The Review, Vol. 1, No. 11, November 1911

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.]=

_The American Prison Association._—Under the title, “The Problem of Prisons.” the Outlook describes thus the recent annual meeting:

“A noteworthy interest in the proper employment of the prisoners in American prisons, reformatories, and jails was the keynote of the annual congress of the American prison association held recently at Omaha. This interest resulted in the appointment of a special committee, in which the name of the president of the American federation of labor is found among others, to investigate thoroughly prison labor conditions in this country and to report recommendations at the next year’s congress in Baltimore as to the best labor methods to be pursued in the correctional institutions of the various states. No more far-reaching action has been taken by the American prison association in the last decade. The sessions of the Omaha congress teemed with aspects of the labor problem. From New Zealand the success of reforestation by prisoners was reported: from Toronto, the remarkable working of convicts on a wide prison farm without armed guards. From the District of Columbia came reports of several successful years of collection of important sums from convicted offenders on probation, for the benefit and support of their families. Colorado has built almost half a hundred miles of state road by prisoners in the open, and other states have emulated the record. The congress was permeated with the feeling that prisoners should be steadily and profitably employed, not exploited by state or corporation or individual, and that so far as possible the families of prisoners should receive some portion of their earnings. Two other currents were strongly felt: one for the rational development of recreation in correctional institutions, the other for the more careful study of the mental and physical condition of each inmate. Baseball, lectures, concerts, prison schools, and other educational features were warmly advocated. Outdoor sports on a week-end half-day were held to be not only a valuable ‘exhaust pipe’ for pent-up spirits and emotions developed in a necessarily abnormal condition of living, but also a distinct part of the plan of re-creation that is a prominent purpose of imprisonment. As to mental and physical defectives, the testimony of specialists was strong, not only that a considerable percentage of prison inmates are mentally backward and deficient, thus requiring special treatment rather than ordinary prison discipline, but that many industrial and living conditions, in which offenders, young and old, have found themselves, tend predominantly to crime. In several sessions emphasis was laid also on the deplorable absence of statistics regarding crime in the United States, it being shown to be impossible to-day to tell whether crime is increasing or decreasing or what the general results of imprisonment in prisons or reformatories are. Encouraging indeed was the frank introspection that the prison wardens and boards of managers gave to this and their own work. Of special interest was the report of Attorney-General Wickersham on the success up to the present time of the parole system for United States prisoners, who now may be paroled, if first offenders, at the end of a third of the maximum term of their imprisonment, by the action of a board of parole consisting of the warden of the penitentiary in which the prisoner is confined and representatives of the Federal department of justice. The Attorney-General advocated the extension of the parole system to cover the cases of life prisoners, details of administration of which would naturally be worked out in legislation.”

The following officers were chosen:

President—Frederick G. Pettigrove, Boston.

General Secretary—Joseph P. Byers, Newark, N. J.

Financial Secretary—H. H. Shirer, Columbus, Ohio.

Treasurer—Frederick H. Mills, New York city.

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_Convicts on Roads._—Warden Wolfer of the Minnesota state prison is quoted in the Des Moines, Iowa, Capital as follows:

“The use of convicts in building roads is wrong in principle. In the first place the sight of convicts upon the public highways has a detrimental effect upon the young people, it is apt to inspire in them any but the purest of thoughts. But the worst effect is upon the convict himself. He is subject to public shame and humiliation, and if he is making an effort to reform, he becomes easily discouraged. I have no objection to preparing the stone and other materials for road building by the prisoners, provided it is done within the prison walls. The talk that the use of convicts upon the highway will eliminate the conflict between convict labor and free labor does not prove out. The exhibition of the convict upon the highway only tends to aggravate the conflict, as it gives the lazy free laborer a chance to claim that he would work on the roads if it wasn’t for the convict. It is too expensive a method of road building.”

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_The Occoquan Workhouse._—The entire supervision of the District of Columbia workhouse at Occoquan probably will soon be given to the Board of Charities. Under the law charitable, correctional, and penal institutions in the District come under the board’s supervision. The workhouse will, it is believed, shortly emerge from the engineering stage and be ready to pass under the control of the board, as is the jail at present.

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_Grim Humor._—The Germans describe that grim humor that emanates from cynics in distress as “gallows humor.” Here is a bit of it from the monthly prison paper of the inmates of the Charlestown (Mass.) state prison. It is a drama synopsis.

Act I. Incarceration Commutation On probation “Fine!”

Act II. Animation Expectation Situation “Wine.”

