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Title: The Delinquent (Vol. IV, No. 3, March 1914)
Author: Various
Language: English
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Table of Contents
THE “DOPE HABIT” 1
A COURSE FOR PRUSSIAN PRISON OFFICIALS AND OTHERS 6
IMPORTANCE OF AN UP-TO-DATE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT IN A PENAL
INSTITUTION. 7
A SCENE FROM “THE MAN INSIDE.” 10
Act II, Scene 16. 10
EVENTS IN BRIEF. 14
Legislation in Maryland. 14
The Lash in Delaware.
Why Prisoners’ Families Aren’t Supported by Prisoners’
Earnings. 14
Parole In Kentucky. 15
The Kansas State Prison Makes Money. 15
State Use in Ohio. 16
The Governors on Road Work by Prisoners. 16
Transportation Again? 16
Ohio Penitentiary Breaks Silence. 17
A Good Idea. 17
Prison Publicity. 17
State Use in New York. 18
Probable Abolition of Contract Labor at Chicago Bridewell. 18
Vermont’s State Prison Warden Resigns. 19
Prisoners’ Wages Reduced in Ohio. 19
Parole Law Recommended For Rhode Island. 19
Convicts Build Arizona Bridge. 20
In Iowa. 20
Auburn Inmates Celebrate Under Their Own Captains. 20
Tynan’s Way. 20
Tramps and the Railroads. 21
Changes in Military Prisons. 21
Frank Sanborn on the State Control of County Jails. 22
The Booher Bill Passes the House. 23
Gruesome! 23
National Agitation for State Use System. 23
Pardons. 24
Farming by Texas Prisoners. 24
VOLUME IV, No. 3. MARCH, 1914
THE DELINQUENT
(FORMERLY THE REVIEW)
A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE
NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION
AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.
THIS COPY TEN CENTS. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR
T. F. Garver, President.
Wm. M. R. French, Vice-President.
O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer
and Editor The Delinquent.
Edward Fielding,
Chairman Ex. Committee.
F. Emory Lyon,
Member Ex. Committee.
W. G. McLaren,
Member Ex. Committee.
A. H. Votaw,
Member Ex. Committee.
E. A. Fredenhagen,
Member Ex. Committee.
Joseph P. Byers,
Member Ex. Committee.
R. B. McCord,
Member Ex. Committee.
Entered as second-class mail matter at New York.
THE “DOPE HABIT”
[We reprint Edward Marshall’s illuminating article from the New
York Times of February 22nd on the most recent serious menace
within our prisons, and outside of them. There has come throughout
the country, apparently a relatively sudden realization of the
fearful effects of the habit-forming drugs.]
Habit-forming drugs and their ravages, destructive of both the
morals and the health of the community, seem at last to have aroused
commensurate human indignation, at least in New York city.
Discussion is continual of this strangest and saddest of the problems
of our modern civilization; city officials are definitely interested,
studying and planning; a committee, including in its membership
magistrates and others of sociological force, works on an impulse
supplied by Mrs. Vanderbilt; and from a third source definite
legislation emanates to be offered in the Legislatures of this and
other States and in the National Congress.
Nothing more astonishing, nothing more appalling than the hold which
habit-forming drugs have taken on the community at large can be found
among the tragedies peculiar to modern civilization.
And all this has come suddenly. Not so many years ago the opium smoker
was the only known victim, and he was a curiosity of Chinatown; the
morphine taker was a rare, and troubled spirit, stalking solitary in
its slavery and misery; the cocaine fiend remained unknown, and the
heroin addict--latest in all this incomparably tragic company--was
undreamed of.
Now opium smoking, though still the cause of an occasional police
raid, has sunk into insignificance by comparison with morphine taking;
cocaine habitues are not uncommon sights upon the streets to those with
the depressing knowledge which identifies them; police slang has coined
a name for them--“snowbirds”; and we read in almost every issue of our
daily newspapers of new developments of the “heroin habit.”
Habit-forming drugs of one kind or another have gained so strong a
hold upon the people of this country, more especially upon the people
of American cities, that they have reached the dread proportions of a
national curse.
They play their tragic part in uncounted domestic tragedies; an annual
crop of business and professional failures numerically approaching the
sad army of alcoholic wrecks is thrust into the various bins wherein we
hide our human refuse; drugs send their yearly thousands of young men
into the prisons, of young women to the streets.
A native Southerner, of national fame, high in the councils of his
party, told me recently that habit-forming drugs, cocaine principally,
have of late so complicated the negro problem of the South as to triple
its difficulties and dangers.
These heroin and cocaine groups, lately so conspicuous, are
insignificant in numbers and in tragedy when compared by those who know
with the thousands to be found among our citizenship who, driven only
into misery, not into viciousness or crime, by drug addictions, fall
innocent victims to this most terrible of modern curses, sad sacrifices
to illness and to pain, to ignorance and to cupidity.
The victims of drug habits who have been led into them through the
mistaken methods of the doctor, who first administers the drug to ease
acute physical suffering, and by the proprietary medicine or drug
store preparation passed out as cure-alls with an indifference to or
ignorance of consequences which must remain incredible to those who
understand, is infinitely more numerous than the growing group of drug
takers led into their addictions by the tendency towards dissipation.
Drugs are even taking hold upon our youth. Within the year many
instances have been cited in the newspapers, which have uncovered
peddlers of cocaine and heroin to school children. I listened recently
to the appalling story of a seventeen-year-old Connecticut boy, brought
by his father for treatment in this city, who told how he had been the
center of a group of not less than a hundred other boys in his own town
who gained the drug through him and were completely at his mercy.
I was present recently when this father told the story, having brought
the boy to the metropolis for treatment. It was practically the
duplicate of many, and illustrates the real necessity of legislation,
which will impose upon the druggist and the medical profession a
general restriction.
“My boy,” this sorrow-racked and disappointed father said, “was
employed by a physician living near us to care for his automobile.
He paid him for his work by giving him prescriptions for heroin.
My boy quickly became a victim of the habit, and soon formed the
centre of a group of twenty or more other boy victims, who secured
from him the prescriptions by means of which they brought the drug.
“Two large manufacturing establishments in our home town were thus
infected, and at the present time not less than one hundred boys
have become slaves to the habit. They buy the drug in quantities as
large as they can pay for from the largest drug store in our city,
and are never questioned.”
Their home city is Bridgeport, Conn. I have in my possession one of the
prescriptions given to the boy by the physician, who thus paid him for
his services in attending to his motor car.
In New York State and city the situation is not better. The police
records have been full of “dope cases” for years. Morphine and heroin
are doing serious work in the demoralization of the city, and the
ravages of cocaine are as serious here as they can be among the negroes
of the South.
Miss Katharine B. Davis, now in the full swing of her duties as
Commissioner of Correction, tells me that she finds her problems
complicated all along the line by drug addictions among inmates of the
city’s prisons and jails, and the Mayor and other members of the city
government are looking into the whole subject with deep interest.
In her efforts to discover how the city’s prisoners get drugs, Miss
Davis has uncovered strange, almost uncanny methods. A prisoner’s wife
or “girl” brings him clean handkerchiefs or shirts, stiffly starched.
Left alone with them, he chews them eagerly, getting thus the morphine
which impregnates the starch.
Another prisoner greedily sucks an orange which has been brought to
him. Investigation shows that through a tiny puncture its juice has
been withdrawn, to be replaced through a hypodermic syringe, after it
has been transformed into a saturate solution of morphine.
Fountain-pens are now taboo among the prisoners. Their barrels may be
filled with drug tablets.
In a letter now in my possession, written to Charles B. Towns, the drug
expert, by Dr. Charles W. Farr, prison physician of Sing Sing, the
doctor, after announcing the successful treatment of some drug addicts,
continues:
“But the men seem to be able to get the various drugs as readily
as ever. I suppose that the usual method is to have the guards
bring it in for them. When questioned the prisoners always blame
the traffic on the honest and unpopular guards who are not really
concerned with it. I asked a convict to estimate the number of drug
takers among the prisoners. He answered:
“‘Counting the habitual users and the “joy riders,” there are
probably two hundred in this prison.’”
And while these demoralizing novelties are frequently discovered in the
underworld, the hold which habit-forming drugs are getting elsewhere,
with the worth while, is admittedly appalling. There are pharmacists
in New York city whose important trade is drug traffic; there are
physicians here, and not a few, who, while drug addicts themselves,
find their practice also among drug addicts, furnishing prescriptions
daily to habitues, collecting fees proportioned to their victims’
purses.
As these things have become generally known, so has work begun to check
the evils. Within a few days the most comprehensive legislative plan
which has so far been proposed for regulation of the traffic in all
habit-forming drugs has been launched at Albany.
It will presently be launched in the New Jersey and all other
State Legislatures. It is further planned to make this definitely
comprehensive and effective by Federal legislation, already drafted and
soon to be introduced at Washington.
Charles B. Towns, its author, also wrote the law, already on the
statute books of New York and several other States, permitting the
sale of the hypodermic syringe only upon prescription by a doctor; he
presented last year at Albany a comprehensive bill which did not pass.
His measure of this year, known in the Senate as the Boylan bill,
includes many features new to legislation of the sort, and has
already won outspoken approval from many members of the medical
profession, including Dr. Alexander Lambert of New York, and Dr.
Richard C. Cabot of Boston. Commissioner Davis has gone over it
with care, indorsing it.
“To wholly control the drug evil, which is so unfortunately
affecting New York City and the State, by any legislation entirely
local to the State,” said Mr. Towns, “is out of the question. But a
beginning must be made at home.
“For various reasons habit-forming drugs have found a stronger
foothold in this country than elsewhere in the world. Our annual
opium consumption, per capita, is far greater than that of China,
although we use it principally in the form of its derivatives,
morphine, etc., and our consumption of cocaine has grown to a
magnitude unprecedented anywhere.
“Most of the legislation drafted for the purpose of restricting the
use of habit-forming drugs has been ineffective. It is ridiculously
easy to-day to obtain morphine or any other of the inhibited
substances in New York without violation of the law, although New
York has laws which were designed to be of drastic force.
“The classification in my bill reads: ‘Opium, morphia, coca leaves,
cocaine, alpha and beta cocaine, their salts, derivatives and
preparations.’
“This classification includes automatically many substances which
it does not specifically mention, but which have recently attracted
much attention because of their common use among drug-habitues.
“Among these is heroin. But heroin is a derivative of morphine,
which is the active principle of opium, and is three times as
strong as the parent drug.
