years too late. Men who live as their kind has always lived—by the strength of their own right arms. To them might is right, and they know no other code. They, too, are criminals, are they not? These are the men who have never learned to turn the other cheek. These are the men who strike back. Society tramples them under its feet, and they arise from the dust with grim murder in their hearts. They cannot forget; they cannot forgive; and so they fight to the bitter end with the blind courage of their breed.

Some, the very machinery of the courts has converted into criminals. I see them every day in the chrysalis stage. They commit some minor infraction of the law, some petty offense, and for that they go to jail. In jail they receive scant consideration and little courtesy from either their fellow prisoners or from the police. They are neither fish nor fowl. They note the fact that the “good thief” is respected and feared by one, and extended the hand of good fellowship by the other. Straightway they determine to become criminals—and some few succeed. Many more fill our prisons.

Others are accidentally criminals. Under the influence of liquor, drugs, sudden passion, and sometimes actual hunger, they commit crimes. They are not really criminals, however; they are “accidents.” Sometimes serious accidents no doubt, but still accidents. Surely you would not call them criminals!

You ask what is a criminal? In the last analysis the question is unanswerable. You could as readily ask, “What is a man?” and the definition would be as undefinable as this. What is a criminal? Out of the depths of my experience I would say that a criminal is a thousand changing moods, a thousand inherited tendencies, a thousand mistakes, a thousand injustices, wedded into a thousand different personalities; and from the furnace of the melting pot you could perhaps find the answer. What is a criminal?—A Man in Prison.

THE PRINCIPE PRISON IN CUBA.

[From the Galveston News we take the following interesting account of General Castillo’s main prison.]

Cuba boasts that Principe Prison, its national penitentiary, is one of the model prisons of the world. Officials of foreign governments who have made lifelong studies of prison conditions have declared it to be as near a model prison as one can be made. It is ten years old and within that time only one prisoner has ever escaped, and he, after a few days’ liberty, voluntarily gave himself up and asked to be returned to his section. Within it have been confined desperate criminals of world-wide reputation, but they have never succeeded in getting by prison vigilance.

Principe Prison, or Castillo de Principe, Castle or Fort of the Prince, is one of the historic points of Havana, and its history is closely interwoven with that of the city. It was built in 1774 and completed in 1794, and was then considered one of the strongest fortresses on the Western Hemisphere. There is a legend that it was built chiefly by French and Spanish engineers, who upon its completion were put to death lest they might divulge some of the secret tunnels and defenses.

It is situated on Principe Hill, about two miles west of the national palace, and overlooks the entire city. It has five bastions and is surrounded by a moat fifty feet wide, twenty feet deep and loopholed for rifle fire upon both sides. There is an ancient drawbridge at the main entrance, but it has been out of use many years. The scarp walls are about forty feet above the moat and are crowned with medieval sentry[3] boxes and lookout stations. There are many secret passages leading from Principe to various other fortifications, but these were hermetically sealed during the provisional administration of General Leonard Wood. The principal one extends to Morro and Cabanas castles across the bay, a distance of two and one-half miles. The governor of the prison is General Demetrio del Castillo, and Lieutenant Colonel Tomas Garzon is assistant.

Cuba is thoroughly modern in her treatment of prisoners. The terrible “third degree” is an unknown quantity. There is no whipping post nor “chamber of horrors” at Principe. Solitary confinement in a well ventilated cell, equipped with toilet and shower bath and a wall berth is the usual punishment. The prisoners are not only taught industrial trades, but are given the elementary branches of schooling. Even some study music, painting and sculpturing. The government employs twenty instructors, most of them being graduates, to teach the 400 “pupils.” There is a prison library, an orchestra and a brass band. The band is the pride of the prisoners and is composed of forty musicians and taught by a professional teacher. Several “lifers” are members, who took up the study of music after they were sentenced, and are now what might be considered tip-top musicians.

Of the 1,380 prisoners, 36 are politicians who took part in the Estonez negro uprising in 1912. There are twenty-six “lifers” sent up for assassination and highway robbery. The majority are robbers and thieves, with a scattering of murderers. The race percentages are: White 64, black 37 and mulatto 17 per cent.

The prison guard consists of eighty-two men and a small clerical force in charge of the office. The prisoners are not put in stripes, but instead wear a cool uniform of white duck, which is changed twice a week. When working they wear a brand of overalls made from palm thatches.

The big court yard, which covers more than an acre, has a flower garden, neatly trimmed and laid off in beautiful squares and walks and dotted with shrubbery and royal palms. The proceeds from the sale of flowers go to a prison fund. Prisoners who can not do manual labor make hammocks and other grass products. These they are allowed to sell and the proceeds go to their families. If single, a fund is kept by the warden against their release. Six hours is a day’s work.

During the evening the band gives a concert in the court yard, and all prisoners are allowed to attend, notwithstanding the facts that the music can be heard perfectly from the casemates.

Workmen in the shops are allowed 25 cents plata per day, while those outside receive 35 cents. This is also either sent to their families or kept in the release fund. They receive no pay for government work.

The men in the clothing and shoe shops are worked on contract goods which are sold to Havana mercantile establishments, and they also make clothing for the prisoners. Shoes run in price from $1.10 to $5 per pair. Were it not for the heavy import on leather these prices could be nearly cut in half. The higher grade of shoes sell in the retail market for $6 and $7. Clothing is made from 50c. to $15 a suit. Beautiful white duck and linen and other tropical garments are turned out that look about as well as suits made by many first-class tailoring establishments. There has been some trouble with the labor unions, who complain against competing with “convict labor,” but these complaints have never assumed serious proportions. Ordinarily the casemates are used for workrooms, but the shoe and clothing factories are ramparts “hollowed” out and remodeled. An effort has been made to work the Principe prisoners in road building, but for some reason or other Congress has never allowed it. General Castillo built a sample road near the prison and invited members of congress to test it, but they continue to refuse to allow the government to be saved thousands of dollars annually by employing the convicts upon the public roads. Another feature that meant an annual saving of thousands was a proposed printing establishment, where the government printing could be done. This scheme progressed finely for awhile, and floor space was made by changing several casemates into a large hall and machinery ordered, but at[4] the last moment the newspapers and printing establishments began to hammer the proposition and the government abandoned it.

“But how would you get prisoners competent to do the work?” was asked Colonel Garzon.

“Well,” he replied, “we would be compelled to hire experts at first and keep an eye for printers in other prisons, and also inform the police to be extra vigilant. It wouldn’t be long before we would have a competent force.”

The sanitary conditions of Principe are perfect or as nearly perfect as a medical staff of fifteen physicians can make them. The floors, walls and roofs of the entire prison are of Cuban stone and are “sluiced” twice a day. The “dormitories” are large, airy casemates and both ends are covered by steel bars which make a window fifteen feet square. A continuous sea breeze blows through them. The berths or bunks extend in one tier on each side of the casemate and are made to fold up against the wall. The “bed clothes” consist of two duck sheets and a blanket for cool weather, which are changed twice a week. A row of shower baths completes the furniture and the inmates are required to take at least two baths a day.

There are three hospitals—the tuberculosis, contagious diseases and the “public” ward. They are upon the roof of the south bastion and face the sea. Their sanitation, according to the physicians, can not be improved upon. The “lungers” sleep practically out of doors, or rather with just enough overhead to protect them from the heavy tropical dews. So healthy and sanitary is the prison that very few cases of sickness occur. The majority of the inmates of the hospitals are those sick, principally with consumption, when they arrive.

There has never been an insurrection or mutiny in Principe. In fact, scores of prisoners when released at the end of their terms have asked Colonel Garzon to save their “cup and pan,” and invariably they return to use them. They really fare better “inside” than “outside.” The average Cuban of the criminal type has but few necessities of life, and these of the barest.

“How do you manage to keep the prisoners so orderly and apparently well satisfied?” was asked General Castillo.

“We try to make them contented,” he replied. “We have a band that gives concerts in the court yard. We let them study, work them, feed them well, keep them sanitary, study each one personally and let them know they must obey the regulations. Each man knows he will get fair and impartial treatment. If one gets into trouble (and fist fighting is the only trouble we have), we simply put him in solitary confinement. There is nothing that hurts a Cuban prisoner as badly as to keep him from talking and away from his associates, and besides, those in solitary confinement are not allowed tobacco. We never prevent them from talking with one another, and besides, each man gets two months off of each year for good behavior. We hope to put the prison upon a self-supporting basis during the present administration.”

In 1905, Juan Jose Garcia, serving a ten-year sentence for highway robbery and holding a rich farmer for ransom, escaped. He, with a squad of prisoners, was working outside the walls, and during a severe rainstorm, he made a successful dash for liberty. He had four years to serve. His escape was reported to the warden and the usual reward offered for his arrest.

Some days later General Castillo was going into Havana by automobile, when a man stepped into the road in front of the machine and held up his hand for it to stop. “What do you want?” inquired the general. “I am Juan Jose Garcia. I ran away from the prison last week, but want to return. I have been dogged and chased by the officers and am worn out and starving.”

“It serves you right,” said General Castillo. “You have been a very, very bad prisoner, and moreover, I can’t keep such men as you in my prison. You ruin discipline and break the rules.”

“But,” Garcia pleaded, “if you will just give me one more trial I’ll promise never to run away again.”

“I am very busy to-day, but go up to the prison and if Colonel Garzon will take you back I suppose it will be all right.”

That occurrence is one of General Castillo’s pet anecdotes and he tells it with much enthusiasm and never fails to impress[5] one that it is the only case on record in Cuba that an escaped convict begged to be readmitted to jail.

“General Castillo,” “gobernador del presido de la republica de Cuba,” is a noted soldier of the Cuban war of independence, and one of the island’s foremost men of affairs. He was educated in the United States and later graduated with high honors from the Royal French School of Engineers and he is what might be termed thoroughly “Americanized” from a modern business point of view. He has made a special study of foreign prisoners and is perhaps as thoroughly conversant with prison conditions as any official in the world.

He arose to the rank of general, commanding a division during the war of independence and took part as such in the Santiago campaign. After the surrender he was selected by General Brook as the civil governor of Santiago. He was appointed to his present position by Governor Magoon. His son, Demetrio, Jr., is a graduate of the United States Military Academy.

Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Garzon is also a veteran in the war of independence and commanded a regiment of regular troops. He keeps in close touch with prison affairs and makes a personal study of each convict. He goes through the prison at all hours unarmed, and some two years ago disarmed a coterie of prisoners who were planning trouble by walking into the casemate where they were confined and ordering them to turn over their crude weapons. That was the first and only time anything that savored of an insurrection has ever occurred.

THE PRISON OF THE FUTURE.

By William H. Venn, Detroit, Mich.

[Detroit Journal, March 2nd, 1914.]