Act III. Condescension False Pretension Apprehension “Bats.”

Act IV. Judication Condemnation Long Vacation “Rats.”

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_Antiquated Methods at Fall River._—The citizens of Fall River, Mass., have recently been aroused by a revelation of conditions prevailing in the central station house of that city. Because of the lack of modern detention quarters, children, women and men of all degrees of vice are crowded together in a common compartment. A clergyman, who investigated the place, says:

“I found two children there, a boy and a girl, about twelve years of age. At night the station filled up with its inevitable horde of drunkards and offending women, whose language, if not immediate presence, was forced upon these children. I called upon the boy on Sunday and found him the companion of the loose women whose cases were to be heard in court Monday morning. I have nothing to say in regard to the accommodation of the men and women who must needs be shut up. But I think the treatment accorded to these children was outrageous.

“Why were they there? For the inexcusable, the damnable reason, that there was nothing else to be done with them. I am not criticising the officers of the central station. They are extremely kind to these children. It is the city of Fall River that is responsible. The community is committing an offence against children. If the city, as by all means it should, will take in hand either to punish or reform little children, it ought to make provision to properly accommodate such.”

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_Convict Labor in Colorado._—The rapidly spreading custom of employing convict labor on the roads is strongly indorsed by the experience of Governor Shafroth of Colorado. Under the Colorado system, Governor Shafroth says:

“The prisoners, in large gangs and with but two overseers in charge, work on the state roads, and at times are two hundred miles distant from the penitentiary. There is no confinement, guards or other precaution, yet during the past year there was a net loss of only two men by escape. In one instance a piece of road was constructed through solid rock for $6,000, that would have cost $30,000 under the contract system.”

That the convicts are reconciled to the conditions, the Governor explains is due to a law providing that the time of every prisoner is commuted ten days for every thirty he works upon the roads, and the penalty of three years added to the original term of very convict who escapes, in case he is recaptured. The convicts are in better health than they can possibly be when kept in prison, and work harder than men who are paid by the day.

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_Prison Verse._—“Verses of Hope” is the title given to a book of poems, written by prisoners at the Kansas state prison, and published under the direction of the chaplain.

I wonder now that parents ever fret At little children clinging to their feet; Or that the racket, when the day is spent, Brings angry words to them so pure and sweet; Oh, if I could find a muddy shoe, Or cap or jacket on my prison floor; If I could mend a broken cart today, Tomorrow make a kite to reach the sky, There is no man in all God’s world could be More blissfully content than I.

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I sometimes think I’d rather be forgot Than be remembered by the things I’ve done I’ve often wished my name was but a blot, On mortal scrolls of battles lost and won. Or rather still I’d like to be a child, As innocent as in those other days, If from stern duty’s path I was beguiled, Ere I had reached the parting of the ways. But still I see the folly of my fears, For something seems to say: “It’s not too late; For to whatever port the pilot steers, He may return. It is not left to Fate.”

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Turn failure into victory, Don’t let your courage fade; And even if you get a lemon, Just make the lemon aid.

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_Night Court Proposed for Baltimore._—A night court, modeled after the Night Court of New York city, should be incorporated in the proposed reform of the police magistracy system of Baltimore, according to Justice Alva H. Tyson. He believes that the numerous instances of innocent people having to spend a night in a cell in a police station is a relic of a crude governmental system, beyond which Baltimore should have passed years ago.

Another great field in Baltimore for charitable endeavor has been exploited in New York—that is probationary systems for women. Under the present magistracy system of Baltimore, almost all women who are arrested on minor charges, unless hardened criminals, have to be dismissed. What is a magistrate today to do with a woman on her first offense of having too much to drink in the opinion of a police officer? There should be a probationary official to whom she could be released and who could look after her future conduct.

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_Farm Work for “Convalescent” Offenders._—A new plan, intended to give Kansas convicts a new idea of life, has been put into effect at the Kansas penitentiary, according to the report of Warden J. K. Codding to Governor Stubbs. Every man that is sent to the prison is given six months’ work on the farm just previous to his release. The men get out in the open. They are tanned and sunburned, have more liberty, less discipline, get close to nature and leave the prison with the hatred of men and laws gone and really wanting to try to live better lives. Since the new system has been tried not one released convict has come back. Warden Codding believes that through this system Kansas may gain a record for a minimum number of second-term men which will be lower than that of any other state.