“It is not mentioned in the bill because the word ‘heroin’ is a
mere trade name, and a law prohibiting its sale under that name
would not prohibit the sale of the same substance under any one of
the new trade names which manufacturers would have no difficulty in
coining.
“I speak of this almost at once, because I have had several
inquiries as to why this drug apparently is omitted from the list
named in the bill.
“To intelligently discuss the reason for the prevalence of drug
addictions in this country would necessitate an exhaustive study of
national psychology.
“Patent medicines containing small quantities of habit-forming
drugs have wrought great havoc with us, for any medicine,
containing any quantity of any habit-forming drug, contains it in
habit-forming quantity if the dosage is regular. It is not the
quantity, but the regularity of dosage which produces drug habits.
“A lack of understanding of this fact upon the part of the medical
profession and the public has been responsible for many drug
addictions.
“The cocaine habit had its start in patent medicine, mostly
socalled catarrh cures, and will find its end in a national
degeneration if it is not checked by drastic legislation.
“Heroin was first advertised about fifteen years ago, and accepted
by the medical world as a non-habit-forming substance, having all
the useful qualities of the dangerous habit forming drugs.
“Having been thus started, and innocently promoted by physicians
and druggists, the progress of the habit, which has become a
sanitary, criminal, and social problem of real moment, can be
halted only by the passage of some law including such provisions as
those I have included in the bill now pending in Albany.
“My plan is not accidental. I went to the Orient in 1908-1909
and spent a year there, studying the opium curse as it has there
developed. Returning to this country I have since been thrown into
the closest contact with the various drug addictions, passing
several hundred cases in minute review each year. Last Summer
I toured Europe and found that drugs have gained comparatively
slight foothold there, and that no European nation has produced
restrictive legislation worthy of consideration.
“Our own internal revenue reports show us to be consuming as many
of these drugs as all of Europe put together uses.
“Of course, the fact that the drug traffic has continually
increased in this and every other State despite the presence on the
statute books of laws thought to be stringent, can mean but one
thing--that in these laws are loopholes.
“The same laws which require that these drugs must be dispensed
only upon presentation to the druggist of a physician’s
prescription fail to forbid a layman from posing as a physician in
making out prescriptions; no obligation of investigation is imposed
upon the druggist.
“The drug trade is practically without legal regulation, although
across the drug store counter are dispensed substances at least
as dangerous to individuals and public welfare as those which
are dispensed across saloon bars--and saloons are regulated very
rigidly.
“No registration of manufacturing, wholesale or retail druggists is
required by law. The importation, manufacture and distribution of
habit-forming drugs are now surrounded by fewer restrictions than
are thrown about tobacco. The proposed law provides for records
of each grain, from the time it leaves the manufacturer until it
reaches the ultimate consumer.
“Any druggist, wholesale or retail, may manufacture and market any
proprietary medicine he may desire, containing certain quantities
of these drugs, and offer it openly for sale, without the formality
of a physician’s prescription.
“The clause in the otherwise worthy and admirable National Pure
Food and Drugs act requiring that any drug store composition
containing any quantity whatsoever of any habit-forming drug must
bear upon its label an announcement of this content, was well
meant, but has worked havoc.
“Even as no physician who administers a habit-forming drug to ease
his patient’s pain should acquaint that patient with the nature
of the drug he gives, lest the patient turn again to it when
pain recurs and fasten something worse than pain upon himself,
despite the doctor’s wishes, so no medicine offered for general
sale and bearing on its label the announcement of its content of a
pain-killing, habit-forming drug should by the law be tolerated.
“Relieved by the medicine those who take it read its label
carefully, learn what has afforded the relief--it always is a mere
relief, it never is a cure--and, unacquainted with the dangers
attending substances of the sort, regularly dose themselves, either
with increased quantities of the medicine or more probably with the
straight drug.
“A drug-tainted patent medicine is absolutely certain to establish
a drug habit in any one who, for any length of time, takes it
according to directions.
“The proposed law makes such patent medicines, containing any
quantity whatever of the habit-forming drugs, illegal. Physicians
rarely if ever give prescriptions for them. The public will lose
nothing and gain much through their abolishment.
“Now let us consider the physician.
“Physicians are at present permitted to prescribe and administer
the habit-forming drugs as loosely and extravagantly as they
please, either to themselves or others, without responsibility as
to the outcome. Under the proposed law they are held responsible.
“There is real necessity for the provision which disbars from
medical practice physicians who take drugs. The drug-taking doctor
is more dangerous than the drug-taking druggist or drug clerk. All
are liable to irresponsibility at a time when it may well mean
death to others; and, furthermore, all are promoters of the drug
habit. The proposed law guards against them.
“The drug taker invariably introduces others to his drug, sometimes
openly, oftener secretly, through perverted sympathy for another’s
suffering.
“And if the drug-taking doctor should be barred from practice, so,
also, should the drug-taking nurse and the drug-taking veterinarian.
“Now how are these things to be accomplished? The State
Commissioner of Health is to prepare and furnish to all local
Health Boards or officers official prescription blanks, serially
numbered and bearing the State seal, making their imitation forgery.
“These are to be furnished to physicians on demand, and no drugs
of this class are to be dispensed, save on their presentation
properly filled out and signed; no prescription shall be refilled;
all filled prescriptions shall be filed and open to periodical
health board inspection, bearing not only dates and names of the
physicians, but the names of patients for whom the drug is ordered,
and no such prescription shall be filled more than ten days after
issuance.
“To the purchaser, for his protection, while he has the drug in his
possession, druggists must issue a certificate, giving their names
and addresses and those of the prescribing physician.
“These are the principal restrictions surrounding the prescription
blank, though there are others. And violations of these regulations
are to be regarded as misdemeanors.
“In this proposed law, also, is incorporated a provision similar
to that of the existing law restricting the sale of hypodermic
syringes to physicians’ prescriptions.
“This roughly indicates the proposed provisions covering the sale
of habit-forming drugs. They are followed by one which may seem
almost fantastic to the person unacquainted with the terrible
psychology of drug addictions.
“I shall preface any explanation of it with the announcement that
the drug habit is not a mental state, but a physical condition.
My knowledge of it, gained from observation of many hundreds of
its victims, will forever prevent me from proposing or pushing any
further restrictions of the traffic, until some provision is made
for the relief of those already enslaved.
“To deprive a drug addict of his drug without giving him definite
medical help must inevitably subject him to such suffering, such
incredible and indescribable torment, as cannot otherwise be
brought upon mankind. It may mean death; it is very likely to mean
insanity. The drug addict will steal to get his drug; indeed, he
may do murder in order to obtain it.
“Therefore this bill provides for the treatment and relief of those
who, rendered unable to procure their drug by the provisions of
the legislation, might otherwise be made the victims of a social
progression.
“Such a relief is possible and not too difficult. The treatment
by means of which it may be accomplished bears my name, but is no
monopoly. I could gain no profit from its use by the authorities
and others. It includes no medicaments not purchasable at any
well-stocked pharmacy. I have freely published broadcast every
formula connected with it, unrestricted, for the benefit of the
medical profession. It is now in use by the authorities in Sing
Sing Prison, at Bellevue Hospital, in the hospital on Blackwell’s
Island, and elsewhere. Plans are under way for its more extensive
use by the authorities.
“Very briefly I have sketched the provisions of this proposed State
legislation. It should be welcomed by the doctor, for it puts him
absolutely in control of one of his most valuable assets, the
pain-deadening drug, a control which he must share, as things at
present stand, with every corner druggist and every manufacturer
of patent medicines.
“Decent druggists will welcome the planned regulations. It will
protect them against thefts of drugs by employees, and the
drug-taking drug clerk is a dangerous and at present all too common
handicap on the employing druggist.
“A certain reputable retail druggist of my acquaintance tells me
that within a year he has discharged two clerks, one for taking
morphine, one for using cocaine. They were a threat against his
welfare. How much greater was their threat against the public
welfare?
“Neither the drug-taking doctor nor the drug-taking drug clerk
will be a possibility under the provisions of the proposed new
legislation, which demands that every grain of any of these drugs
dispensed by or in the possession of druggist or a doctor, shall be
instantly accounted for upon demand of the Health Board.
“The present situation, so terrifying that it forms a problem of
our modern civilization, has grown out of the fact that neither the
physician nor the druggist have been held really responsible.
“The druggist has been permitted to import and manufacture as
freely as he pleased, and to sell under restrictions which were
insufficient to prevent promotion of drug habits; the physician
has never been required to make accounting for prescription of or
the administration of these dangerous substances, and his medical
training, both in college and in hospital, has left him in the dark
concerning the danger point in their administration.
“This proposed New York State legislation has been drawn with
careful eye to the establishment, here in the Empire State, of a
model law for other States. General adoption of such legislation
would make proper Federal laws effective and without a perfect
understanding between the State and Federal Government as to where
responsibility of each begins and ends, no really effective action
will be possible to either.
“The first step for the Federal Government will be to require the
registration of all importers and manufacturers of habit-forming
drugs, all wholesale druggists and drug jobbers, and all retail
druggists. A similar registration is now required of all those
engaged in the tobacco trade.
“The regulation of interstate traffic in such drugs will be a
simple matter. A system of uniform order blanks furnished to the
buyer, and of uniform invoice blanks furnished to the seller on
demand, by the Government, can be so arranged that every step of
every interstate shipment can be closely followed.
“It will be necessary to require that habit-forming drugs shall be
shipped in bond; that the importer shall account for all which he
imports, the manufacturer for all which he manufactures.
“The passage of the law subjecting importations of opium prepared
for smoking to a prohibitive tax lost us millions in annual
revenue and increased the vice of smoking opium, for it forced the
preparation of raw opium for smoking in this country--an art which
theretofore had been in the exclusive possession of an ancient
Chinese company. Under this law opium prepared for smoking is
cheaper in this country than it was before its passage. Let us have
no more abortive legislation on this vital subject.
“Ninety-five per cent. of the whole nation’s drug evil could surely
be avoided by the general adoption in all the States of legislation
such as this proposed in New York State, supplemented by such
Federal legislation as I have outlined.”
A COURSE FOR PRUSSIAN PRISON OFFICIALS AND OTHERS
BY AUGUST PLASCHKE, MINISTRY OF JUSTICE, PRUSSIA
I am very glad to give to The Delinquent information regarding the
course of instruction in penology which for the last ten years has been
conducted by the Prussian Ministry of Justice. There are three kinds of
prisons under the supervision of the Ministry of Justice:--
1. The local prisons, under the direction of
the local magistrate.