The prisons of the future will be vastly smaller than the larger ones of the present time. Not alone because of the fact that better results can be achieved by the penologist who is at the head of the institution where fewer men are confined, but also because of the added reason that various other institutions will be in vogue to care for many unfortunates (not criminals) who are now sent to our penitentiaries.

The feeble-minded class in our prisons in the United States is said to number between 25,000 and 35,000 individuals, or about one-fourth of the prison population. These will be cared for in other institutions than prisons, confinement in which is a greater crime upon the part of society towards these poor unfortunates than were the offenses for commission of which these feebleminded individuals were sent to prison. According to the general statistics, the farm for epileptics in Michigan should care for about 200 persons now confined in the prisons of this state.

The wider extension of the system of probation will save thousands of men from a prison experience, thereby protecting the taxpayer and reclaiming the individual himself, the latter occurring in between 75 and 85 per cent. of the cases. This saving to taxpayers is most evident to-day, for were the two recorders of Wayne county to bring to court and sentence those who now enjoy a probationary relation to their courts, there would not be empty cells enough in our State penal institutions to receive them. It is much better to build up homes than to erect more prisons.

Undoubtedly the physician, the surgeon, the alienist and the psychologist will serve as greater factors to relieve our crime problem than in the past. It is well known that a nervous condition occasioned by affections of the eyes, nose and ears has played a large part in the delinquency of boys and girls, of young men and young women. The splendid results achieved in Chicago and in Rahway, N. J., as well as in other localities, have already warranted a great deal more of investigation and effort along the same lines.

The prison of the future will be located miles away from the city, upon a tract of sufficient acreage to insure outdoor employment for a large number of men during[6] the larger portion of the year. Work under such conditions will not only be more lucrative for the State, but, better still, the means of building up physically and mentally, as well as morally, these wards of the commonwealth.

The warden of our prison at Jackson already is planning to divide some of the acreage into small tracts to be “gardened” by “trusties”; a record being kept of the cost of care and seeding of these little farms, as well as the value of the products thereof, thus encouraging a healthy rivalry among those responsible for these sections of the prison farm. How much this will accrue to the benefit of the men will be best understood by those who have worked among paroled or discharged prisoners.

The prevailing style of prison architecture will be superseded by one which will admit of the greatest possible amount of sunlight and circulating air in the cells. Most cellhouses are constructed with the corridors running along the outer walls of the building, while the cells are arranged in the center, end to end, a thick wall separating them. In the effort to reduce the possibility of escapes, the health of the inmates has not always been properly considered.

The United States can well afford to turn backward for improvement in cell construction. In Richmond, Va., to-day stands a building erected from plans drawn by Thomas Jefferson in the year 1797. This cellhouse, still in use, and esteemed by the inmates as better than the steel cell-block of very recent construction, is erected in the form of a horseshoe. There are three stories of cells, and each cell has a window opening upon the prison yard, while the doors of the cell swing out toward a large court within the circle of the horseshoe, and a covered veranda traverses the entire length of the cellhouse. The cots are not near the floor, but about on a line with the lower sash of the cell-window, some four or five feet from the floor, insuring to bedding, cell and inmate the greatest possible modicum of sunshine and air.

In the prison of the future each man will be paid a certain sum for the performance of his work, whether his task be remunerative or what is termed state work. From this wage he will pay for his food, clothing and such other necessities or luxuries as he may obtain from the inmates’ co-operative store. He will thus be accorded greater latitude in the selection of the aforesaid raiment and food. Hence even by these humble means, the prisoner’s power of initiative will be somewhat retained against the day when he shall again fare forth to take his place among the world’s free men.

In this prison of the coming day discipline will be largely maintained, not by fear of force, but rather by the self-interest and personal pride of the men confined. Punishment will more and more take the form of deprivation of privileges, which latter will be greatly increased because the better spirit and attitude of the men will be such as to warrant the greatest possible privileges.

Wardens, under-officials and guards will be recruited from individuals who have a positive social vision, and who will look upon their position not as a “job,” but as an opportunity for service to humanity. Already the day has dawned when men are being placed at the head of these institutions, not because they are politicians with a “pull,” but rather because they are capable business men and broad-minded humanitarians with a heart. Men are to arise who will feel as much “called” to labor among the prison “shut-ins” as do now those who are set aside to serve as ministers of charity or uplift workers.

These changes, and even greater ones, will be strongly manifest in the prison of the future, for the day will yet dawn when bastilles will be no more in demand among the sons of men.

[7]

PASS A LAW!

BOOK REVIEWS.

By Philip Klein

Assistant Secretary Prison Association of New York.

The Walled City.—Edward Huntington Williams, M. D., New York, 1913, Frank & Wagnalls Company. Pp. 263. Price $1.00.

The general public looks upon a convict with a certain amount of fear. The word criminal is awe-inspiring. But the idea of the insane criminal is more than that; it is replete with the vague terror of the weird and unknown. People have in recent years come to consider the criminal with a little better understanding; but the “insane criminal” has retained its full quota of terror. Perhaps there was good reason for that. The older ways of handling both the insane and the criminal were very well calculated to bring forth the worst there was in them. But no one could probably read the “Walled City,” without experiencing a complete change of attitude towards the inmates of institutions for the criminal insane. They are primarily men, these unfortunates with hopes and plans, with differences in personality, education, tastes, relations, in all things that make for the differences among man and man in the normal outside life. And yet, there is a “kink” in every man; an innocent kink generally, yet a “kink” to be reckoned with. It makes things interesting, yet delicate and difficult to handle. “Every man in his kink” we might paraphrase Ben Jonson.

One gets from the book a feeling almost of old association. It is all told in a pleasant, almost anecdotal form. The reader feels himself introduced to citizen after citizen of the walled city and passes through the book as if in a series of personal conversations with its inmates. The author’s sympathy and understanding for his words speaks from every line. And yet when we close the book, we are surprised at how much we have learned. We have been given scientific, correct, technical information without knowing it; the book had done what it was evidently meant to do.

Hell in Nebraska.—Walter Wilson, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1913. The Bankers Publishing Company. Pp. 372. Price $1.00.

If individuality in a man means the possession of decided and highly developed qualities, both good and evil, and if books also may be said to have individualities on the same basis, then the present book has a valid claim to the distinction of possessing a goodly amount of individuality. From the title,—and from the illustrations on both covers,—one would be justified in expecting a horrible revelation of fiendish cruelties practiced in the Nebraska Penitentiary. But it is simply another indication of the “yellow journal” style that pervades the whole book. In fact, were it not for the thorough knowledge of conditions, evidenced throughout, one might very easily take the volume for a reporter’s paraphrase of a few selected annual reports of the penitentiary. It is full of inside personal information, of interest to nobody but the friends, relatives and enemies of the persons concerned. But there is a good deal of real good common sense and practical penology, that comes from a sympathetic yet rational observation, and from continued activity in the field. If the language is too strong at spots, and the emotions unrestricted, it may well be excused as being the result of righteous indignation, coupled with a sense for journalism and strong feeling for friend and foe—and also an invincible belief in[8] one’s own righteousness. Incidentally, however, the book gives really valuable information of the conditions in the Nebraska Penitentiary.

Measures of Social Defence Against the Recidivist.—This was one of the three questions discussed by the International Union of Criminal Law at its congress in Copenhagen in August, 1913. A masterly report on the subject was submitted by Prof. Nabokoff, and after a spirited discussion by many of the leading authorities of Europe on criminal law, the following resolutions were adopted by the congress:

1. That system of procedure which combines the requirements of an objective scale of proof of recidivism with subjective judgment of the particular case in question and thereupon adjudges the said criminal a habitual recidivist, dangerous to the social order, should be recognized as the most rational.

2. The exclusion of the political criminal seeming inevitableness, they made the acsures of social security, applicable to habitual recidivists, are directed is a just and necessary proviso.

3. The minimum term to be pronounced against such recidivist at the time of his trial shall be at least as great as the term to which he would be sentenced if he were not adjudged a habitual recidivist; but it may be greater by not more than two years.

A special commission shall, at the expiration of such minimum, decide whether such prisoner shall be liberated or further detained. In the latter case the prisoner shall have the right to have his case reconsidered at intervals of two years. (It is understood that the judge sentences such recidivist to an indefinite period of which he fixes the minimum, but not the maximum).

4. The Congress is not agreed as to whether the period of preventive detention pronounced against the recidivist shall follow the period of punishment or take its place.

The IKV, Anniversary Number.—To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the “Internationale Kriminalistische Vereinigung,” a special number was issued in January of this year. It contains, in addition to the history of its establishment, a symposium as to the effect that its activities have had on the development of the problem of delinquency in its various phases, and in the various countries. The contribution for the United States is written by Prof. Charles R. Henderson of the Chicago University. Most characteristic of the spirit of the IKV is perhaps the paragraph in the introduction to the anniversary number, that reads as follows: “This volume should be a milestone in this sense also, that it shall define the program of the future activities of the Union. In addition to such legal questions as the regulation of international extradition, restitution instead of punishment, and the diminution of the concept of the punishment by imprisonment as the ultima ratio in the struggle against crime, the Union shall pay more attention to the sociological aspect of crime.”

The Four Gunmen.—Under this title Winthrop D. Lane writes in the Survey of April 4th about the social history of the four unfortunate young fellows who were executed at Sing Sing on April 13th. Mr. Lane found on careful investigation that all four came from “decent” families; that their career of crime started apparently from street life and its temptations; that each of the four had a previous correctional institution record; that they each started their lawbreaking career early; that the early years of each seem to have been normal and straightforward, giving no hint of the direction later conduct was to take. “One by one, through disease, going to school, or going to work, they came into contact with the abnormal street life of a crowded and heterogeneous community. Their youth demanded play and excitement, and they sought these where they were easiest to find. Gradually, but with seeming inevitableness, they made the acquaintance of older boys and men who had mastered the trick of turning an easy dollar.... Their own entrances into crime were gradual, beginning in all but one case with petty attempts while they were still in their teens to get spending money easily.... Whatever help there may be in probation and suspended sentence was not extended to them.”

EVENTS IN BRIEF.

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

New Cell House at Iowa Penitentiary.—The new cell house, built by convict labor at the Fort Madison penitentiary, will be completed in May. The structure has been six years under construction, and its value is said to be more than $200,000. It probably will be sixty days before the board will have everything completed so that the new prison house can be used. The structure is of stone and concrete, and the cells are considerably larger than the rooms in the old cell house. There will be room in[9] each cell for a single iron bed, a rocking chair, hot and cold water and toilet conveniences. The rooms formerly provided for prisoners held but a cot.

The board of control has not yet decided what it will do with the old cell house when the new one is occupied. It is probable that prison labor will be used in the remodeling of the walls so that one fair-sized cell may be made out of two cells.

There are 590 prisoners now in the Fort Madison penitentiary. The new cell house will provide for 400 of them. The remainder will have to remain in the old structure.