Many years ago an island in the Missouri river was sold to the state. The island has never been used, and the lands owned by the state around the prison have never been used to any great extent for farming. Warden Codding began work two years ago, and the first thing he did was to give the prisoners half an hour’s liberty each day in the prison yard. The men can do anything they wish during that half hour. They can talk to each other and the guard, play ball, pitch horse shoes, play croquet or a dozen other games.

The prisoners had been morose and sullen, and there were twenty-two insane prisoners in the hospital and a half dozen tuberculosis patients. The plan was adopted to see if the insanity and tuberculosis could not be stopped. Not a new patient has developed in 14 months, and there is not a single prisoner in the tuberculosis hospital at this time.

“The farm does two things of great importance,” says Warden Codding. “The first is that it gives the men a new aspect of life as they are about to leave the prison. The farm work and a half hour recreation period have reduced the ordinary prison vices seventy per cent. The plan of working the men on the farm has not been going long enough to make any figures, but I believe that there will be a less percentage of men returned to prison for second terms now than under the old plan of keeping them confined all the time.”

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_The State of Jails in Massachusetts._—The state board of health of Massachusetts finds 45 jails in the commonwealth unfit for occupancy. They are unsanitary and not properly managed. Describing his incarceration in the Middlesex county house of correction in Somerville, Mass., Rev. E. E. Bayliss said in the Boston American of September 24th, that

“When prisoners are admitted they are given no medical examination whatever. The weak, the strong, the sick and the well are all one in the eyes of the prison officials. All receive the same food and the same treatment.

“The result is that there are any number of prisoners suffering from very serious and shocking diseases, who receive either no treatment or treatment of the most perfunctionory sort. In addition all these men use the same knives and forks, the same drinking cups, and the same towels as the rest of the men. They are shaved every day with the same razor.

“In other words no precautions whatever are taken to guard healthy individuals from contamination from diseases, the virulence and contagiousness of which are only too well known.

“The sanitary conditions of the jail are abominable. They are not fit to describe in print, and they nauseate me when I think of them. The bedding, walls and floors swarm with vermin, and the half-hearted attempt to get rid of them by an occasional sprinkling of ill-smelling powder only emphasizes their presence.

“Humanity, common courtesy, the slightest sympathetic realization that we are all human beings, after all, is unknown. There is no one to say a good word to the prisoners. During the three months I was there we had only two sermons, and these were perfunctory in the extreme, and delivered without the slightest idea of appropriateness and of crying spiritual needs of the listeners.”

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_Alien Criminals._—A study recently made by Joseph P. Byers, general secretary of the state charities and prison reform association of New Jersey shows that 35 per cent. of the prisoners in that state are foreign born. Of the inmates of the state reformatory, 23 per cent. are foreign-born and 45 per cent. are either foreign-born or of foreign parentage.

Alien prisoners in 1909-10 comprised one-fourth of all the inmates of the state prison of New York.

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_Prison Philosophy._—From the Charlestown (Mass.) state prison paper, the Mentor, come the following verses, written by a prisoner.

CHANCE

He made us all of flesh and blood, And we, in troth, are kin; You in your place as ruler stood, I in my place of sin.

A turn in the mould, a spot in the clay, Would have changed our spheres of life; Mine would have been the glorious day, And yours the bitter strife.

Brothers in spirit and brothers in form, Only a step apart; One life was lost in a raging storm, One saved by a fairer start.

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_What Miss Jane Addams Says._—“More and more our reformatories are filled, not with criminals, but with the boys who have in them the basis of play unsatisfied, the basis of art unfulfilled, even those beginnings of variation from types which we call genius.

“It is these children, our brightest and best, whom we are spoiling by giving them no proper chance for development. The city offers adventurous children nothing to satisfy their desire for pleasure, nothing which will allow them to cherish their determination to conquer the world and make it a better one.

“So these children go out and get into trouble, or else they stay in their poor houses and factories and turn into stupid dullards, all initiative, all ambition stamped out of them.”

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A commission, one of whose members is Governor Harmon, is seeking a site for a new reformatory in Ohio.

The commission wants 300 acres of land, and an appropriation of $200,000 was made for purchasing the site and beginning the preliminary work. The commission proposes to locate the prison within a radius of 50 or 60 miles of Columbus.

Transcriber’s Notes

pg 1 Added periods after the word Committee, 4 times pg 4 Changed criminal classes, corruping to: corrupting pg 6 Changed jails and refomatories to: reformatories pg 10 Removed repeated word than from: less than than the familiar pg 11 Changed a nominating commitee to: committee pg 11 Added period after letter R in: R B. McCord pg 15 Changed things of great importance. to: importance,