2. The county prisons, under the direction
of the ranking county district attorney.
3. The large, so-called “special prisons,” of
which the “Director” is the executive
officer.
We had the experience that the directors of those prisons I have named
under 1. above did not always meet the demands that we believed the
government had the right to require of them, because they did not
possess the necessary means and knowledge. The training of the lower
officials in these local institutions was also often faulty. To be
sure, there prevailed in general a condition of cleanliness, order and
honesty, but the treatment of the prisoner according to the crime and
to the individuality of the inmate was often pretty poor.
On the other hand, we came to the conclusion that only those judges
could properly and reasonably impose a just sentence who knew and had
studied the effect of imprisonment and the administration of a prison
sentence upon the prisoner. And so there developed from this idea the
requirement that the judge should also be assigned to the office of
prison warden. And so, with the introduction of the course on prison
administration, we had two aims:--
1. The understanding of the judge should be strengthened as to the
effect of imprisonment upon the prisoner, in order that proper
sentences should be imposed, not only from the standpoint of the
law, but from that of the individual to be imprisoned.
2. It was important to develop prison wardens who would understand
the effects of imprisonment and who could therefore administer
their office properly. This required a proper training in all the
details of prison administration, and the rules and regulations.
We were confident that when the warden became conversant with all
these matters, if he then had the necessary knowledge and interest,
he would also train up in his turn the lesser officials of the
prison.
So much for the purposes of the course in prison administration. We
carry on the course in the following manner. We issue, around January,
not a special, but a general invitation to attend the course. The
invitation goes to recently admitted members of the bar, judges,
district attorneys, and also to clergymen, physicians and the higher
prison officials, who have shown special interest in their work. The
invitations are very numerous. But since we can receive at the most
only from 24 to 27 persons, in order to do each person justice during
the two weeks of the course, only about fifty per cent. of the requests
for admission can be considered.
The course is divided into two parts, practical and a scientific.
During the forenoon the men in the course work in the prisons, where
they are instructed in all the details of the administration. In the
afternoon, scientific lectures are held, with following discussion,
lasting often four hours or longer. I regard this part of the course
as of great value. After the close of the course, during which, by
the way, there are inspections of a number of institutions, the
participants in the course return to their occupations, with the
admonition that they shall pass along the knowledge they have acquired,
and especially to give to the lesser officials of the respective
prisons from which they have come, the benefit of what they have
acquired. In this manner we send out through the Kingdom of Prussia
every year a corps of new teachers.
Moreover, we ascertain who among the men that have taken the course
has shown special interest, and is inclined to become the warden of a
prison, and we send him for several months to one of our best conducted
institutions, “in training.” Here he takes up the ordinary duties of
the minor officials, up to and including the duties of the director of
the institution himself. And if he shows himself well qualified, he is
assigned as soon as possible to the position of representative of the
warden, or his associate in the case of especially difficult tasks,
and in this manner comes to learn the duties of prison warden in a
number of institutions. And from this group of men the directors of the
prisons are chosen.
As to the subjects of the lectures of the course, I would say that
I cannot be very specific, for they change from year to year. The
lecturers are both executive and theoretical. Among the teachers I
might mention Professors Kahl, von Hippel, and Moehli. Among the
subjects are the following:
Prison System and Prison Architecture.
The Mentally Deficient: their responsibility and methods of
treatment.
The Treatment of Juveniles.
Organization of the Prison Administration.
If you wish, I shall be very glad to send you the program of the last
course.
I can say, with much satisfaction, that we have really succeeded with
these courses, and that they have found very favorable mention both in
the press and in Parliament. The participants in the course complain
sometimes because they are driven so hard, and I confess that the
mental strain is considerable. But they nevertheless show great zeal
and industry.
IMPORTANCE OF AN UP-TO-DATE MEDICAL DEPARTMENT IN A PENAL INSTITUTION.
BY JOHN L. WHITMAN, SUPERINTENDENT CHICAGO HOUSE OF CORRECTION
[Read at the American Prison Association, October, 1913]
It would seem as though the management of penal institutions, and
especially houses of correction, could do no greater service to society
than to give to their inmates the medical treatment and training they
so badly need, and send them back to society at least somewhat prepared
to take their places among men with a more equal chance of success.
As a result of observation made at the Chicago House of Correction,
along these lines, the medical department of this institution has been
equipped and enlarged during the last five years, so as to carry on
some of the kind of work indicated.
The demonstrations made are most encouraging, not only to continue,
but to still further increase the capacity. At present, instead of
having only one physician, as in former years, who was expected to look
after the needs of the entire population in all the different branches
of medical science, which is impossible for one man to do, no matter
how efficient and interested he might be, we have in addition to Dr.
Sceleth, the Medical Superintendent, whose entire time and attention
is given to the department, four internes, who are physicians, and two
professional and registered nurses, who also reside on the premises,
and are instructors for the inmate nurses used in accordance with their
capacity.
As a consulting staff, we have twelve physicians, surgeons and
specialists, who are actively engaged in the work of the department,
visiting the institution at least once a week, and oftener as required.
The entire staff consists of nineteen, who are experts in their
profession, find an abundance of work that, in doing, is in most
cases a direct benefit to the community, as well as to the individual
treated, as the delinquency of many can be traced to their physical
ailments.
As a typical case, I might relate the story of a man that had been a
delinquent or criminal (so called) for several years, during which
time he had been estranged from family and relatives, who did not want
to be identified with one of his reputation. He had for a long time
been suffering from a rupture, and used this fact as an excuse for not
applying himself to ordinary labor, and claimed he could not earn a
living otherwise, so had drifted into criminal ways. When committed
to the House of Correction and opportunity given him to be treated for
his trouble, he gladly accepted; an operation was successful, and while
convalescing he realized an obligation for having received, while under
the bane of the Law, that which he had for years so badly needed.
The return to normal physical condition brought to him a desire
to discharge that obligation. Upon the advice of the General
Superintendent, he communicated for the first time in years with his
family, and satisfied them that he was determined to no longer disgrace
them, whereupon, with their moral support, he did renounce his vicious
way, and has been in no further trouble with the law.
In other ways the Medical Department is of great assistance to the
management of the institution, especially in furnishing to it reports
of findings in individual cases of limited mental or physical capacity,
so that the facts contained in the report may be considered in making
assignments to work. Everyone, especially prison wardens, can readily
see the advantage of this.
Not long ago, one of the boys in the School Department was reported
to the management for apparently making no effort, particularly in
his physical training exercises, to develop with the class, and was
indolent in other studies. He was sent to the doctors for examination,
and they learned by applying the X-Ray that he was suffering from
tuberculosis of the shoulder joint. It is needless to say that the boy
did not merit punishment under the circumstances.
Out of the fourteen thousand commitments to the Chicago House of
Correction last year, three thousand three hundred and seventy-two were
treated in the hospital, besides those who were prescribed for in the
cell house, whose ailments did not require hospital care. Two hundred
and fifteen were major surgical operations.
The results obtained in this work have attracted the attention and
commendation of all who have observed them, especially judges of
the courts, and captains of the police department, who could see an
opportunity for great good to come to many individuals, their own
work facilitated and simplified, if treatment could be given and
observation made before the cases were disposed of in court.
In order to do this and prevent legal technicalities from arising
by receiving patients before commitment by the courts, the House of
Correction Hospital was organized by the executive officers of the
institution as individuals, and is operated under a license granted
by the city, under the name of the Sceleth Hospital. In one section
of it, regularly committed sick prisoners to the House of Correction
are kept, and in another section those under arrest, and cases pending
in the courts, are brought by the police, placed under treatment and
observation, and when able are taken to court with a statement from
the physicians as to mental and physical conditions, so that the court
can more intelligently dispose of them. Some are returned for further
treatment and confinement under fine or sentence; others may be held
to await the action of the grand jury on more serious charges; while
others who had been treated for alcoholism, and for the first time in
years were free from the effects of liquor, physically able and willing
to support their families as they should, would be allowed to go home,
with no record of fine or imprisonment against them.
The courts, and especially the court of domestic relations, finds
that the hospital is a great aid in solving some of the problems
submitted to them by families whose breadwinners have become neglectful
or abusive, as a result of excessive drinking. In such cases, a
sentence may be imposed, which carries with it a recommendation for
such treatment as the defendant may need. When he has responded to
treatment, and the proper disposition is shown toward his family,
the court is made aware of the fact, and he is released. In a normal
physical condition, he is very apt to realize his possibilities as
the head of a family and avoid the courts in the future. I can best
describe the different classes of cases brought to the Sceleth Hospital
by using the words of the Medical Superintendent, in a report made to
me by him, which is as follows:
“I wish to emphasize the importance of a higher medical and
surgical standard for the treatment of prisoners in our penal
institutions.
“The officials controlling the Medical Department in ninety-five
per cent. of our prisons and workhouses do not provide a proper
equipment or staff of trained surgical and medical specialists, and
they fail to recognize the importance of the medical department in
educational and reform work.
“The proper care of prisoners and the remedying of bodily defects
through such treatment as modern surgery and medicine can give,
will decrease the prison population. There is not a day that we do
not receive unfortunates who are compelled to beg or steal, because
of their inability to earn a living on account of some physical
infirmity which is readily cured by proper surgical or medical
treatment.
“The Chicago House of Correction to-day is looked upon by the
police department, the judges, and part of the public, as a city
emergency hospital and sanitarium for all the alcoholics, drug
habitues, epileptics, chronic incurables, cripples, blind and
helpless beggars, cranks, perverts, and general mental and moral
defectives who require special medical and surgical attention.
Fully twenty per cent. of the cases that we receive are sent here
by the judges for medical and surgical care. During last September
four hundred and thirty-six cases were treated in the male hospital
alone, with eleven deaths. Almost one hundred of these were ‘no
paper’ cases, admitted to the Sceleth Emergency Hospital for
treatment and observation. Among the cases that have been sent to
us as alcoholics, we have found unfortunates suffering from skull
fractures, syphilis, softening of the brain, delirium of pneumonia,
brain tumors, acute dementia and other forms of insanity.
“Cases of nervous disease, with symptoms which simulate the ‘drunk’
in walk, speech and dull intellect, cases of coma, due to kidney
disease, to hemorrhage, or injury of the brain, to exposure, to
cold, to apoplexy, to sunstroke, meningitis, narcotic poisoning,
etc.