The board has received samples of hollow building blocks manufactured at the State clay works at the hospital for inebriates at Knoxville. This is the first of the output of the new industry and, according to experts, the tile is as perfectly made as that of other institutions. It is the intention to have the hollow building blocks needed in the new building at Oakdale sanitarium made at Knoxville.

The State institution at Knoxville is also ready to turn out tile and brick. Orders have been sent to all State institutions to order from Knoxville whatever material of this kind is needed.

Training For Prison Warden.—Warden Clancy, of Sing Sing Prison, recently resigned. Eugene Smith, president of the Prison Association of New York, has written an open letter to the New York city papers, as follows:

Progress in New York City’s Department of Correction.—Commissioner of Correction Katharine Bement Davis, and her deputy, Burdette G. Lewis, have already planned important improvements in administration. The upper floor of the Tombs is to be transformed into a hospital with nearly ninety beds; a visiting building, with screens between visitors’ seats and prisoners’ seats, will be built; food brought in from the outside is to be prohibited, and improvement in the catering service in the Tombs is arranged for; classification of prisoners in the various institutions is being developed; the punishment cells in the Penitentiary are to be abandoned in favor of a separate punishment building[10] with “reflection cells,” a detention house for women prisoners is to be built; the Department has moved from an antique building on Twentieth street into adequate quarters in the new Municipal building; stripes are to be abolished in the Island institutions; several “crews” of youngsters have been sent out to the tract of six hundred acres in Orange county to be used for the new City Reformatory for Misdemeanants; the clothing of women prisoners at the workhouse and Penitentiary is to be considerably bettered; and so forth. The fundamental plans for the re-organization of the Department’s institutions are being carefully worked out.

The Power of Suggestion.—Some of the complacent ones who maintain that you must leave to youngsters of either sex their own governing, and hold them pretty completely responsible for crime committed by them might pause for a moment to read the following—except that no such complacent ones read The Delinquent. This is from the monthly journal called the Training School, published at Vineland, New Jersey:

Farewell, and Don’t Come Back!—The editors of prison newspapers sometimes “gets theirs” in very pleasant fashion. Here is one of the most recent events of the kind, quoted from the Mirror, published at the Minnesota State Prison:

“‘Chip’, the editor of Our View Point, the Walla Walla, Washington, prison paper, has been paroled after serving several months conscientiously and well as the guiding spirit of that publication. Prior to his departure for the outside world, the inmates subscribed a dime apiece and presented him with a watch as a testimonial of their appreciation. The presentation speech was made by the warden in the presence of the inmates in the chapel, the Sunday prior to his departure.”

Hayward.—Here is a story to make a man “feel good”.

Harry S. Hayward, after seven years’ influential work with the newspaper called the Cumberland, Md., News, disappeared recently because politicians and evil interests he had opposed learned that he had served in prison, and threatened to reveal his past. Hayward had made very many friends. The proprietor of the newspaper received a letter from Hayward, in which he reviewed the trials he had endured in trying to live down the past, and in which he declared that he was determined to lose himself in some distant part of the country, and continue the struggle to live a decent life.

The proprietor, W. W. Brown, immediately tried to reach Hayward, but in vain. He inserted then the following advertisement in papers all over the country:

W. W. Brown.

Many prominent citizens joined in the effort to find Hayward. The Governor of Maryland pardoned him and restored him to citizenship. And, finally Hayward came back, in triumph.

The Latest Thing in Joy Rides.—Edward Smith, a lifer, and James McGee, sentenced for seventeen years, escaped from the Joilet Penitentiary recently, in Warden Allen’s automobile. After riding around Chicago all night they decided to return to[11] the prison. Guards had been hunting the men in three States.

Smith was the Warden’s chauffeur and drove in and out of the prison without attracting attention.

“We could have got away without much chance of being captured,” he said, “but we got to thinking that our escape might interfere with the good treatment given the other honor prisoners.

“Warden Allen treated us mighty well and we thought it best not to violate the confidence he placed in us. We certainly had a fine time while we were away. We rode all over Chicago and saw all the sights.”

Advice in the Shadow of the Gallows.—Several years ago there was executed at Trenton State Prison, New Jersey, a very intelligent man, who had committed a fearful murder. A day before his execution he was asked to leave some word for the young men of this country. Here is what he wrote, in a firm hand, without tremor:

Progress at Bellefonte.—According to the Pennsylvania Prison Society (the 127th annual meeting of which was recently held), “about 75 prisoners from the old Western Penitentiary at Pittsburgh are at Bellefonte, busily engaged in taking care of the farm and in various preliminary operations. (Pennsylvania is to build a farm industrial prison on 5,000 acres). They have been employed in the repairing of the old buildings on the estate, in quarrying stone for roads, and for other construction. There have been erected a number of new buildings, among them a machine shop, blacksmith shop, power house, large dining room and a dormitory. The work done on all the buildings was almost entirely by the prisoners themselves, superintended by an experienced outside foreman. It would be difficult to get together on the outside an equal number of men who worked as zealously or faithfully. There have been but three attempted escapes since the men arrived in the summer of 1912. The prisoners are allowed to go to all parts of the large farm in gangs of from three to twenty, under the care of one guard or trusty. The population is transitory, as almost weekly some are paroled, while new ones take their places.”

An Honor Colony Hoped For.—The New Jersey Reformatory is a congregate institution run by trustees and officers that believe in individualization and classification. So, in the current annual report the Board of Managers urges the establishment of an honor colony. “This should be at some distance from the Institution, and should be utilized for those inmates who are near parole, and who have demonstrated that they are learning the lessons they have been sent to the institution to learn.... It has been for some years the custom to permit inmates to return to their homes when a death occurs in the family, unaccompanied by anyone from the institution, relying solely upon the promise of an inmate to return at a given time. In no instance has an inmate broken the promise or failed to show an appreciation of the trust reposed in him.”

The Limits of Reformatory Treatment.—Superintendent Frank Moore, of the New Jersey State Reformatory, writes in his annual report:

Other Items From the Reformatory.—During the year 456 inmates of the New Jersey State Reformatory worked outside of the enclosure. There have been only two escapes, one from those working inside the wall, who was returned by the police, and one from the details working outside, who was captured and returned to the institution by other inmates.

The physical condition of the inmates now present in the institution is as follows:

Those who have increased in weight, 67 per cent.

No change in weight, 19 per cent.

Loss of weight, 14 per cent.

The reduction in the number losing weight is explained as follows:

A larger number of the inmates have been assigned to the outdoor work, gardening and farming, than ever before.

The amount of food served in the dining room has been increased, and its quality much improved.

Many low places in the grounds where mosquitoes breeded and from which malaria emanated have been filled.

During the year more inmates have been paroled, and with better results than ever before in the history of the Reformatory.

Contracts in Iowa.—The Fort Madison Farming Tool company will make a fight to retain its business of manufacturing tools at the Fort Madison penitentiary. It will ask that its contract to employ 150 prisoners be continued for at least a year from the expiration of the present contract on November 1, 1914.

The board has announced, however, that it will not renew the contract for any certain period of time, if any extension is granted. It may be advisable, it is said, to continue the present arrangement to keep the men employed from November 1 until such time next year as the legislature can provide some industry at the prison which will take the place of the tool contract.

The State of Iowa has registered a protest against the convict labor system. As fast as the contracts at the penitentiary expire the state must make some new arrangement. At Fort Madison one contract expires this year. The chair contract, employing a maximum of 179 men, does not run out until 1916. This then will free this prison of contracts and the buildings now housing the machinery of private companies will be used by the state in the manufacture of some product which will most benefit the state.

The Fort Madison Tool Company pays the state $50,000 for the use of 150 men, or $333.33 a year per man, based on the maximum permitted under the agreement. The board of control has stated that this sum is not sufficient, and that if the company is to get a temporary extension of contract it must offer a higher rate.

Education For Prisoners.—Education by correspondence for prisoners in the Kansas Penitentiary would be possible if a plan outlined by the Chancellor of the University of Kansas should be adopted by the Board of Administration. He would have the privilege of the extension division of the University, including vocational training by correspondence, offered to the inmates of the Penitentiary at the expense of the State.

In this connection it is worth while noting that more than 90 per cent. of 269 men committed to the Wisconsin State Penitentiary for murder in recent years were sent to work before they were 15 years of age, says the Bethlehem, Pa., Times. Of these[13] 269 convicts, of whom a special study has been made, about one-third have never been to school, half reached the fourth grade and but 3.2 per cent. finished high school.

Utilizing Prison Labor.—The Cleveland, O., Plaindealer, says that:

Parole Test Case in Virginia.—The recent session of the General Assembly of Virginia passed the Allen bill providing that the Penitentiary Board might in its discretion parole a prisoner after he had served three years of his sentence; but exempting from its provisions those convicted of murder in the first degree or of criminal assault. Governor Stuart described this bill as misleading in its title. It should have been, he said, “An act to increase the powers of the board of directors of the penitentiary at the expense of the constitutional powers and prerogatives of the executive.”

The Governor referred it to Attorney-General Pollard, who, held not only the bill was unconstitutional, but that the parole act of 1904, which it sought to amend, was likewise unconstitutional. On this advice the Governor vetoed it.

In view of the opinion holding the parole law of 1904 unconstitutional, the question arose as to the future conduct of the prison directors. In a statement issued at the time Governor Stuart expressed the view that it was certainly not contemplated in the Constitution that the prison board should sit as a sort of superior court, to review and reverse in criminal cases not only the verdicts of trial juries and the judgments of Circuit Courts, but the deliberate opinions of the Supreme Court of Appeals as well. The Attorney-General upheld the view that any action releasing a prisoner before he had served the specific term for which he was sentenced by due process of law was to upset and reverse the trial court. This power, it was held, was vested by the Constitution exclusively in the Governor, who may grant absolute pardons or may grant pardons with conditions attached, which are in effect paroles.

Prior to the act of 1904, under the statute of 1896 and subsequent acts, there was a parole system, under which the prison board from time to time made recommendations to the Governor of those convicts who were, in their judgment, suitable for conditional pardons or paroles, thus acting in an advisory capacity. The act of 1904, which is the one now in question, eliminated this report to the Governor and made it possible for the prison board, in its own discretion, at any time to release any convict after he had served one-half of the term for which he had been sentenced.

Under this act the prison board has been from time to time paroling convicts at its own discretion, acting entirely independent of and without connection with the actions of the Governor in granting pardons or conditional pardons, which are in effect paroles.

It has been agreed to make a test case to determine the status of the parole law of 1904, which Attorney-General Pollard has held to be unconstitutional.