“Please understand this is not a criticism of our ambulance
surgeons or our police department, ‘as they need more than a
curbstone diagnosis’ but to give you an idea why you need an
efficient medical department. A man may be sitting on a curb, or
lying in the gutter in a collapsed condition, with cold clammy
skin, unable to talk intelligently, with or without an alcoholic
breath; he may be on the verge of delirium tremens, or his
condition might also be due to heart disease, to arsenic or lead
poisoning, to intestinal, kidney or liver colic, to intestinal
obstructions, to sunstroke, to the rupture of an artery in his
brain, to shock, to the onset of some acute disease, or to a plain
fainting spell.
“He may have had a tremor that looks like chronic alcoholism, but
it may be a disease of the spine or brain, paralysis agitans or
general paralysis of the insane. There was a time not very long
ago when these cases were taken to the police station, locked
up as drunks and died in a cell, when proper medical or surgical
assistance would often have saved a life. Over one-half of our
‘no paper’ cases are not able to give any history of themselves;
we know absolutely nothing except that the police brought in
an unconscious man to us. This makes a diagnosis almost an
impossibility in many cases. A printed history sheet was given to
the police department, a sample of which is enclosed, which has
been of great assistance to us in making a diagnosis.
“A number of insane cases, which are not responsible to man or God,
are sent here for violating some statute. Among them are violent
cases who have tried to commit murder, or assault, and would be a
danger to any city to have at large; these of course are sent to
asylums.
“Another type are unfortunates who are charged with being
shiftless, who will not work to support themselves or their
families. These are often unrecognized cases of brain or spinal
diseases which leave the victim absolutely helpless and unable to
work. These are often treated as worthless bums, when they need
good medical care and kind treatment.”
Another point of view deserving of strong emphasis is one directly the
opposite of that usually held. We know well that alcohol is responsible
for many conditions which are daily called upon to treat, but we do
not give due consideration to the fact that the alcohol or drug habit
had its beginning in an effort to relieve pain due to sickness, or to
obtain solace after unsuccessful attempts to obtain or keep a job, when
handicapped by some disease, recognized or not. Disease, alcoholism and
crime are very closely interwoven.
Especial efforts are made at our institution to detect pulmonary
tuberculosis in its early stages. Whenever possible, such cases are
transferred to institutions devoted to the care of such patients,
the aid of the courts being invoked in many cases to overcome the
legal obstacles. If it is necessary for us to retain the tuberculosis
patients, we place them under the best possible hygienic conditions.
We point with pride to our out-of-door cottage tents, where the three
essentials for cure are at hand--fresh air, rest and good food.
The House of Correction has a well deserved reputation for its success
in the management of drug and alcoholic cases. But no “cure” such as
is employed in most institutions is made use of here. The treatment
is essentially educational. The offending drug is withdrawn, and the
patient convinced that he can get along without it. Then, upon his
release, it is entirely “up to him,” so to speak, as to whether he
returns to the habit or not.
This is in no sense intended to underestimate the psycho-therapeutic
treatment where it is indicated. However, we do desire to point out
the absurdity of psycho-therapeutic treatment in cases suffering with
a definite physical ailment where a careful and complete physical
examination by competent men is most essential.
We have each week the following clinics:
Three Surgical Clinics,
One Medical Clinic,
One Nervous and Mental Clinic,
Two Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Clinics,
One Skin Genito Urinary Clinic,
One Gynecological Clinic,
Two Dental Clinics.
In addition to the above, the health of two thousand inmates and the
sanitation and food are cared for.
A SCENE FROM “THE MAN INSIDE.”
[This scene gives in special detail Mr. Roland Molineaux’s attitude
toward the present-day treatment of the delinquent. “The Man
Inside,” written by Mr. Molineaux and presented by Mr. Belasco, had
a successful run in New York early in the winter. The following
scene was the original, which was somewhat altered because of the
exigencies of the stage.]
Act II, Scene 16.
Object: Gordon pleads for a better system of justice.
Jim Poor (to Travesty): What shall I do now, sir?
Travesty (to Jim Poor): Gordon has asked me to postpone this case.
Jim Poor: Postpone it! What reason has he got?
Travesty: I’d like to know (holding up the evidence). Don’t you see,
Gordon, that these men are a couple of habitual criminals? Why, they’ve
been in prison time and time again! And even that didn’t do them any
good!
Gordon: Of course, it didn’t! Do you suppose that to take these men and
shut them away in prison--to make them walk in a degrading manner--to
garb them in a humiliating fashion--to force them to the performance
of tasks without compensation--or worse, to submit them to the horrors
of enforced solitude and idleness of mind and body! Is there in such a
system anything influencing them for _good_?--sending them out useful,
honest and ambitious members of society?
Travesty: Why, Gordon, these men are shameless! Nothing will reform
them--not even the severest measures. They go right back to crime at
the first opportunity.
Gordon: Because imprisonment as a means of reformation is known to be
useless! No one will trust the released convict! What chance has Red
Mike got? Who would give Big Frank employment? The State releases them
and tells them to go their way and sin no more, after the State has
made it impossible for them to do anything else but sin! They have no
chance to rehabilitate themselves.
Travesty: They wouldn’t take it if it were given them. You can’t reform
them. “Once a crook always a crook.” They must be taught that if they
break the law they shall suffer for it, swiftly and surely. Am I not
right, your Honor?
Judge Dykeman: Certainly. Punishment is what they need.
Gordon: Oh, no your Honor. That was the old idea of vengeance. “An
eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, and life for life.” Surely,
we have outgrown that theory long ago! Punishment for the sake of
punishment--suffering as a curative agent--has always failed.
Travesty: Who says so?
Gordon: History proves it. Torture--death itself did not stop the
pursuit of science: (To Creedon): It could not exterminate the
Christian faith! Punishment never halted virtue and it will never
conquer vice!
(Father Creedon greatly interested.)
Judge Dykeman: What would you suggest in place of punishment?
Gordon (with enthusiasm): Reverse the principle of Punishment--make it
Reward! (Astonishment of all.)
Father Creedon (puzzled and astonished): Reward for criminals!
Judge Dykeman: Ridiculous!
Gordon: Not if we approach the subject in a constructive manner,
abandoning methods which are obsolete and failures and direct our
energies, not to destroying but to building up! Reward! All training
and labor and success is built upon it. Children are trained that way.
In schools, prizes and promotions are Reward. Why does the scientist
and inventor work and study and succeed! Is it because of Punishment?
The explorer sails and suffers--dies! The patriots fought not through
the force of fear, but for the Reward of Glory!
Father Creedon (softly; half aside): The martyr’s crown!
Travesty: All whom you have mentioned were innocent and noble.
Remember, we are discussing felons.
Gordon: Well, do you train an animal by locking it up and making it
miserable? Will a snake dance for you if you hurt it?
Jim Poor (sinking into a chair with assumed weariness): Now, you’ve got
him going!
Judge Dykeman: Ah, but punishment is an example to others! You cannot
deny the deterrent principle.
Gordon: Does the procession of convicted men ever halt? Where there was
one yesterday, there are two to-day and there will be three to-morrow.
Father Creedon (crossing himself): Do not say, Mr. Gordon, that you
quarrel with the great principle of Example! Do not forget what one
Man, divine, has given us!
Gordon: I remember that the Romans crucified that Man as an example.
Did they accomplish what they thought to do? So we, instead of making
the criminal an example to others, should make our treatment of him the
example to the criminal himself. To-day we cannot claim example as our
purpose when the life of the murderer is taken in the pale light of
dawn, in a little room, and in the presence only of a few scientists.
Surely, it is not these that need the warning! If punishment is
intended as an example, let us be consistent; let the executions take
place in the public parks and let the State declare the occasions
holidays.
Judge Dykeman: You have forgotten, Gordon, the most important doctrine
of all--Protection.
Travesty: Yes! Society has the right of self-defense. We are justified
in imprisoning such people; even if it does them no good, because it
protects Society.
Jim Poor: That’s right!
Gordon: Only while imprisonment lasts, and in almost every instance it
releases them a more dangerous menace than before their incarceration.
And all because we deal with crime by a system childishly futile! As
well might we sentence the lunatic to three months in an asylum, or
the victim of smallpox to thirty days in the hospital, at the end of
these periods to turn them loose, whether mad or sane, cured or still
diseased.
Jim Poor (with great dignity): Now listen to me! You’re going to claim
that criminals are mentally diseased. There’s nothing in that idea of
their being abnormal.
Gordon: They must be! No normal man chooses sickness rather than
health, or selects poverty when he might be rich! No one seeks
suffering when he could be happy! Why, then, does a man follow crime
when it brings him only misery in the end?
Jim Poor (with great satisfaction): As some great man once said--I
forget who it was--“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
Gordon: Apply this very theory of Protection which Judge Dykeman urges.
Judge Dykeman: Just so. Protect ourselves against them.
Gordon: No! The protection of society would be doubly sure if we
applied the great principle rightly. Our criminal law aims to protect
society--in this it fails; it should aim to benefit the criminal--in
that it could succeed.
Father Creedon: You’re right!
Gordon: Physicians do not give medicine to those who are well, but to
the sick who need it. The criminal law should protect the criminal
against himself and the influences which have overcome him. It should
cure and armor him with self-respect and courage.
Judge Dykeman: That would be a delightful state of affairs.
Travesty: And now I suppose you are perfectly prepared to substitute
some new method of procedure? An original system of jurisprudence? What
better method than imprisonment have you to offer for bringing a man to
his senses?
(Annie does not understand the following.)
Gordon: I do not know, as yet. Is it fair to expect that I have found
that which has been a mystery through all the centuries? But don’t you
see that the present method is inadequate? We punish crime with fine,
imprisonment, and death, but is the fine given to the one injured? Does
imprisonment of the criminal compensate the victim? Does death restore
the dead?
Travesty: It is the Law!
Gordon: Yes, but the Law is wrong!
Jim Poor: Listen to that!
Gordon: Has not the State, so clear in defining the duties of the
individual to itself, failed in its duties to the individual after
his conviction? Is it not absurd and unjust for the State to wreak
vengeance on the criminal and then abandon him? There must be a
better way! A scientific method which is not based on suffering
and inhumanity! To find it is the duty of the State. The National
Government should undertake it.
Jim Poor: It’s not the National Government’s business!
Gordon: Yes, it is.