In Kentucky.—The Louisville Post says editorially that:

Prison Commissioner O’Sullivan has thus summarized the recent developments:

“The most important act passed by the last General Assembly affecting the prisons was the bill providing for State aid in the building of county roads. While it makes no reference to the penal institutions, the opportunity it presents is providential. On January 1, 1915, the contracts on the labor of at least 900 prisoners will expire. In the face of the adverse legislation in Congress, it is probable that the prison contractors will not again bid for this labor, even if the Prison Commissioners were inclined to make new contracts.

“The law permitting the Prison Commission to lease farms adjacent to the prisons at Frankfort and Eddyville is of inestimable value. These farms can not only be made self-sustaining, but the tubercular prisoners can be transferred there and given the chance for life which is sometimes denied them in the narrow confines of a prison cell.

“The indeterminate sentence law does away with the automatic parole of prisoners and gives the jury the power to fix a minimum and maximum sentence proportionate to the crime committed.

“The passage of a law limiting the age of children sent to the House of Reform, near Lexington, and making the county pay part of the cost when the child is not guilty of a penal offense, will prevent the scandalous practice prevalent all over the State of consigning innocent, dependent children to this institution. Some of the officials seem to be in a conspiracy with the parents to get rid of their unfortunate offspring and make the State support them. The Prison Commissioners have returned to their homes 125 children under thirteen years of age who were sent to the House of Reform on flimsy charges. Two boys, six years old, were among the number. They were charged with ‘housebreaking.’ Dozens of cases just as flagrant could be cited.

“The Board has under way plans that will broaden and better this institution, which is one of the most important in the State, as it deals with the child after he has made his first mis-step.

“Before the recent parole of 450 prisoners under the Court of Appeals decision there were 1,450 convicts at the Frankfort Reformatory and 780 at Eddyville. The number of children at the House of Reform will average 700.

“The contractors at Frankfort and Eddyville paid into the State treasury last year $352,000. The cost of conducting these institutions, salaries, supplies etc., was $340,454. The cost of maintaining the House of Reform was $123,386.

“In eighteen months from August 1, 1912, to January 1, 1914, the prisoners have been paid in earnings the sum of $86,000. A great portion of this amount is sent home to their families.

“In the two prisons there are 556 men confined for murder, 115 for manslaughter, and 153 for malicious shooting and wounding. Of this number 340 are life prisoners.

“There are 1,250 negroes to 900 whites. There are 1,300 single men and 950 married men.

“There are 419 men serving second terms, 104 serving third terms, twenty-seven serving fourth terms, and one prisoner serving his seventh term.

“Since the adoption of the parole system 2,200 men have been paroled, which number includes the 450 men liberated under the Court of Appeals decision. Less than 5 per cent. of these men have violated their paroles and been returned to prison.

“In the past twenty-one months the present Prison Board has only paroled one life prisoner sentenced for murder. He had served fifteen years for killing a man who invaded his home and insulted his daughter, and had he been a white man he would never have been convicted.

“The night schools are very successful. Next to the abolition of the lash they have had a most humanizing effect on the prisoners.”

Cleveland’s City Farm.—Dr. Harris R. Cooley reported recently in Des Moines, Ia., regarding recent results in Cleveland:

“We have three different departments on the farm,” he said. “We have 100 consumptives[15] on one section, 700 people in the alms house located in another section, and 700 prisoners working on the ‘correction farm.’ These men are convicted of different petty crimes and sent to the farm to work out their sentence.”

According to Mr. Cooley, the farm’s profits from products raised last year were $22,167.04.

“It takes a little nerve to start a farm of the kind,” he said, “as it is necessary for a time to keep up two places. While the farm is being started it will be necessary to have some prisoners in jail and some on the farm, until enough buildings are completed to accommodate all the prisoners. However it is a great system when once in working order and would be a great thing for Des Moines.

“We also have a 450 acre farm for the juvenile prisoners,” he continued, “and this too, is proving a great success. It is located twenty-three miles from the city and the large farm is ten miles from Cleveland. All boys under sixteen years are sent to the juvenile farm.

“Our large farm,” said Mr. Cooley, “cost us $330,000 ten years ago. We have recently been offered $1,000,000 for it, but of course refused to consider the offer. We have hundreds of heads of fine cattle, hogs and horses and raise everything in the way of farm products. The profits possible on a farm of this kind are not to be realized by people who have had no experience with the system.

“We also do away with the problem of labor. We have the men on hand with nothing to do with them but let them work. We do not compete with labor, either. The men enjoy the work and nine times out of ten leave the farm better morally and physically than they came to it. Such is not the case with the man who spends a week or six weeks in the stagnant atmosphere of a city jail.”

422 Convicts to be “Turned Loose.”—The New York World, of April 5th, prints a special dispatch from Louisville, Kentucky.

“Kentucky is facing the problem of caring for 422 convicts, to be liberated at approximately the same time and for whom no provision has been made. The prospect is viewed with varying sensations in different parts of the State. In cities and towns there is alarm, but on the farms and plantations, where help is scarce, no fears are felt, and in fact the liberated criminals will be made welcome for the labor they can perform.

“This condition is brought about by the new indeterminate sentence law which is now operative in Kentucky and which does away with the old law by which the jury trying a case fixed the term of years for which a person should be confined, in the same verdict declaring him guilty. As it is now, the jury merely passes upon a prisoner’s guilt or innocence, and if he is found guilty his prison term is automatically fixed by the law covering the offense with which he is charged. These sentences, of course, range from a specified minimum number of years to a maximum. And it has been the rule heretofore for the Prison Board with whom the power of parole rests, to allow the prisoners their freedom largely upon the character of their crime and their conduct while in prison.

“But in the John De Moss case (recently decided by the Court of Appeals), it is held that if a prisoner has completed his minimum sentence and shows a clear record in the prison he must be issued a parole then. Another feature is that he must be able to show that he has some legitimate occupation waiting for him when he is set at liberty again. This parole, of course, does not free the prisoner absolutely. A string is held on him, and should he ever transgress again he may be brought back and made to complete his original sentence.

“Naturally, the convicts are delighted. Of the 422 convicts to get their liberty 232 will go from the penitentiary at Frankfort and 190 from the Eddyville prison.

“One of the requirements with which a prisoner must conform before he can be paroled even under the new order is that he must have a job awaiting him. This has caused the 422 prisoners who are to be released to cast about for a landing place. Among them are individuals of all classes, some very expert in certain lines, but the most of them are ordinary laborers, this being especially true of the negroes, who[16] are in the majority. Right here is where the release of the prisoners promises to be a good thing for the State at large. For several years the question of farm labor has grown to be more and more a matter of serious nature. The negroes prefer to live in the towns or to work on the public works, where they can be together in crowds. Often the farmers are sorely tried in their efforts to get labor at rush seasons and are forced to pay exorbitant prices.

“But the ordinary laborers among the convicts find the farms their best chance for getting the coveted job. The farmers are willing to take the risk, if risk it is, and they are offering to give employment to the prisoners. In one county the seventeen negroes that are due to return have all been thus guaranteed work. Other counties are doing the same thing and probably the majority of this class of the convicts will find a home and freedom on the farms.

“Much consolation is found in the fact that a radical change in the methods of handling and treating the convicts will result. They will be better citizens when their terms are out.

“One of the results of the new law will be the changing of the Frankfort prison into a reformatory, where the female and younger prisoners will be confined, and the Eddyville prison into the penitentiary, where men only will be confined, and these only for major offenses.

“The prisoners are now allowed more liberties; they are permitted to enjoy the prison libraries, attend night school, organized in the various cell houses, attend religious services, to have the freedom of the grounds at stated times, and when the weather permits to play ball and take other healthful outdoor exercises, to receive mail, and are given better and cleaner cells and better food.

“So, after all, the situation does not appear alarming, but on the other hand it is believed by those in touch with conditions that the released prisoners will come out into the world again with a full appreciation of the joys and privileges of liberty, and few of them will again wilfully disobey the laws and be returned to bondage once more.”

Modern Detention Prison For Women in New York City.—After years of effort on the part of civic organizations, borough officials and individuals, the city is at last to have a Home of Detention and Court for Women. It is to be a fourteen-storied structure and is to occupy a 100×100 foot plot on the north side of West Thirtieth street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The working drawings are now being prepared by the architects, Griffin & Wynkoop of No. 30 Church street, and construction will begin in the near future.

The need of such a building has from time to time been emphasized by the numerous abuses attendant upon the imprisonment of women. Heretofore both men and women have been confined in the same building, and because the police stations and the City Prison were of an obsolete design, there was no way of segregating the first offenders from the hardened criminals, a condition which sociologists have long deplored.

The plans for the new building provide for this segregation. Provision is made for three general classes of prisoners, these to be again subdivided into other groups. No longer will first offenders be herded into dark, unsanitary cells along with the habitual offenders. The building is so arranged that each room will be flooded with sunlight at some time of the day; moreover, each cell will have its own individual window and will be provided with running water, basin and sanitary conveniences.

The Magistrates’ Court with its entrances and subdivisions is placed in the first four stories. The Detention Home and District Prison with their subdivisions are placed in the fifth to fourteenth stories.

It was found that by placing the small rooms of the Home of Detention and Prison around the court, recessed from the street, most of the dangers of communication between prisoners and the outside could be obviated, and the possibility of introducing drugs and weapons into the building overcome.

The prisoners are to be delivered through a driveway court into the room for arrested persons, taken to their individual temporary detention rooms on the first and second floors, from which an officer[17] conducts them to the complaint room, or in a continuous line of circulation through the prisoners’ waiting room, the court room, the finger print room, and after sentence, to the room for detained persons, from which they are taken by guards of the Detention Home and Prison and after examination put among that group of prisoners which their degree of crime permits or requires.

The public will enter the building through a public vestibule, pass up a large stairway and enter the court room or complaint room through a public lobby on the second floor. The court room is 25 feet high, of ample size, and has abundant light and cross ventilation from the street into an interior light court, which opens at its top into the recessed light court of the Detention Home above.

The entrance to the probation and administrative portions of the Magistrates’ Court is through a special vestibule controlled by the janitor of the building at the southwest corner. Women on probation of the court can report to their probation officer in the second floor without coming in contact with the crowd frequenting the courtrooms and public vestibule. Probation officers are to be located on the floor immediately below the courtroom and will have ready access to the courtroom when their attendance there is required. Reporters are to be given a special room and provided with tables and seats in the court. The judge, the clerk of the court, the assistant clerks and the district attorney are allotted rooms on the fourth floor, which is accessible to all of the lower floors of the building by a special elevator and stairs.

On the fifth floor of the building are placed the administrative offices of the home and prison, the apartments of the superintendent and assistant superintendent and separate facilities for visitors coming to see the home and prison. The visitors cannot at any time pass to the prisoners either weapons or drugs. Double wire screens will at all times separate the prisoners from the visitors.

From the sixth to the fourteenth floor there will be twenty-four rooms on each floor, these being for housing the inmates of the home and prison. Each group of twelve rooms will have a dining and living room, a service pantry, a bathroom and a storage closet for linen and clothing. An open air exercise loggia will connect the two twelve-room groups.

The prison and home rooms will be slightly different, in that the prison rooms will have steel grilled fronts opening onto the corridor, whereas the rooms of the detention home will have regular fireproof doors fitted with a small grilled panel, for the convenience of matrons in overseeing their charges. Each of the small rooms will be provided with a wash basin, a water closet and a bed.

Criminals in War.—Criminals generally turn out to be cowards on the battlefield, according to observations in the cases of 225 men with jail or prison sentences in their record made during the campaign of Italy in Tripoli by Dr. Consiglio, chief of staff surgeons with the Italian army.

Dr. Consiglio says:

“The abnormal man is unfit for methodically disciplined effort in times of peace; in war, where the demands of discipline and the strain of systematic preparations increases, he displays invariably sooner or later a reaction against his surroundings, which manifests itself chiefly in morbid lack of discipline, disobedience, insubordination or even desertion. The moral strain and the violent manifestations of war induce in such men physical disturbances, excitative crises, hysteric and epileptic attacks and acute insanity. They lack the possibility of methodic action, the iron will to respond to the multiple demands of the instant and to the continued physical and intellectual strain.”

Probation in New York State.—The increasing use of the probation idea throughout the State is shown by reports of the State Probation Commission. More than 9,000 persons are now on probation in the State, including over 2,000 children. Approximately one-half of these are located in New York City; the remainder are scattered in nearly every city and in many of the rural communities of the State. The appointment of county probation officers to have charge of the probation work in all the courts of the counties[18] is rapidly increasing in favor. Twenty-three counties now have such officers.

The use of volunteers to assist the regularly appointed officers is still practiced in many courts. Forty-nine new volunteer officers have been commissioned during the last two months.

Probation officers were shown to have more than justified their work from a financial point of view alone. During the past year more than $77,000 was collected by probation officers throughout the State from husbands charged with non-support, and the same turned over directly to their wives and children. Ten thousand dollars was also collected for fines on the installment plan. This amount went direct to the various cities and counties employing the officers.

The Commission meets every two months in various cities of the State.

Parole and Other Matters in Rhode Island.—Prisoners who have served part of their sentences at the Rhode Island penal institutions will be admitted to parole if the recommendation of the State Board of Control and Supply, made in its annual report to the General Assembly is carried out.

This recommendation, which the Board seeks to have made into law, would allow a prisoner to remain at liberty as long as he lives up to the terms of his parole. It is pointed out that other States have such laws on their statute books, and that Rhode Island, if it is to live up to modern methods in handling prisoners, must fall into line.

Another recommendation contained in the report, is that one board should be given full control over the management of the various institutions, while the sociological work, such as welfare, admission and probation of inmates, should come under another board.

One of the most important items is that connected with the operation of the new shirt contract, the returns from which show a substantial increase over the revenue obtained by the State from the old agreement.

According to the report, the change from the contract with the Sterling Manufacturing Company has been a most beneficial one.

Under that agreement the State received 30 cents per dozen for shirts, whereas under the new contract with the Crescent Garment Company, the State receives 50 cents per dozen for the same garments.

The result of this during the past year has been an increase in the total revenue derived by the State from $24,185.04, the amount received under a year’s contract with the old company, to $42,930.56, the total received during the year 1913 under the new contract.

The additional revenue to the State from this contract alone, over the year 1912, it is figured, will be sufficient to pay all salaries of the members of the Board of Control and Supply, as well as the clerical staff of the office.

Chicago to Study Criminals.—Enthusiastic press notices come from Chicago about the proposed criminal laboratory.

The judges of the Municipal court have unanimously voted to establish a psychopathic laboratory for criminal study, thus, it is asserted, placing that court far in advance of any judicial body in this country.

All prisoners who go before a judge of the Municipal court and show indications of being weak mentally or who are believed to have physical defects will be sent to the new laboratory for expert examination in the hope that some way may be found to correct criminal tendencies and restore the victims to normal condition.

If possible, arrangements will be made to send a certain class of prisoners into the country, where they may breathe pure air and come in direct contact with the best there is in nature. Dr. William J. Hickson of Vineland, N. J., who has spent years in psychopathic work, including six months as an assistant in the department of neurology and psychiatry at the Royal Charity hospital, Berlin, has been selected by the judges to take charge of the Chicago laboratory at a salary of $5,000 annually. Miss Mary R. Campbell of Milwaukee was selected as an associate to Dr. Hickson after a committee of judges had made a year’s search for the best experts to be had in this country.

There is an appropriation of $8,500 by the city council available for the work.

In arguing for a psychopathic laboratory Chief Justice Harry Olson and other jurists[19] interested in scientific treatment of criminals have said that under present conditions there was no alternative for the judges except to sentence those found guilty of transgressing the law. Time and again, it is asserted, they have been compelled to deal with prisoners who were not considered actually insane though having mental defects. There was no expert advice available and, in a way, they dealt blindly with the cases. Now it is declared it will be possible to give every such suspect—murder, pickpocket or otherwise—a scientific examination.

Coroner Hoffman several months ago established a psychopathic laboratory in connection with his office. Its mission is to ascertain causes of mysterious deaths. The Juvenile court also has a psychopathic laboratory.

Five Escaping Convicts Killed.—On April 4th, a carefully planned prison delivery was frustrated at the State penitentiary in Folsom, when five convicts were shot down. Four were killed instantly and one mortally wounded by prison guards who had been stationed at vantage points where they could rake the entire corridor of the incorrigible ward with rifle fire at the least sign of a disturbance.

Only a dozen prisoners were connected with the plot out of the thousand or more convicts in the prison. Previous warning received by the prison officials that a break was to be attempted prevented what might have been a general prison delivery. The most desperate convicts in the State are confined in the Folsom prison.

Folsom, or Repressa, as it is known officially, is a prison without surrounding walls, the convicts being employed largely in the stone quarry and prison farm during the day, returning to the prison buildings at night, but always under guard.

The fact that the prison is without walls has impressed the convicts that it would be comparatively easy to escape at night and several fatal attempts have been made.

Flogging Convicts.—According to the Chronicle of Charlotte, N. C.:

“The North Carolina supreme court has handed down a decision written by Chief Justice Walter Clark saying that corporal punishment by flogging is not reasonable and cannot be sustained. It is true that this decision refers to whipping convicts by guards, but it is only a little stretch to make the application cover all cases except where used by parents as a corrective method for children, and it is not too big an undertaking to even reach that form. The court now takes judicial notice when the parent becomes too severe with the child.

“Some months ago a Wake county convict was whipped by a guard, and the matter was carried into the courts. The defendant was adjudged guilty in superior court and a fine of $10 was imposed. In this case the defendant raised the point that flogging was necessary for the maintenance of discipline among the convicts. It was shown further that it has been the custom in all camps to use whipping to subdue the unruly. The case was carried to the supreme court by the defendant, but that body affirmed the decision of the lower court.

“Continuing, Judge Clark gives it as the opinion of the court that while the constitution of the State does not directly prohibit corporal punishment in prison discipline, its spirit is against the longer use of floggings for that purpose. The opinion cites the powers of the world which have abolished prison whipping, and says even Mexico by legislative enactment more than a decade ago did away with such punishment for prisoners. In conclusion, Judge Clark says, ‘we have, however, been discussing the legal rights of the prisoners and we find no authority for its longer continuance.’

[20]

“It is true that there is a general opinion among many, especially those who have to deal with convicts, that flogging is the only effective way to secure and maintain discipline, and they contend that unless proper methods are used with a certain class of prisoners a condition will soon arise in the camps which will cause a great deal of trouble. With a squad of vicious and unruly prisoners who have a resourceful leader knowing that the courts will protect them from that only dread of convict-flogging—the ingenuity of the officers will be taxed to secure proper results.

“On the other hand the decision will prevent the undue use of the whip by guards, a few of whom are only too anxious for an opportunity to administer corporal punishment to those who are helpless. While cases of the abuse of this power by the guards are very rare, heretofore the opportunity has always been present for the man who was vicious enough to use it.

“What will be the result of the decision upon the convict discipline of the future, time alone can tell.”

Brick Plant at Elmira.—Bricks for use in constructing highways in New York State will be made at the Elmira State Reformatory as soon as buildings and apparatus are erected, Governor Glynn having signed the Murtaugh bill, appropriating $75,000 for this purpose. The plan is the first step in the Governor’s recommendation to the Legislature that convicts be employed in manufacturing road material.

Governor Glynn pointed out the greatest item in the construction of brick roads is the cost of vitrified brick. “If the State can secure this brick cheaply,” the Governor said, “the road problem would be solved. In a brick road costing twenty-five thousand dollars a mile, the brick itself costs twelve thousand dollars. Those who are qualified to speak inform me that by securing the vitrified brick for New York’s roads in this manner brick roads can be constructed at a cost of $15,000 a mile.

“On this basis the total cost of a mile of brick road for twenty years would be $16,000, including $15,000 for building and twenty years of maintenance at $50 a year. The total cost of macadam road for the same period is $36,000.

“An idea of the importance of the economy I propose may be gained from the fact that the total saving in the 7,300 miles of road yet to be constructed would amount to $146,000,000 in the twenty years after their completion, or more than the total cost of constructing our entire systems of highways, and I am gratified that the first decisive step toward this end has been taken in the enactment of the Murtaugh law.”

Apropos of Brick Makers.—More than 150,000 concrete bricks were made by workhouse prisoners at Minneapolis during the month the new plant has been in operation. Superintendent Frank McDonald says his theory of winter labor and the utilization of the short term prisoner for skilled labor has been justified. The plant is employing 60 men and will continue to operate until May 1 when the clay brick industry will open. Whether it will be operated during the summer is not certain.

Parole in Wisconsin.—Society’s benefit as the result of the adoption of the parole system for prisoners of the State penitentiary at Waupun is demonstrated in a report that has just been compiled by the state board of control which shows that less than 10 per cent. of prisoners paroled violated it. The percentage of violation among the “lifers” is even smaller.

The Wisconsin parole law has been in operation over six years. It became effective in August, 1907. Up to February 28 this year, 938 applications have been considered for parole at the State prison at Waupun. Of this number 480 were granted; 445 were denied; 8 were continued and 5 were withdrawn.

Of the 480 granted, 345 have received their final discharge, 27 were not discharged on account of not having proper employment, 46 defaulted, 10 applications did not meet with executive approval, 5 died while on parole, 2 were pardoned while on parole and 45 are now making monthly reports.

Of the 45 who defaulted 37 have been returned to prison, 7 are at large and two[21] are in prison in other states and will be returned to Wisconsin penitentiary to serve out their terms as soon as they have completed their other sentences.