Jim Poor: Where’s your precedent? (to Judge Dykeman). That’s right,
Judge,--I beg your pardon, Your Honor,--got to have a precedent for it,
hasn’t he?
Judge Dykeman: Certainly, he should.
Father Creedon: Perhaps he has.
Jim Poor: Go ahead, let’s hear it; but the United States has nothing to
do with it.
Gordon: Why not? It studies questions less important. It maintains
experimental stations in every State and Territory where scientists
investigate preventive measures against the ravages of insects and
fungus growths.
Travesty (interested): You mean the Department of Agriculture?
Gordon (taking book from case and turning the leaves): I do. Here
is the annual report in your library. If you want to know anything
about the eradication of ticks on sheep--hog cholera bacillus--the
chestnut-bark disease--the control of pecan scab by spraying--worms in
dried fruit, the gypsy and coddling moth eradication--the Department
of Agriculture has bulletins and rules and even laws to regulate these
matters.
Travesty: What of it?
Gordon: This! To regulate these _blights_ and _pests_ it costs the
Federal Government twenty million dollars a year.
Travesty: But what has this to do with crime?
Gordon: Nothing! That’s the trouble! The cost of handling crime is
over one billion dollars a year in the United States and there are one
hundred and thirteen thousand men in prison there to-day.
Father Creedon: Incredible!
Gordon: And yet, our National Government spends twenty million dollars
a year to study and exterminate the animal, insect, and vegetable
pests, but not a dollar is appropriated nor an hour of attention given
for the study of preventive measures against the _human_ pest--the man
gone wrong--the criminal! The greatest menace to humanity is not of
such importance as the mould on apple trees; a weevil in the cotton
plant, or even a potato bug! Why a poison squad of scores of men
employed to determine the harmlessness of Benzoate of Soda in tomato
catsup, when there are “procuresses” and “cadets” in every city?
Father Creedon: What a terrible contrast! (to Judge Dykeman). Can
nothing be done to remedy such a condition?
Judge Dykeman: I think there should be; it has never been brought to my
attention before. (to Gordon). Do you think there is a way?
Gordon: Of course there is! Efficiency demands it! Think how much is
lost through the non-productiveness of criminals and of the energy
wasted by reason of our great army of two hundred thousand tramps. And
add to this what must be the amount of the depredation of all criminal
classes. Save this--make this an asset, not a depreciation. Under the
present system, what a waste--what a sin against efficiency! We should
stop this just as we reclaim the worthless land by irrigation and plan
the conservation of our forests.
Travesty: And how do you propose to accomplish it?
Gordon: By taking the treatment of criminals out of local politics.
Jim Poor: Can’t do it.
Gordon: Yes, by enacting a Federal criminal code with a Federal police
to enforce it, and no longer leaving the management of prisons to
keepers and wardens appointed because they are good fellows who can get
out the votes, but providing for their appointment from a Government
school of criminology established for this branch of the service,
similar to Annapolis and West Point. And above all, establishing a
Federal bureau of criminal research and control, which will study
preventive and constructive measures and make crime almost impossible
by doing away with poverty, drunkenness and the thousand and one
causes of crime. Some day a President will come who will make it the
Government’s duty to do something progressive; then there will be less
study regarding the accumulation of wealth and more research for ways
to benefit humanity. That day will come! Oh, God! that this our Land
might be the first to welcome it! The day when crime will be controlled!
Jim Poor (sarcastically): When do you think that time will come?
Gordon: When woman votes!
Travesty (interested in spite of himself): It’s not a bad idea,
“Federal control of crime.” I may use it some day in my campaign. What
do you think of it, Your Honor?
Judge Dykeman: I am impressed by the conclusions shown.
Father Creedon (to Gordon): How did you find this out?
Gordon: From getting at the point of view of criminals themselves.
Father Creedon: But how did you do that?
Gordon: For years I have associated with men of this kind for the
purpose of trying to understand the criminal instinct.
Judge Dykeman: Keeping bad company, as it were.
Gordon: Exactly that! Just what I’ve been doing!
Father Creedon: The end justifies the means, _in this case_.
Travesty: Been slumming in the interest of justice, have you?
Gordon: I have been trying to get at the truth.
Travesty: Worked yourself up into a state of mind in which you are in
sympathy with these felons?
Gordon: Yes, I do sympathize with them! I realize the hopelessness of
their lives and that they must move in the line of the least resistance!
Travesty: Well, you’ve wasted your time.
Gordon (earnestly): No, Mr. Travesty; think of the tremendous
importance of any explanation in that direction. Isn’t it worth while
to have gone into the underworld and to have talked with men who have
been through criminal experiences? There lies the secret of it all--in
their point of view.
Judge Dykeman: But what makes you think there is some secret cause of
crime?
Gordon: There must be some universal law--some influence that
sways--something that binds them all together!
Judge Dykeman: Father Creedon, you who are learned in the deep law of
spiritual things, tell us your opinion--judge this matter for us.
Father Creedon (softly): I think in pictures. To me it is as
if a mariner lost upon some unknown sea; I sailed my ship
astray--bewildered--lost. A sail appears! Answers my signal of
distress--heaves to--gives me my bearings and then passes on. Hail and
Farewell! That’s all--but what it means to me! (to Gordon): You’ve put
me on my course! A new day comes. You were the light illuminating all
the East before Dawn! I want to see the splendid noonday when your
answer comes. “Interested?” I want to see these men--I want to hear the
evidence and the defense--I want to know that they are fairly treated.
Judge Dykeman (going towards door): Reverse your decision; come and sit
with me. I want your help.
Father Creedon (crossing himself): _I_ cannot give you help, but there
is One who can.
(The Judge and Father Creedon about to exit. Creedon stops and comes
back.)
Father Creedon (to Gordon): My son I bless you ere I go. (as if
blessing Gordon): Be strong: Let nothing hinder you. I know that He
will send His kindly light amid the encircling gloom--to lead you on.
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.]
_Legislation in Maryland._--Prison reform legislation, as a result of
the year’s investigation of Maryland State prison and the subsequent
discussion of prison conditions in that State, eventuated through a
report on February 19th by the Penal Commission to the Governor of
Maryland. The report advocated a considerable amount of progressive
penal legislation, mainly as follows: One bill provides for an unpaid
advisory board of parole, in order that all the essential features
of the indeterminate sentence principle may be worked out. Further
bills provide for the suspension of sentences, for indeterminate
sentences, and for the release of prisoners on parole. A state board
of control is established for the management of the State Penitentiary
and the Maryland House of Correction, and provision is made for the
establishment of a State prison for women. The operation of a penal
farm is recommended in connection with the State Penitentiary or
the House of Correction. A hospital for tuberculosis prisoners is
recommended.
_The Lash in Delaware._--The “Umpire,” which is the prison paper of the
Eastern Penitentiary of Pennsylvania, reprinted from the _Delinquent_
the article by Governor Miller, of Delaware, defending the whipping
post, and published the following editorial as a rejoinder:
“Governor Miller’s argument in defense of the whipping-post would
be simply unanswerable if it were applied to any other state in the
Union, but Delaware.
“Delaware is an agricultural state wholly, with only one city
worthy of the name, and that, Wilmington, which by its close
proximity to Philadelphia, is really a suburb of the latter. There
are no large number of factories, business houses, or thickly
settled residential sections of the wealthy classes offering
temptation to the professional burglar of other cities. A few banks
are there, but bank robbery has been classed among the lost arts
for some years, and rarely attempted anywhere.
“Within the past six months, Wilmington has been termed by the
daily press, as a “veritable hot-bed of crime.” Highway robberies,
burglaries, and assaults have been so common that citizens formed
patrols for mutual protection of themselves and property. The
authorities were not only compelled to largely increase its police
department, but to enlist the services of a former superintendent
of the Philadelphia Police to reorganize it.
“If, as the Governor claims, professional thieves from other cities
give his state a wide berth, the inference is that these recent
crimes were committed by natives. This being so, why doesn’t fear
of the lash act as a deterrent to those who are so fully acquainted
with its frequent use?
“The probabilities are that the professional burglar from other
cities does not know of the existence of such a penalty, and if
he did, it would not enter into his calculations one iota. No man
perpetrates a crime with a view to being caught, therefore he
rarely weighs the consequences. The professional thief endeavors to
provide against detection, not punishment.
“The Delaware whipping post is a relic of the first settlers of
the state, and used at that time as a measure of economy instead
of jails which were to come later with the increase of crime. The
law has been on the statute books for so many years, it has become
a matter of state pride to perpetuate it as something reverential,
descending from their forefathers. It was not effective 250 years
ago, else they would not have built jails. It is no more effective
now.”
_Why Prisoners’ Families Aren’t Supported by Prisoners’
Earnings._--Editorially the Boston Herald says:
“When the new prison commissioner advocates the dedication of the
earnings of the prisoner to the support of his family, or, if he
has no family, that they should be held for his benefit when he is
released, he is proposing to load upon the State a charge which it
ought not to bear. The State is entitled to the proceeds of the
labor of its prisoners. With the handicaps which have been imposed
upon prison labor by legislation such labor is not and cannot be
self-supporting. The goods that prisoners make are excluded from the
general market. Power machines are forbidden, for the most part, except
in wood workings. Take the State farm, where the conditions are such
that, if anywhere, the institution could be made self-supporting. With
all possible use made of prison labor the average cost for the care of
inmates above the proceeds of this work is in the neighborhood of $2.50
per week. Of course the able-bodied short-term men come nearer than
that to self-support. But that is the average outlay for maintenance,
allowing nothing for interest on the plant. The State has been put
to the cost of ferreting out the criminal, arresting, trying, and
convicting him. The State must provide for his safe-keeping, clothe
him, feed him, shelter him with proper warmth. Under restrictions
surrounding prison labor he will not nearly meet the expense to which
he has subjected the State. If his family need support while he is
imprisoned, let the municipality provide that. With all the work he can
do, the criminal is a burden to the Commonwealth. The State is entitled
to all he can do towards self-support.”
_Parole In Kentucky._--According to the Louisville Herald, since the
State Prison South was converted into a State reformatory sixteen years
ago, 4,670 prisoners have been paroled, of whom 2,666 have received
final discharges. During the parole period the sentences of 295
expired. Six hundred violated their paroles and were returned to the
institution. Five hundred and eighty-nine are parole violators and are
at large: 433 are still reporting, and seventy-eight have died while at
large.
Out of each hundred paroled, twenty-six have violated their agreement;
fifty-seven have received their final discharge; two died; the terms of
six expired while on parole.