Under the Wisconsin law “lifers” are eligible for parole after they have served a certain number of years and have been on “good behavior.” In the time the law has been in effect, the applications of 34 “lifers” have been considered. Fourteen have been granted and twenty refused. Of the fourteen granted, 10 are now making monthly reports, two have died and one returned to the prison voluntarily claiming that he was not fitted for the world and that “prison is a more desirable place for me.” One violated a rule of the board of control, was returned to prison, but when it was discovered that others were probably more to blame for the technical violation than the prisoner, he was paroled. He is now making regular reports.

For the past calendar year 227 applications for parole from the prison were considered, of which 114 were granted, 108 denied, 2 withdrawn and two were continued. Of the 114 granted during the past year 66 have received their final discharge, 33 are now making monthly reports, 13 have defaulted, and 2 were not discharged on account of not having proper employment.

Of the 13 who defaulted, 11 were returned to prison and two are at large. In the six years out of the 480 paroles granted there were only 46 who defaulted. This is less than ten per cent.

“The men who are on parole draw from $20 to $35 a month and some of them more,” said President Smith.

Honor Camp in Georgia.—On motion of Commissioner Winn the first honor convict camp to be established in Georgia was recently authorized by the Fulton County board of commissioners, recently. A force of negro convicts, who have long been trusties, will be put to work grading. Some of these trusties will take the place of drivers, who are now employed by the county at a cost of $4,000 per year.

Two other resolutions tending toward convict reform were adopted. One provides that the convicts shall not be worked more than ten hours a day at any time during the year, and fixes longer dinner hours than have heretofore been allowed. Another provides that the convicts shall not be forced to walk a longer distance than three-quarters of a mile to their work.

Up to Father.—We copy the following story from the annual report of the Pennsylvania Prison Society.

James A. Leonard, President of the American Prison Association, relates the following story:

Prison Earnings in New York.—The convict population of the State of New York at present is 4,604, an increase of 88 over a year ago. The highest number confined at any one time during the year was 4,838. The total cost of maintenance during the year was $814,583. Sing Sing earned $73,371.50, a decrease of $3,513 over the previous year; Auburn earned $29,167.45, decrease of $39,954; Clinton earned $36,963.72, decrease of $7,811.

[22]

The Views of Boston’s District Attorney.

Not Stripes, But Uniforms.—The fourth State Legislature of Oklahoma provides modestly colored jeans—gray jeans for the regulars, brown jeans for trusties in the State Penitentiary. The “ring-tailed” stripes are still found in the store rooms of the penitentiary, but they are used only as a means of punishment, to be worn only by prisoners who have escaped and been returned after capture. Suits of novelty goods, various colors, but neat, though cheap, business cuts, are provided when prisoners have served their terms.

“Dope” in Magazines.—A prisoner recently released from Stillwater Prison, Minnesota, has been arrested by post office inspectors in New York.

Prisoners’ Wages in Iowa.—Under date of February 6th the Des Moines Register states that the method of paying prisoners for their work within the State Prison walls has been tried long enough to prove the venture successful. The corps of salary-earning convicts are those employed on the new cell house, including electricians, wirers, plumbers, plasterers, steam fitters, mechanics and iron workers. Just now the working force is somewhat reduced, though the weekly payroll amounts to $69.

An effort is on foot to secure a wage allowance for the men employed upon the construction of a new reservoir, to be followed by compensation to prisoners for all work on strictly prison industries. As an ultimate possibility in this direction is the plan to put all prisoners upon a salary, charging them for their care and living, with opportunity given for earnings.

At the same time, throughout the city of Fort Madison is being circulated a petition to Governor Clarke to halt the employment of prisoners to do laboring work about the city. Such work as papering,[23] plastering, painting and carpet cleaning is specifically mentioned. The petition has nearly a thousand signers.

At Duluth, Minnesota.—Although the joint city and county work farm had been in operation little over a month by February 9th, prisoners sent there have already cleared the underbrush from nearly 20 acres. It is expected by spring over 200 acres will be cleared. During the summer the men will prepare the land already cleared so that it may be plowed in the spring of 1915.

According to Superintendent Fred Ward of the farm, all men now at the institution are apparently satisfied with conditions and appear willing to work. A few have been encountered, he says, who at first refused to do their share.

In all 52 men have been sent to the farm from municipal and district courts. Four men have been discharged, leaving 48, the limit, now in the toils.

Ending an Old Abuse.—The Boston Transcript thus characterizes the effort of the War Department of our country to modernize its treatment of military prisoners. “The bill for the revision of the Articles of War, which was passed by the Senate recently without dissent, and almost without debate, is intended to be the legislative expression of Secretary Garrison’s advanced ideas on military penology. It will be remembered that in September last Secretary Garrison issued an order applying the principle of endeavoring to make the military prisoner better instead of worse for his imprisonment. This is a familiar purpose in civil penology, but an innovation in the military code. Secretary Garrison could proceed but tentatively in putting his reform—for reform it is—into operation, but now, if the House concurs, he will have the authority of unquestionable law with him in substituting detention barracks for military prisons.

“The scope of Secretary Garrison’s new departure becomes apparent when it is said that heretofore criminal and military offences have been regarded almost from the same point of view, and the offenders have been treated along the same lines of punishment. Men were sent to the army prisons, where they were worked hard and were made to feel their disgrace whenever possible, only to be finally dishonorably discharged, which included the forfeiting of all the rights of citizenship. Naturally, this kind of treatment was not exactly fair to all the prisoners, for many of the offenders had made serious mistakes through an ignorance of military matters, or through the yielding to some outside influence, such as deserting to visit a sick relative. Such men as these were not really bad, but nevertheless they were made to serve time with the ultimate disgrace of dishonorable dismissal hanging over them along with men who were convicted of acts of moral turpitude.

“The military prisoners now are practically divided into two classes, a classification that the proposed law will maintain:

“This new order of September 17 deals mainly with the first class.

“All soldiers of the first class are separated from those of the second class, and are given a chance to make good and to ultimately return to their regiments and fulfil their term of enlistment. The time they have spent in confinement is not taken out of their period of enlistment. Most of these men are sent to the new detention barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Ks., while the remaining few go to the barracks at the Presidio, just outside of San Francisco. No men go to these barracks unless they have a term of three months or more to serve, as men with short sentences are placed in the post guard house.

“Upon a soldier’s arrival at one of these detention barracks he is eligible for one of the companies or battalions, which are organized, equipped and drilled as infantry under the command of officers and non-commissioned officers specially selected and detailed from the active list. A serious attempt is made to do away with all the atmosphere of a prison. The men are not known by numbers, but by their own names; and the heretofore prison garb is replaced by a uniform, differing slightly from that of the Service. There is also[24] school for the more illiterate men, and courses in shorthand and typewriting are open to all wishing to take up these subjects. Thus, these men will learn things which will be to their advantage later in civil life. No menial work whatever will be performed by the prisoners, except their own police duty. Under this system the men will not feel all the while that they are prisoners as they formerly did, but as soldiers doing soldiers’ work and receiving soldiers’ training. And when these men return to the colors they will not return as men who have worn stripes and numbers, but as men who have been subjected to a special and rigid regime of military instruction and training, for the purpose of bestowing upon them new ideals of conduct, and to make them capable of performing efficient service upon rejoining the army.

“And as for the men of Class II.—those convicted of acts of moral turpitude—they are sent to Federal penitentiaries, where they will serve the sentence given them by a military court martial. When their time is up they will be dishonorably discharged, thus forfeiting their right of citizenship.

“Also, this new system will have much to do in the saving of material, money and character. It will save many from becoming social outcasts, who only spread germs of antagonism against the army and all organized government. The shorter terms of confinement, during which the men receive schooling of more than one kind, cannot but help in making soldiers and not in destroying them.”

Alphonse Bertillon Dead.—Alphonse Bertillon, who died recently at Paris, was the creator of the famous Bertillon system for the identification of criminals. He was director of the anthropometric department of the Paris police. The system was introduced into France in 1883, and was eventually adopted by police departments in all parts of the world, including the United States. However, in later years it is being gradually supplanted by the finger-print system.

M. Bertillon’s system was based on his discoveries that certain physical features and dimensions of certain bones or bony structures in the body practically remain the same during adult life. He took the measures of the head length, head breadth, the length of the middle finger, the left foot and the length of the forearm from the elbow to the end of the little finger. These various measurements were subdivided into three classes, “small,” “medium” and “large.” As the system developed, M. Bertillon added the height of a person, the color of the eyes and length of the little finger. All this information was entered on classified cards.

By means of the system police departments have been able to keep records of crooks who have been arrested and convicted. This information has been of great value in the prosecution of criminals, identified as previous offenders by means of the records, notwithstanding their professions of innocence. Identification bureaus in the largest cities exchange Bertillon measurements one with another, and thus increase the efficiency of the system and add to the embarrassment of the criminally inclined.

Parole in Michigan.—During the fiscal year ending December 31, 1913, the State pardon board paroled 647 prisoners, having investigated a total of 1,424 cases. The average length of parole was 10.8 months, the average number on parole during the year was 619 and the number of prisoners violating their paroles was 199, the percentage of violation being 15.9 per cent.

Forty-three meetings were held by the board, four being at Marquette, 12 at Jackson, 12 at Detroit and three at Lansing.

The paroled prisoners earned a total of $287,796.65, while the total expenses of the board were $4,370.30.

There is some opposition to the present system of a pardon board, the members of which receive $7 per day and expenses when acting. No member is paid for more than 200 days of any one year, however.

The Jacksonville Correctional Farm.—Police Justice Stein, of Detroit, has recently brought this description of the Jacksonville (Fla.) city prison farm:

[25]

“The farm consists of 640 acres, a mile square, and lies about seven miles outside the city of Jacksonville,” he said. “The property was purchased by the city two years ago. Several hundred acres were then covered with timber. Much of it was high and dry and clear of timber, while the remainder of the land was submerged. The land was purchased at a low price. Since the city bought it the water has been drained off into the St. Johns’ river, and this portion of the farm is now as fertile as any land in Florida.

“An ordinary wire fence, about five feet high, is the only enclosure about the farm. There are four buildings on the land, all of wood. One is for the women who are sent to the farm, and one for the attendants, consisting of a warden, a cook, a physician and several guards and helpers. The other two are used by the prisoners. The buildings for the prisoners are equipped with shower baths.

“The prisoners are taught to work on the farm. They raise all the vegetables used on the farm, and the sole cost to the city of operating the farm is for meat and clothes which averages about seven cents a day for each prisoner. The prisoners do not wear striped clothes, but overalls and ordinary jumpers. Neither is a ball and chain fastened to them when they go to work. During the last two years but one prisoner has escaped or tried to escape, and he came back of his own volition two days later.

“The average number of men on the farm runs from 75 to 100, while the number of women averages about three to five. Both whites and negroes are sent to the farm. Besides the farm work carried on, the men work on roads, ditches, at cutting timber, and in planting new trees. The men are divided into squads.

“No prisoner is sentenced to the farm for more than ninety days.

“By a peculiar architectural arrangement one man can guard all the buildings. Each building has but one door. These doors all face a common center, about 25 yards away. The walks from the doors to the center are bordered by a high wire fence. At the center is the gate, which admits the prisoners to the farm. Here the guard sits with his rifle, and he can cover the buildings easily.

“The increased value of the land since it was purchased by the city, due to the draining of the swamp, its high degree of fertility and the good roads on it, have more than offset the purchase price, and the money expended by the city to keep the prisoners in meat and clothes.

“I think the day is not far distant when Detroit will consider the advisability of establishing a prison farm.

“Most of the prisoners at the Jacksonville farm are drunks and petty offenders, and the steady work in the open air away from other workmen and congestion of one kind and another, has a salutary effect on their mental processes, which is highly beneficial. The average number of prisoners who come back to the farm for further offenses is relatively small, according to Justice Anderson. I think it is a step in the right direction.

“In Jacksonville persons who carry concealed weapons are sentenced by the police judge and not by the judges of the recorder’s court, as is the case in Detroit. A police justice also has the power of pardoning any person he sentences to the prison farm. Justice Anderson told me he would not be police justice if he did not have the pardoning power.”

Politics and Prison.—“Until politicians keep their hands off State prisons there is no hope for reforming notorious abuses in the system,” says Henry Solomon, President of the New York State Commission of Prisons. Mr. Solomon recently finished an exhaustive examination of Sing Sing Prison.

“We see no use in mincing words on this subject,” said Mr. Solomon. “We know it is not an easy thing to find the right man to run a prison, but we believe he can be found some where in this country, if it is really desired to find him.

“The present Warden at Sing Sing has so far as we know no particular experience in prison matters. He has however, made many improvements in the short time he has been there. We are perfectly willing to suspend judgment until he has had a further chance to prove what he can do.[26] We must add, however, that there is much room for improvement and particularly in the industries.”

Mr. Solomon said that the suggestions of Thomas Mott Osborne, arising from his personal experience in Auburn Prison, had afforded valuable hints.

Some Reasons For Massachusetts Pardons.—The Governor and Council in Massachusetts granted 69 pardons in 1913. One man, sentenced to 18 months for polygamy, had had papers served on him back in 1902 for divorce, had been introduced to a man represented to be his divorced wife’s second husband and, supposing himself to be a single man, had married a Lawrence woman in 1911. Another, an 18-year-old sailor-boy, sentenced for assault and battery, had had no counsel at his trial. Another sentenced for second-degree murder, was at most, according to this statement, guilty only of manslaughter for striking a fatal blow at a huge negro in fear of repetition of revolting treatment. He had pleaded guilty to the greater charge on advice of counsel.

Among a long list of cases, somewhat similar in the showing made, is a curious one of a man released on condition that he go to the Long Island hospital and submit to an operation for the transfusion of blood to his mother, who it was believed could be cured in this way and would otherwise die.

Such a report lends strength to the plan Prison Commissioner Randall is urging before the legislature for an indeterminate sentence system, says the Worcester Post. It is a question on which much can be said pro and con, though the most advanced penologists are pretty well agreed as to its advantages when wisely administered. Indiana and Minnesota have found that it works with even unexpected success. Mr. Randall, in the recent hearing on his bill, urged that it

“Would relieve the courts from fixing the maximum and minimum of those committed to state prison, which was right, for the court’s duty is simply to find whether a man is guilty and it does not study his personality to any extent. The question of when a prisoner shall be released should be left to the parole board rather than to the court.”

As a practical consideration, also, it would relieve the Governor and council from work which now absorbs much of their time and energy. A competent parole board would specialize in the study of convicts and their needs and thus add to knowledge that is needed in our modern life and the duty to make it better by every means within our reach.

The Virginia Penitentiary.—According to the annual report of the State penitentiary board to the governor, the big prison not only made expenses last year, but earned a net profit of $20,412.31. Its operating expenses were $115,098.88 and its receipts $135,511.10. Of the total earnings $130,573 came from the hiring of the men on the contract system in the penitentiary shops. Defending itself from the charge of overworking the prisoners for the benefit of the contract holders, the board calls attention to the fact that the 800 prisoners released during the year ending September 31, were paid the sum of $10,575.85, which represents their earnings during imprisonment.

The board emphasizes the fact that the prisoners do not work more than an average of nine hours a day. The amount of the prisoners’ fund on hand on October 1, was $16,22.44, notwithstanding that $10,575.85 had been paid to discharged prisoners and $14,902.79 spent by the prisoners during the year on delicacies.

There were in the penitentiary on October 1, 1913, 728 prisoners, 300 at the State farm and 1,057 in the twenty-nine road camps, making a total of 2,118. On the same day of 1912, there were in the penitentiary 1,158 prisoners confined, 286 at the State farm and 691 in nineteen road camps, a total of 2,131. The daily average of prisoners confined in the penitentiary for the fiscal year ending September 31, 1913, was 1,012, as against 1,213 for the preceding year.

A total of 785 new prisoners were received during the year. By expiration of term, 487 prisoners were discharged, two were granted absolute pardons, fifty-six were granted conditional pardons, 169[27] were paroled, 31 died, 54 escaped from the road camps and nine were sent to insane asylums.

Of the 728 prisoners not fitted for work in the road camps, 139 are white men, 499 colored men, five white women and eighty-five colored women. Of the 785 prisoners received during the year 362 could read and write and 423 were illiterate; 373 were abstainers, 278 moderate drinkers and 134 intemperate; 277 were married, 489 single and two divorced.—(Roanoke News).

A Holiday at Auburn.—An unusual event took place in Auburn prison, when 1,400 convicts, observing Lincoln’s birthday, marched from cells to chapel and mess hall in charge of convict captains, elected by the inmates several weeks before, as their representatives in the mutual welfare league. The convict officers relieved the regular officers of their usual duties and maintained splendid discipline.

The holiday entertainment was furnished entirely by convict talent and included an oration on Lincoln by an inmate.

The Development of Road Work.—Thirteen States have passed laws during the present year allowing the use of convicts in the construction and repair of highways, according to a compilation by Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, assistant in social legislation in Columbia university and chairman of the executive committee of the national committee on prison labor. They are Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As many other States had previously passed similar legislation, but few of the forty-eight States have not adopted the policy of using prisoners to build and maintain public roads.

West Virginia and Iowa are the two States whose laws regarding the working of convicts on highways stand out most prominently. So anxious was the governor of the former State to secure an effective law that he went to New York and with the assistance of representatives of the national committee on prison labor, of the road department of Columbia university and of the legislative drafting bureau worked out bills making compulsory the employment of convicts on the roads. The West Virginia law authorizes the county courts to make appropriations out of road funds for convict work; it states that the court shall sentence any male person over sixteen to road work instead of to the county jail; persons charged with misdemeanors unable to furnish bail shall work on the roads and if acquitted when tried shall be paid 50 cents a day for each day’s work they perform; justices of the peace shall sentence to work on the roads persons convicted of crime whom otherwise they would send to the county jail.

Another feature of the West Virginia law is the establishment of a State road bureau to supervise any plans proposed by a county for using prison labor in road building. The plan approved, the county shall apply to the board of control for the number of prisoners required and shall state the length of time they shall be needed. The board shall, as far as possible, give equal service to each of the counties and shall determine which prisoners may be assigned to such work. The warden is to provide suitable and movable quarters, which shall be built, where possible, by convict labor. The convicts shall remain under direct control of the warden, their work, however, being under the supervision of the road bureau.

In Iowa the board of control of the State institutions with the advice of the warden of any penal institution, may permit able bodied male prisoners to work on the roads. The law specifically states such labor shall not be leased to contractors. A prisoner opposed to such work, or whose character and disposition make it probable that he would attempt escape or be unruly, is not to be worked on the highways. Although the prisoners are under the jurisdiction of the warden while building or repairing roads, their work is supervised by the State Highway Commissioner. Prisoners employed on the highways of Iowa receive such part of their earnings above the cost of their keep as the board deems equitable, the earnings[28] either being funded or given to their dependent families. Before Iowa passed her present prison labor laws, George W. Cosson, attorney general of the State, made a thorough investigation of the prisons of his own and other States, and strongly denounced the contract system, under which the prisoners were employed up to that time. Mr. Cosson drew up the road bill and is of the opinion it will do much to drive the contract system out of the State.

The Cost of a “Chair.”—The State of Tennessee’s new electric chair at the State prison is now in readiness.

A total of 2,300 volts are to be used in operating the death chair. The equipment is said to be the most up-to-date in the United States. It cost the State of Tennessee $1,750.

Land Reclamation Plans in Massachusetts.—Under the provisions of the so-called wet lands reclamation act passed by the legislature of last year, the State boards of agriculture and health are contemplating the purchase of about 300 acres of swamp land in Walpole, to begin work which is eventually expected to reclaim between 100,000 and 200,000 acres of land within 30 miles of Boston, and including the towns of North Billerica, Lincoln, Concord, Bedford and Carlisle.

Most of the land will be available for agricultural purposes; other portions will furnish manufacturing sites.

Chairman Randall of the prison commission is considering the advisability of using prison labor on the work, and an effort will shortly be made to obtain from the legislature provision whereby a portion of the wages earned by the prison laborers can be given to their families.

Convict Farm in Arkansas Condemned.—Here are some of the conditions alleged by Officer W. M. Rankin of the Arkansas Humane Society to exist at the Monroe County convict farm. Mr. Rankin made the following charges:

That when the prisoners were brought in from their work at six o’clock in the afternoon, they were chained to a long chain which extended the length of their room and that they were thus kept chained all night. They were kept chained thus from six o’clock Saturday night until they went to work Monday morning, being released only to take baths. Mr. Rankin states, however, that he was told by the prisoners and by one of the guards that the chaining was discontinued about a week before he visited the place.

That he found eight white men confined in a room about twelve feet square. That he found ten negro prisoners in a room 12 by 14 feet.

That the bed for the white prisoners consisted of some straw mattresses placed on planks that had been nailed to the wall, four comforts and no pillows. That the bedding for the ten negro prisoners consisted of two straw mattresses and a few comforts, all of which were covered with vermin.

That all clothing given the prisoners was charged to them and that they were forced to work out the amounts charged except for rubber boots furnished them.

That the food furnished the prisoners was insufficient; that they were furnished with neither knives nor forks nor a table and were compelled to stand or sit on their bunks while eating.

That prisoners were whipped on their naked flesh with a heavy piece of leather about four and three inches in width.

That sanitary conditions were awful.