The paroled men have earned $1,315,642.76, and it cost $1,143,078.64 to
maintain them, a difference in favor of the State of $172,564.26.
_The Kansas State Prison Makes Money._--According to the Leavenworth,
Kansas, Post, the State prison at Lansing saved the State about one
half million dollars during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1913. This,
according to those who should know, is a very conservative estimate. It
represents about one-half of the appropriation asked for by the warden
to be used in constructing the new penitentiary. The twine and brick
plants and the coal mine are the different departments where the most
of the saving was made.
The twine plant supplied the farmers of Kansas with three million
dollars worth of twine last year at nine and one-half cents a pound.
This represents a net profit of $32,000, which went into the State
treasury. If the farmers had been forced to buy from outside dealers
at eleven cents a pound it would have cost them $45,000 more. This
$45,000 and the $32,000 profit, represents a total of $77,000 saved the
citizens of Kansas in twine.
The prison burns its own brick and lime and supplies brick to
the different institutions over the state. The prison brickyard
manufactured, for the use of State institutions in 1912, 1,623,447
brick of different grades. The prison received credit on the brick
account for $12,098. This was an average of about $2 a thousand less
than the same quality of brick sold for on the market. If these
different institutions had been forced to buy on the open market, the
cost to the State would have been about $15,344. This does not take
into consideration the brick used in the construction of the new twine
plant and other small buildings in the prison yard.
The coal mine is the big money maker for the State. Last year the
different institutions received 31,000 tons of coal from the prison,
for which the prison was credited with $77,500--$2.50 per ton. It is
said if the State had been forced to buy this coal on the open market,
together with the twenty thousand tons it takes annually to run the
prison, it would have cost the State at least $155,000. Some estimates
have placed the amount as high as one-quarter million dollars. If
the prison had new quarters it is said that the annual maintenance
appropriation could be safely cut from $105,000 to $50,000, as the
saving in fuel alone would run into the thousands of dollars.
The construction of the new twine plant is another instance of economy
where the Kansas citizens profited. With prison brick, lime and labor,
this plant, consisting of two buildings, will have cost the State, when
completed, $60,000 less than a similar plant constructed by a sister
State. The two plants are identical in size except the Kansas plant
contains two more machines than its neighbor’s.
_State Use in Ohio._--Printing of all the blank forms used by the
counties of Ohio is a venture upon which the State soon may embark
as one of the features of the “state use” plan of employing the
convicts in the Ohio Penitentiary. Under the law the State Board of
Administration sells all products made in the institutions to counties
and other political subdivisions who are compelled to make purchases
from the State. The blank supply business has been a lucrative one for
the dealers.
_The Governors on Road Work by Prisoners._--Twenty-five governors have
placed themselves on record as favoring the working of convicts in the
construction and repair of highways, according to a compilation of the
discussions of prison labor in their last messages to the legislature,
recently issued by the national committee on prison labor.
Convict road work is advocated by the governors both because of the
healthful nature of such work and owing to the fact that convicts who
have been employed in this way can more readily find employment when
released; while many of the governors also point out the benefit to the
public from better roads secured at a minimum cost.
Governor Dunn, of Illinois states that humanitarian reasons underlie
the employment in open air work or the sort wherein and whereby the
convicts are restored to society with their manhood quickened instead
of deadened or destroyed.
Governor Oddie, of Nevada, who was instrumental in securing the passage
of the legislation which provides for convict road work in that State
is enthusiastic as to the success of the plan.
“There is no question,” he maintains, “but that the passage of this law
has had a wholesome effect on our prison system, and has been the means
of giving a new start in life to a large proportion of the discharged
and paroled men. About forty per cent. of the total number of our
convicts have been performing good service under the honor system at
the road camp.”
Governor Hanna, of North Dakota, Governor Cox, of Ohio, and Governor
West, of Oregon, hold that out-door work should be a privilege to be
earned by good conduct; Governor Mann, of Virginia, testifies to the
efficiency of the convicts when employed on the roads and cites figures
to prove the economy of such work, maintaining, however, that the
present cost can be greatly reduced by placing the men on their honor
and lessening the number of idle guards; while Governor McDonald, of
New Mexico, and Governor Carey, of Wyoming, refer to the few attempts
at escape that have been made by convicts practically unguarded.
Governor Hunt, of Arizona, is in favor of paying the convicts at least
25 cents a day for their services as the cost will be small compared to
the actual benefit derived by the construction of splendid highways,
while the benefit accruing to society will return the investment a
thousand fold.
The consideration given to convict road work by the governors is
an indication of the importance attached to the matter by the
police throughout the country. The governors present many different
view-points, but a careful study of their statements shows that road
work when conducted on a basis fair to the convict and the State, will
go far towards solving the convict labor problem and the problem of
good roads.
_Transportation Again?_--The question of exiling habitual or
professional criminals is being agitated in England. In a recent report
of the British prison commissioners it is noted that the number of
persons having previous convictions has in late years risen from 78 to
87 per cent., says The Buffalo Express. The latest available figures
show that in England only 118 of the 916 sentenced to penal servitude
had not been previously convicted and that the greater number of old
offenders had from six to twenty convictions against them. It is
estimated that at the present time there are in London alone 20,000
habitual criminals. “The only way of dealing with these habitual
criminals,” says an English authority, “is to expel them from the
community against which they wage incessant war. A third conviction
should cause the prisoner to be deported to some island and reduced to
a state of industrial serfdom, in which he could earn his living.”
To adopt this suggestion means a return to the old system of convict
colonies. An obstacle to the segregation plan under present conditions
is the scarcity of lands available for such purposes. Suitable island
territory is at a premium. Continental land, except in isolated cases,
is not desirable for the location of convict colonies because of the
opportunities for escape. The alternative is the establishment of
prison farms--a system experimented with more or less during recent
years.
_Ohio Penitentiary Breaks Silence._--One of the most sweeping changes
made in prison rules by Warden Thomas since he was placed in charge of
the penitentiary came on February 24, when he announced that convicts
would be permitted to talk to each other while working.
Almost since the time the prison was first built it had been one of the
stringent rules of the institution that prisoners could not talk with
each other while at work. This rule always was adhered to strictly. The
theory was that to let prisoners talk in the shops and factories was
to invite attempted escapes and plots leading to infractions of prison
discipline.
_A Good Idea._--From the Elizabeth, New Jersey, News, comes this
information: “What New Jersey Is Doing for the Young Man Who Breaks
Its Laws,” is the title of an instructive address being delivered
throughout the State by the Rev. Frank Moore, of this city,
superintendent of the New Jersey Reformatory. In his address Mr. Moore
plainly shows the efforts of the State at its institutions to uplift
manhood and instill higher ideals of living.
Superintendent Moore selects the county courthouse as the place to
deliver his lecture, and has already spoken at seven county seats,
including Toms River, Ocean county; Woodbury, Gloucester county;
Freehold, Monmouth county; Mount Holly, Burlington county; Belvidere,
Warren county, and Newton, Sussex county. At the two latter places,
the audiences were so great that there was not room enough in the
courthouses to accommodate them. At Mount Holly the largest gathering
in years was the result.
Usually the county judge presides, and the lecture is heard by
prosecutors, officials, ministers, school teachers, etc., who are
naturally interested in the work from their vocations. Excellent
reports have been made concerning the value of the lecture.
_Prison Publicity._--The Montreal Star says that the farther the
inquiry into the Kingston Penitentiary goes, the more it is evident
that what the discipline of any prison needs is the wholesome and
curative application of publicity. Punishments ought not to be
inflicted upon convicts without the fact being made public. Any
mischiefs which may arise will be possible only because the authorities
of a prison have the power to punish prisoners behind their grim walls
in entire secrecy.
“It is not necessary to charge that the authorities or even the guards
are worse than the ordinary run of mortals, to see how the human nature
in them may be exasperated by the criminal classes under their charge
into taking action which they would not take if the steadying eye of
the whole community were on them. It must be remembered that prisons
are not young ladies’ boarding schools. We do not send the brightest
and best of our youth to them. In fact, the deliberate purpose of our
system of justice is to send them our worst. Undoubtedly, at times, we
do send there some of our best--men whom a chance step from the beaten
path has tripped into disaster--but our whole machinery of justice
is at fault if the rule is not to select our criminals for our prison
population.
“This being so, the guards and the prison authorities generally have a
difficult and trying task constantly before them. It would be little
wonder if they grew pessimistic and cynical touching the motives and
the prospects and even the possibilities of their ‘guests.’ They are
constantly in contact with men who ought to be far below the average
in all these things. It would be a miracle if they kept their faith in
human nature, and their attitude toward the human derelicts who thwart
and defy them, at even the average pitch. Under such conditions, with
the prison shut in on itself, like a little world islanded from the
rest of the country, what can we expect but that prison opinion will
come to justify harsh measures and cruel punishments?
“What is clearly needed is to correct this drift toward cynicism and
possibly brutality by keeping it always in touch with the sane and
unruffled point of view of the general community. This can only be done
by publicity. Nor would a demand for publicity be unfair to the prison
authorities. Their prisoner is sentenced to a fixed punishment for a
definite crime. If he commits another crime, he should be sentenced to
another punishment for that; but he should have his second trial and
sentence as fully safeguarded by public opinion as his first. Refusal
to obey prison regulations would be such a second crime; and his public
trial for it would not only make it certain that the evidence was
convincing and the punishment humane, but would bring the regulations
themselves under public review.
“The whole prison system is bad enough--necessary as it is because of
the criminality of certain people--without keeping it in darkness.”
_State Use in New York._--The Prison Commission of New York bewails the
reluctance of municipalities to obey the law relative to the purchase
of prison-made goods.
Seven municipalities have made no purchases of this sort since the
enactment of the law in 1896. One city has bought nothing but a
straight jacket in eighteen years. Towns and villages have been even
worse offenders.
Rochester’s last order for supplies came in May, 1911; the authorities
there contended that the city charter nullified the provisions of the
Prison law with regard to the obligatory purchase of supplies from the
State. In August last the Commission appealed to the Attorney-General,
who rendered an opinion that local statutes did not supersede the
provisions of the Prison law. When the matter came up once before, with
regard to the liability of officers making purchases elsewhere than
from the State Commission of Prisons, the Attorney-General held:
It is the duty of officers of political divisions of the State
to make requisition on the State Commission of Prisons for such
articles used in the municipalities as are manufactured in the
State prisons. If such articles are bought elsewhere, without the
certificate of the State Commission of Prisons showing inability
to furnish the goods required, the officers making such purchases
or auditing claims therefore are criminally and civilly liable for
their acts.