Mr. Rankin further charges that he found men working on the farm who had been convicted in the court of the mayor of Brinkley and also that he found that many of the negro convicts had been detained for a considerable period after their terms had expired, according to the records of the mayor’s court.

Three white men are mentioned as being illegally detained. One was Claude McKinnon, and Mr. Rankin said that he has in his possession a certified copy of the docket of the court of Mayor Camerone of Brinkley, which shows that McKinnon was tried January 13, on a charge of loitering and discharged, despite which fact, he was found confined at the county farm.

Another white man, says the report,[29] was W. Van Beek, who was sentenced from the mayor’s court January 6. The report says that Van Beek was still on the farm February 1, and that if the mayor’s docket was correct, he had then worked seven days overtime.

He also says that Frank Lynch, fined $10 and $4.30 costs in the mayor’s court, December 29, was released from the farm February 1, and that if the mayor’s docket is correct, he has worked 14 days overtime.

Transportation Again?—The Buffalo (N. Y.) Express states that

Idleness Reduced at Ohio Penitentiary.—The Columbia Journal says that “a remarkable change in penitentiary conditions has occurred since Warden Thomas was put in charge of the institution last summer by Governor Cox. At that time there were 750 idle men in the institution; to-day only 200 men are in the idle house. Within the next two weeks the idle house will be more than conspicuous by the absence of occupants.”

The new school and the woolen mills nearing completion will result in the depletion of the ranks of the idle house. This is the final solution of one of the biggest problems at the penitentiary, which Governor Cox insisted should be met when he placed Warden Thomas in charge. The prisoners in the school will attend six-hour sessions.

“The White City,” said to be the finest example of cell-block construction in the country, is the name given by prisoners at Ohio penitentiary to the new cell block which replaced one built in 1874. “The White City” houses 580 men. It is known officially as cell blocks “C” and “D.” It has 280 cells, built in five ranges or stories, with 28 cells to a range.

Two prisoners sleep in each cell on steel bunks, which can be raised up against the wall like the upper berths of a sleeping car. The entire cell block and all equipment in it are built entirely of steel. It is fireproof throughout, the only inflammable things in it being the hair mattresses used by the prisoners. “The White City” is modern and sanitary, with running water, electric lights and toilet facilities in each cell.

The prisoners in “the White City” are men of excellent behavior and “100 per cent.” men. This cell block is about the only part of the present penitentiary that will be used in the new prison farm. It was constructed in such a way that it can be moved to the prison farm in sections.

Another Item From Colorado.—“We have built between 1,200 and 1,500 miles of State highways under this system at a cost of about $389 per mile for labor,” says Warden Tynan. “These roads are built of disintegrated granite and are fine boulevards—not ordinary roads. We are now driving a road through solid granite, 16 feet wide and well surfaced, which costs us about $1,000 per mile for labor, and that is the hardest kind of construction.[30] The roads are maintained in good condition by the use of drags. They cost about $4 each, and are effective in keeping the road well surfaced, if used after each heavy rain.

“The State does this work for the counties by furnishing a dollar in labor for each dollar that the county provides for road work. The money the State puts up is used to maintain the camps, an expense of 32 cents per day per man.”

Cleaning Out a Prison.—Governor Cole L. Blease expects to clear the South Carolina Penitentiary of about four hundred prisoners by next August, according to his statement during an inquiry into the conditions at the State Hospital for the Insane by a special legislative committee. The governor urged that the prison be converted into a tuberculosis hospital for negroes.

D. J. Griffith, Superintendent, said there were not enough convicts left to do even such work as waiting on the table. There were more than 1,300 prisoners in the penitentiary when Gov. Blease assumed office three years ago, but he has extended Executive clemency in more than a thousand cases. “In January sixty-four convicts had been the recipients of clemency and if the Governor continues at his usual rate it will not be long until the penitentiary will be cleaned out.”—So speaks the New York Evening Sun of February 5.

An Ex-Convict Running For Governor.—Al J. Jennings, ex-train robber and federal prisoner, who won the Democratic nomination for county attorney of Oklahoma county, Oklahoma, in 1912, has announced his candidacy for the governorship of the State of Oklahoma.

“My object is to clean up the party in Oklahoma. I intend to fight double dealing political thieves, with whom no self-respecting outlaw of former years can associate.

“All I want is to see absolutely honest men at the head of the government, and after I have announced my candidacy if some man whose integrity and uprightness are unquestioned becomes a candidate I shall withdraw and support him with all of my ability.

“Some people do not seem to be able to understand how an outlaw, an ex-train robber and federal prisoner can become sincerely law-abiding and a reformer in politics, but the explanation is simple. I made a mistake and defied the law. I was caught and punished—kept five years in prison—and then saw how I had been wrong to become an enemy of society. I decided to reclaim my place in society and set about doing it. As soon as I became a free man, living in a free community, I began to appreciate the differences in lawbreaking and the consequences thereof, and that made me a political reformer.

“I had been a train robber, a crude, open defier of society, and I had been caught and punished. I saw all about me men who wore the best clothes and stood high in society robbing the people right and left and not getting caught or being punished. They were not as primitive as I had been in the method they chose. They did things in the dark and only appeared in the open when they had on their Sunday clothes, so to speak.

“I favor the adoption of a reformatory parole system,” he said, “by which first offenders can be given a chance to redeem themselves. I think that a young man who is convicted for the first time should be allowed to stay at home and work under the watchful eye of the State instead of being locked up in a prison where, in all probability, he will be made a confirmed criminal. There will be no wholesale release of prisoners if I become governor, but I will exercise the power of pardon and parole with the view of reclaiming for society every man I can. As long as there is a chance of making a good citizen of a man we should try to do so.”

Jennings was a train robber in Oklahoma and the southwest for several years before his final capture in 1897 and subsequent conviction in a federal court. He served a few years in the prison at Columbus, O., before being pardoned by President McKinley. His citizenship was later restored by President Roosevelt, and he began the practice of law in Oklahoma City. In 1912, he ran for the Democratic nomination as county attorney of Oklahoma[31] county against six other candidates. Before the primaries five of the candidates withdrew to concentrate the vote against him, but in spite of this he obtained the nomination. At the general election he was defeated by a narrow margin by a Republican who was supported by both the Republicans and Democratic organizations.

More Road Work.—In June, 1912, the State of Massachusetts decided to start a camp and employ the inmates in road construction and reforestation work, and, accordingly, forty model prisoners were selected from the Worcester House of Correction and sent to the State reservation at Mt. Wachusett.

These men erected five buildings and cleared the land for a garden patch on which, by the way, enormous quantities of vegetables were raised this year, enough in fact to supply the camp and to some extent, the Worcester institution, for the past winter.

There were many who at first were strongly against the establishment of a camp on the side of the mountain, being of the opinion that the reservation would be spoiled for the State, and particularly for the town of Westminster, but this objection soon wore away. The measure of success is both in work accomplished and benefit to the prisoners, physically and mentally.

What first impresses the visitor to the camp is the total absence of anything suggestive of confinement and of a corrective institution. The inmates are free to wander within certain limits from the cluster of buildings and while they are garbed in the customary gray suits worn by other county prisoners, there is little to suggest the prisoner to the passerby in their actions and general demeanor.

So far, twenty-two miles of road have been constructed through the forest, at a small expense to the county, by the prisoners. A stone crusher and a compression drill are parts of the equipment of the road building gang, which is under the charge of the master of the camp.

Flanked on three sides by mountain slopes and by a large meadow on the other, the camp is situated in an ideal spot. Thankful are the prisoners for the change from indoor confinement, and in token of appreciation they work as hard if not harder than men on the outside who enjoy their full liberty.

Supplies are brought from the Worcester jail twice a week by auto truck which generally takes back a load of potatoes or turnips and an occasional term-expired prisoner. Only men who are sentenced for short terms are sent to Westminster and therefore the camps population is constantly changing.

Mr. Coombs, in charge of the camp, said that only three prisoners had ever made their escape, which was an extremely simple matter, and that this trio all returned and pleaded to be taken back into the fold. There are no locks or bars on the dormitory shed and it is an easy matter for a man to take “French leave” if he so desires.

Next year it is thought the State will add to the camp property by purchasing the Bolton farm across the road, and in this way fifty more prisoners will be accommodated.—Boston Herald.

Probation Results in Massachusetts.—The Worcester Telegram states that “the Massachusetts probation commission is approaching the millionaire class. In 1909 it handled less than $50,000, and in 1913 almost $218,000. That is money collected from people under court jurisdiction and paid to others for various reasons: For restitution of property taken unlawfully, $24,250.63; for non-support, which is turned into support of families of the delinquent, $140,773.96; for court expenses, $3,335.34; for fines in the case of suspended sentences, $49,304.09. The increase of such business throughout the State has been so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach the million list in the next five years.

“The probation officials claim they have saved a great many, almost the entire list falling into their hands, from the kind of shiftless if not criminal lives they had been leading, and there is no doubt they[32] have reported correctly. But there is that tremendous increase in the work and cash results of the Probation Commission and its officers, and at the same time the jails and prisons remain full and get still fuller. Then crime must be on the increase in Massachusetts, not only in occasional lapses of the people, but as a regular condition which grows with the years. The probation service of the State costs over $20,000 a year, but the receipts the last year were, for the benefit of the State, $80,000 more than that. The following from the commission’s report is worth reading by all the people:

“That shows a tremendous saving of money, as well as preventing the waste of the same money in idling away time and getting into closer touch with crime. What that means can be still more plainly seen from the report that in 1909 non-supporting husbands to the number of 617, contributed $25,218.13, but in 1913, non-supporting husbands to the number of 1,240 gave up $140,773.96. That shows a gain of 100 per cent. in the number of cases, but nearly 450 per cent. in the amount collected. That leads the Commission on Probation to ask for more money than it is allowed under the law, and a bill goes before the house at Boston to give the Commission more than the $5,000 it has now. The Commissioners do not draw salaries, but they have an office, with a salaried deputy and stenographer. They want a chance to enlarge their powers and work, because many courts are calling for probation officers and what business they do must come under the care of the Commission. But the serious question is as to what the State is coming to while it enlarges on the plans to make the delinquents pay their way as they do in the cases cited and still have an increase of crime and dependence on the public charity for support. The courts do no less, the jails and prisons no more, and still there is the claim that the people are being taught to do better.”

Scrapping Metal and Scrapping Men.—Governor Foss of Massachusetts recently said: “Let me add in all seriousness that the managers of my own shops and factories make a more efficient and intelligent sorting and reclamation of scrap metal than the laws have generally made of the living men and women that have been thrown upon the scrap heap of our jails and prisons.”

Miss Margaret Elliott of Cleveland, Ohio, formerly connected with the Training School for Girls at Geneva, Ill., has been appointed superintendent of the Indiana prison. She will succeed Miss Emily E. Rhoades, who resigned last December.

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