The Prison Commission has issued the following:
The Constitution makes it the duty of the Legislature to provide
employment for the convicts, and declares that the products of
prison labor shall be sold only to the State or its political
divisions. To compete as little as possible with free labor the
prison industries have been diversified under assignments by the
State Commission of Prisons.
_Probable Abolition of Contract Labor at Chicago Bridewell._--The
practise of hiring to private companies at a wage of a few cents a
day the prisoners in the Bridewell, the penal institution of Chicago
and Cook county, will be abolished in May if the recommendations of
Superintendent John Whitman are acted upon favorably by the city
council, says the Christian Science Monitor of Boston.
Instead of the present system of using the labor of the prisoners, a
system is being worked out by which they will be put to work on public
improvements, receive a fair remuneration for their labor, a portion
to be applied to paying their fines and a cash return assured for the
support of their families. By this method the prisoners will not be
relieved from paying the penalty for the crimes for which they have
been convicted in many instances of a minor character, but neither
will their families be deprived of their supporting labor during their
imprisonment.
The board of inspectors has voted to discontinue the contract system
within three months. Mayor Harrison is in accord with the movement.
Representatives of the Chicago Federation of Labor and various trade
unions have been working for it for a long time.
A report of the efficiency division of the civil service shortly, will
recommend that the city use the convict labor, and will criticise the
present system as wasteful and disgraceful. It is expected that a
recommendation will be made for the employment of an administrative
officer to act as a business manager, in charge of the operating part
of the house of correction.
_Vermont’s State Prison Warden Resigns._--Following closely on our
recent account of Warden Lovell’s “honor system” in the Vermont State
Prison, comes the following from the Boston Post, under date of
February 24th:
“The nine years of novel ‘elastic’ treatment of prisoners carried on by
Wilson S. Lovell, superintendent of the State prison, came to an end
to-day when Lovell resigned. It was believed the resignation was due to
a fire of criticism from Governor Allen M. Fletcher and members of the
penal board.
“Some of the administration have openly criticised the Lovell rule as
“too soft,” and declare that “a more impersonal and severe ruler of the
prison is required.”
“The Lovell system aroused nation-wide interest among humanitarians
and social workers. One of its startling features, which is said to
have shocked the more staid citizens of this State, was to let chosen
prisoners go to work about the country without any restraint of any
kind.
“Another was a plan for paying men for overtime work in the prison
factories, so that convicts were often able to pick up a comfortable
little sum for themselves.”
_Prisoners’ Wages Reduced in Ohio._--Owing to an overstock of labor in
the Penitentiary and the Mansfield Reformatory, the State board of
administration has been compelled to cut the wage scale two cents on
the hour. Hereafter, prisoners in the two institutions will receive a
maximum of three cents an hour instead of five cents. The minimum of
one cent an hour remains unchanged, says the Columbus Journal.
Under a law passed by the legislature last spring, prisoners were
compensated at the rate of from one to five cents an hour, according
to their character and good behavior. From September 16, last, until
February 15, this year, there was paid to Penitentiary prisoners on
this scale, $33,000. The amount paid to prisoners in the Mansfield
Reformatory was $24,000.
At this rate, the estimated annual cost of prisoners’ compensation to
the State would be about $140,000. The general assembly last month
appropriated only $75,000 for this compensation; hence the revision of
the scale downward. Where the maximum earning power of prisoners under
the old scale was forty cents a day, or $2.20 a week on a basis of five
and one-half work days each week, the new maximum will be 21 cents a
day or $1.17 a week. No strike, however, is predicted because of the
cut, but much complaining is looked for.
Prison officials have detected many schemes of prisoners to beat the
State’s philanthropy. The law requires that 90 per cent. of their
earnings shall go to their dependents. The remaining 10 per cent. is
held in a fund against the prisoner’s release to tide him over the
period he is looking for work until settled. A scheme of the older
prisoners to obtain all their money was to represent that some relative
in the country was in urgent need of support. The money would be sent
to the “friend,” but soon returned to the prisoner.
_Parole Law Recommended For Rhode Island._--The Board of Control
and Supply of Rhode Island, which has charge of the State penal
institutions, recommended in its annual report to the Legislature that
a parole law be put into effect in this State. Under the proposed plan,
prisoners who have served a portion of their sentence may regain their
freedom and retain it as long as they live up to the terms of their
parole.
_Convicts Build Arizona Bridge._--“Cross-continental automobile
tourists who will take the southwestern route to the Panama-Pacific
Exposition at San Francisco in 1915, will cross the Salt river in going
from Phoenix to Tempe over a substantial concrete bridge 1,508 feet
long instead of having to ford either a wide raging torrent or a deep
long, sandy, dried-up riverbed, according to season of the year,” says
Dr. Charles G. Percival, in his new book, “The Trail of the Bull Dog,”
which deals with the writer’s two years’ automobile trip of 50,000
miles. “The interesting part of this bridge lies in the fact that it
was built of concrete in twenty-seven months entirely by convicts’
labor. The bridge is eighteen feet wide between curbs and 240 tons of
steel rod and wire are contained in its construction. The bridge is
floored with reinforced concrete and a two-inch bitulithic dressing.
Eleven piers, each 125 feet in length, support the bridge, which is
excellently lighted by electricity at both approaches, and throughout
its entire length from power generated at the Roosevelt dam seventy
miles away.”
_In Iowa._--Prisoners at the Fort Madison penitentiary get increased
pay and shorter hours through an agreement made by the State board
of control for the cancellation of one prison contract and the
transference of the contract of the Fort Madison Chair company to the
Fort Madison Tool company. This takes 175 men out of the contract labor
system.
By the terms of the arrangement, the board may terminate the remaining
contract on or after March 1, 1916, by giving ninety days’ notice. The
old contract could not be cancelled before October 15, 1917. The State
gains more than a year by the new deal.
The State will receive 60 cents a day for each man employed by the tool
company under the new agreement. In addition the company will pay each
man 10 cents a day for himself. The working day will be cut from ten to
nine hours.
_Auburn Inmates Celebrate Under Their Own Captains._--Fourteen hundred
convicts in Auburn prison, observing Lincoln’s Birthday, marched from
cells to chapel and mess hall solely in charge of convict captains
elected by the inmates several weeks ago as their representatives in
the Mutual Welfare League. The convict officers relieved the regular
officers and maintained splendid discipline.
The holiday entertainment was furnished entirely by convict talent and
included an address on Lincoln by an inmate. Addresses were also made
by Thomas Mott Osborne, chairman, and Professor E. Stagg Whitin, of New
York, and Professor Henry T. Mosher, of Rochester, members of the State
Commission for Prison Reform.
_Tynan’s Way._--Writing to the New York Sun, Warden Tynan of the
Colorado State Penitentiary says:
“The position of penitentiary warden is the last in the world for a
policeman. The policeman’s education is all wrong. He thinks only of
hunting out the evil in his victim, of making a record in convictions.
A policeman warden would keep the black hole full, he would wear out
the cat-o’-nine tails, he would revive the iniquitous stool pigeon and
spy system; he would produce the typical, modern penitentiary which
sends out unbettered and unstrengthened man and which menaces the
society which it is supposed to protect.
“By removing the continual threat of arms, by eliminating oppressions
and brutalities, by establishing a system of graded rewards for
cheerfulness and industry, the Colorado penitentiary has been given a
wholesome, helpful atmosphere. The men have taken no unfair advantage
of square dealings and fair intent. They have met every advance in
honesty and enthusiasm.
“Half the men who come here are men who never had a
chance--unfortunates grown to manhood without impulse or direction. Out
of their very helplessness they cheated and stole, robbed and killed.
Most manifestly, mere weekly religious services will not free society
from the menace of these men. They must be taught something to do. A
State farm protects the present and guarantees the future.
“The interests of justice and of society would have been better served
had many a convict never known imprisonment. If he were paroled
immediately upon conviction his dependents would not suffer, nor the
taxpayers be forced to bear the burden of greater depravity that always
and inevitably attends penal servitude.”
_Tramps and the Railroads._--Crimes committed against railroads are
increasing, according to the annual report of the police department of
the Baltimore and Ohio system, which shows that 13,129 arrests were
made during 1913, as compared with 10,417 arrests during 1912. There
were 8,449 convictions in 1913, while in 1912 the number of convictions
was 6,515. This increase in crime added materially to the expense of
the railroad for doing business during the year.
The report of G. A. Ogline, superintendent of police, covers all
classes of criminal offenses, from petty larceny and disorderly conduct
to train wrecking, highway robbery and murder. The most frequent
offenders were those who “violated railroad laws,” for which 8,303
arrests of tramps and others unlawfully using the railroad property
were made. Arrests for intoxication and disorder numbered 2,526, with
1,567 arrests for larceny, 176 for burglary and 3 for murder. For
receiving goods stolen from the railroad there were 67 arrests.
Commenting upon the large number of arrests of trespassers--tramps and
other vagrants and loiterers about the railroad--Superintendent Ogline
says: “It is evident that the number of persons unlawfully riding
over the railroads and trespassing upon the property in other ways
is on the increase, but the officials have been badly handicapped in
coping with this evil on account of the lack of co-operation on the
part of authorities. The courts will handle a few offenders, but it is
continually impressed upon the railroads’ police department that the
arrests to trespassers must be held to the minimum because the cities,
towns and counties are unwilling to bear the expense of harboring this
class of offenders in jails and other institutions of detention.”
The head of the police department further states that in numerous
instances where reports were made of obstructions having been placed
on rails, missiles thrown at trains, etc., it was found that “very
small children were often guilty of these offenses,” and the railroad
officers frequently brought the cases to the attention of parents in an
effort to correct the trouble.
Convictions were secured under the Carlin Act, a federal law, for the
robbery of cars on the Baltimore and Ohio lines and heavy penalties
were imposed for such crimes.
_Changes in Military Prisons._--Revision of the articles of war--the
military law of the United States that has stood unchanged since
1906--is proposed in a bill passed without a dissenting vote by the
Senate, in February, designed to make the soldier guilty of purely
military offenses an object of reformatory discipline instead of a
penitentiary convict with the criminal stamp upon him.
Fort Leavenworth, Kas., would cease to be a federal penitentiary under
the terms of the bill, and hereafter would be known as the United
States Military Detention Barracks. The prison would be modeled after
the English army disciplinary institution at Aldershot, and no soldier
or civilian convicted of an offense punishable by penal servitude might
hereafter be confined there.
Military prisoners under suspended sentence quartered in the detention
barracks would be organized into military commands, and their training
kept up where prison conduct warrants in the opinion of the Secretary
of War. Honorable restoration to the army, or permission to re-enlist
without prejudice if the enlistment had expired, would follow good
behavior.
This radical revision of the army’s disciplinary methods is proposed
in a recodification of the articles of war, dropping thirteen sections
from the old code as obsolete and inserting provisions for a policy of
suspended sentence and less drastic treatment of military offenders
generally.
The bill makes no mention of the military prison on Alcatraz Island,
San Francisco. In this connection the committee report says the
Secretary of War is convinced that establishment of the detention
barracks and necessary branches would make the maintenance of a
military prison unnecessary. The elimination of Alcatraz Island from
the bill would make possible the use of the islands as an immigration
station, as desired by the immigration bureau.
The jurisdiction of courts-martial would be broadened considerably
under the proposed new code, extending to capital offenses in time of
peace which are beyond the reach of civil courts. The present code
gives this provision only in time of war. On spies in time of war
only would the death sentence be mandatory under the new code, and a
two-thirds majority of the court-martial imposing such sentence would
be required instead of a bare majority.
_Frank Sanborn on the State Control of County Jails._--In a letter to
the Boston Transcript, Mr. Sanborn writes as follows:
“The present agitation of the prison reform question in Massachusetts,
and the number of those who support a better system of prison
discipline, are interesting facts to me, who, as secretary of the first
Board of State Charities, appointed fifty years ago last October, was
the first permanent inspector of all our Massachusetts prisons that
had ever filled that post. I devoted much time to it in the first
years of my service of five years; and on the 2nd of March, 1865, my
friend, Gov. Andrew, sent in to the Senate my long special report on
our prisons, with suggestions for their reformation, most of which
were subsequently inserted as laws in our successive revisions of the
statutes. But one suggestion, then first made, has not yet been adopted
and is urgently needed for adoption by the present legislature--the
control and classification of the prisons in our fourteen counties
by the State government. It is not practicable, without a change in
the State constitution, to make this control quite complete, for our
county sheriffs are constitutional officers and have certain legal and
customary rights over the arrests and custody of untried prisoners,
witnesses, etc., which no statute can take away. But all convicts in
the counties--that is, all sentenced persons--should be under a uniform
discipline in their prisons, which the State alone can establish and
enforce.
“Fifty years ago we had no separate prison for women, no State
reformatory for young offenders, no State asylum for insane convicts,
and persons untried because insane; and no State asylum for placing
reformed young offenders in private families. The next year after my
report, a first step was taken towards State control by the creation of
a State Workhouse at Bridgewater. This, which is now called the State
Farm, contains at present more than a third part as many convicts as
were in all the county prisons in 1864-5--only 6,563 in all. Adding
to the Bridgewater prisoners the 800 insane convicts held in custody
there, the total to-day is more than half the number in all the
county prisons in March, 1865. The Women’s Prison at Sherborn, with
its hundreds, the Concord Reformatory and the Shirley branch, with
their 1,000 inmates, and the reformed young offenders now living under
State authority in families and other convicts under State authority
elsewhere, would add for an aggregate more than the 6,563 who were
in the county prisons fifty years ago. To that extent the State has
exercised its right of eminent domain over prisoners.
“But there still remain in the county prisons and the few county
reformatories about 4,000 permanent or average prisoners--most of them
convicts--whose proper classification is impossible, even in the larger
counties, and practically out of the question in the middle-sized
and small counties. And this average population of some twenty-five
establishments represents not less than 30,000 different persons during
the year, whose separation and proper care cannot be provided for in
these twenty-five prisons, etc., some of which are always crowded,
others usually empty or half filled, and all under a varying, partial,
costly and practically useless prison discipline. State control would
give all but a few hundred of the 30,000 comers and goers a safe,
judicious and to a good extent reformatory discipline, now quite
uncertain or impossible as things are.
“Our county systems, of which the outward and visible signs are the
prisons and court houses, expend hundreds of thousands of dollars every
year and are the natural nests and breeding places of county rings,
which waste the taxpayers’ money, manipulate and corrupt our local
politics, and make the administration of criminal law, in several of
the counties sometimes a job, sometimes a farce, and by its delays and
appeals a great revenue for lawyers and officials, pocketing fees and
postponing or perverting justice, in a manner that every one familiar
with county business, as I was while a State official knows, but to a
degree that can only be revealed by investigation in each county, such
as that undertaken in my own County of Middlesex, and threatened by the
mayor and other official persons in Suffolk. Let these investigations
go on; but, in the meantime, follow the recommendation of all
well-informed persons, and give the State commission control of these
nests of crime and vice, our ill-governed prisons.”
_The Booher Bill Passes the House._--On March 4th, by a vote of 302
to 30, the House passed the Booher bill that virtually prohibits the
shipping of convict made goods in interstate commerce. The measure
adopts the principle of the Webb law which provides that liquor
shipped into “dry” territory shall be subject to local and State laws
prohibiting the traffic in alcoholic liquors.
The Booher bill provides that convict made goods “shall upon arrival
and delivery in any State or Territory be subject to the operation and
effect of the laws of such State or Territory.”
Another bill dealing with goods produced by convict labor will soon be
considered in the House. It applies the same provisions to goods made
by convict labor abroad. This measure has already been reported in the
House.
_Gruesome!_--In Virginia, according to the Richmond Journal, the body
of a convict dying in prison is forfeit to the State; no matter if he
has friends or money to receive it and give it decent burial. When a
man dies in prison, whether he was sent for one year or for thirty
years, his body is sent to the medical colleges of the State for
dissection purposes. If he commit some horrible crime, which demands a
death penalty, this is not the case. His family may receive his body
and bury it. But the life convict and the convict who dies in prison
are not given this privilege under the present law.
A bill that has come before the committee seeks to remedy this defect
in the present law. It amends the law now in force so that it requires
only such bodies as are to be disposed of at the expense of the State
to be sent to the colleges. No man who saves the little money which
he may have earned within the prison shops and lays it aside for this
purpose will any longer be refused the right of burial.
This matter has for a long time been a source of much agony of mind
and bitterness among the convicts. A Confederate veteran at the State
Farm fears the dissecting table. If the bill is passed it will bring
happiness to a number of the poor men, who have no other peace to look
forward to than that of a quiet grave.
_National Agitation for State Use System._--Organized labor has called
upon manufacturers and citizens generally throughout the country to
support the National Committee on Prison Labor, in its endeavor to
bring about in the different States a system whereby prisoners shall
be employed directly under State control of roads, farms, or in
manufacturing articles for use in the institutions and departments
under the control of the State. For the past four years this committee
and the labor unions, especially the United Garment Workers of America,
have been fighting the leasing system, whereby the labor of the convict
is sold to the highest bidder, the bid always being from 50 to 75 per
cent. less than is paid to the workers in the same line of industry
outside of our penal institutions.
The effect of this prison competition is illustrated by figures
gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of Missouri, which has just
completed an exhaustive investigation into conditions at the Missouri
State prison at Jefferson City.
The clothing factory at that prison reported an output for 1912 of
overalls and other garments valued at over $2,500,000. The convict
working force consisted of 887 men and 44 women, a total of 931, while
for their labor the State received $200,629. The total amount paid out
in wages and salaries for superintendents, etc., was $371,385. From
these figures it will be noted that the cost of labor was so small when
compared to that at a similar factory outside the prison walls as to be
startling.
Free manufacturers are asked to compare their own payroll with that
of the contractors at this prison where for healthy male convicts, 75
cents per day was paid, while for a few cripples and the women the
figure was only 50 cents per day.
The National Committee on Prison Labor and the unions see that this
unfair competition can be overcome by the work for the State, whereby
no prison goods reach the open market, but these two groups need the
support of all interested either for business or humanitarian reasons
to bring about results which shall be effective and lasting.
From a practical business standpoint organized labor has brought this
matter before the people of the country and awaits their action.
_Pardons._--Governor David I. Walsh, of Massachusetts, has said he
intends to refer to the members of the Board of Pardon and Parole, all
petitions for commutation of sentence as well as of pardon, together
with the ordinary cases which, under the statute creating the board,
the Governor may refer to it.
The Governor said he could see no reason why he should discriminate
between the man who is sentenced to the House of Correction and the
man sentenced to State Prison, simply because the latter sentence is
for a felony.
He would reserve the right to veto their recommendations and findings,
he said. All petitions will be referred, the Governor said, except
those where a convict is thought to be in immediate danger of death and
prompt action on the part of the Governor is imperative.
_Farming by Texas Prisoners._--Texas is to try the honor system among
convicts in one of its prisons, says the Little Rock, Ark., Gazette,
and is even going a step further by providing a profit-sharing plan to
encourage prisoners in thrift and industry. Fifty white men have been
selected for the test, and if the new plan proves feasible, it means
that the entire prison system of that State will be revolutionized in
the near future.
The prisoners are to be assigned to road work in a county that is to
pay $15 per month for each man’s services. Half of their earnings will
go to the penitentiary fund and the other half to the prisoners. The
county will maintain the men and, as no guards or overseers will be
employed, it is expected that the living cost of each prisoner will be
less than one dollar per day.
Governor Colquitt has announced that preparations are now being made
for the selection of another crew of 40 prisoners, who will work under
similar conditions at construction work on Texas railroads. All of the
men selected are young and have short sentences to serve. They will
be placed under paroles while away from prison, but the paroles are
revocable for disobedience.
STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, ETC. of THE DELINQUENT,
Published monthly at New York, N. Y., required by the Act of August
24th, 1912.
NAME OF POST OFFICE ADDRESS
Editor, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City
Managing Editor, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City
Business Manager, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City
Publisher, The National Prisoners’
Aid Association, 135 East 15th St., New York City
Owners, The National Prisoners’
Aid Association, 135 East 15th St., New York City
There are no bondholders, mortgages, or other security holders.
O. F. LEWIS, Editor and Business Manager.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 30th day of September, 1913.
H. L. McCORMICK, Notary Public No 6, Kings County.
My Commission expires March 31, 1914.
[Transcriber’s Note:
Table of Contents generated by transcriber.
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Delinquent (Vol. IV, No. 3, March 1914)" ***
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