The Review, Vol. 1, No. 7, July 1911

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bill, which has general interest in all states where the farm colony plan has been contemplated, provides for a state industrial farm colony for the detention, humane discipline, instruction and reformation of male adults committed thereto as tramps or vagrants. The colony shall be under the control and management of a board of seven managers, to serve without compensation. The board shall appoint the superintendent and other employes, establish rules and regulations including the classification, parole, discharge and retaking of inmates. The board shall, if possible, utilize lands now owned by the state, if such lands are suitable as a site for the state farm colony. In case no lands now owned by the state are found to be suitable, the board of managers shall select a site of not less than 500 acres. The term of detention in the colony shall be not longer than 18 months with the exception that an inmate who has been manifestly committed to an institution after the age of 16 may be detained not longer than two years. There is no minimum term of commitment, nor shall any person under the age of 22 be committed to said colony. A significant clause in the act provides that it is the intent and meaning of this act that reputable workmen, temporarily out of work and seeking employment, shall not be deemed tramps or vagrants, nor be admitted to the said colony. Persons committed as vagrants to the farm shall be local charges, and those committed as tramps shall be maintained at the expense of the state. In no event shall any locality be charged a greater amount for the care of vagrants than the actual per capita cost for their maintenance in such state industrial farm colony.

An excellent campaign of publicity has been carried on this year for this bill by the charity organization society, and the association for improving the condition of the poor in New York through their joint application bureau. Rarely has any bill before the legislature found so much favor in editorials and news columns.

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

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

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

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

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The New York Times recently published the following book review:

_Tramps in the Making._--“The laboratory method in philanthropic work has never had more signal demonstration than in Alice Willard Solenberger’s “One Thousand Homeless Men,” (New York: Charities Publication Committee, $1.25) a study of original methods in the true scientific manner and spirit. The author was for four years in charge of a district of the Chicago Bureau of Charities and during that time compiled, in the regular course of her work, the statistics whose analysis and discussion make up this work. She endeavored also to trace the later histories of her subjects and, whenever this was possible, she had included it in her data. Mrs. Solenberger’s untimely death, before she had written the final chapter in which she has purposed to sum up the conclusions to which she had been led by her long study and intimate knowledge of the homeless-man problem, lessens somewhat the interest of her book for the general reader. But her analysis of her tables of statistics and her discussions of the inferences to be drawn from them are so lucid and so practical that philanthropic workers will find the volume valuable alike for its facts and for its suggestions.”

“Perhaps the most striking of the phases of the vagrancy problem brought out by Mrs. Solenberger’s figures is the extent to which it is a native problem. Of the group of confirmed tramps, more than a fifth of the whole number of cases studied, 76 per cent. are native born. Of the vagrant runaway boys, nearly all were born on American soil and of American parents. The chapter devoted to these boys is particularly notable for its sympathetic but level-headed treatment of the causes which lead to boyish vagrancy, of its results, and of the methods by which it might be combined. Among these methods she thinks the most important would be the satisfying of adolescent “wanderlust” by normal, wholesome means and the closing of the railways to vagrants.

“Indeed the whole tramp problem she believes could be well-nigh solved if vagrants of all ages could be kept off railway trains. It has been estimated by several authorities, working independently, that there are in the United States at least half a million tramps. In her book Mrs. Solenberger studies the genesis, character, and previous environment of 220, and comes to the conclusion that in the huge army of which these are typical examples the variations of character and of inducing causes are so great that they call for much variety in methods of treatment. But the basic characteristic of all of them is the abnormal propensity for incessant wandering.

“‘It is the mere accessibility of the railroads, more than anything else,’ she writes, ‘that is manufacturing tramps today. * * * When we succeed in absolutely closing these highways to any but persons having a legitimate right to be on them, we shall check at its source the largest single contributary cause of vagrancy, and the problem of the tramps, as such, will practically be solved.’

“She thinks the problem should be dealt with by states, and that if several of the most populous and most tramp-ridden would deal with it adequately, for which she makes a number of practical suggestions, the rest would be driven, in self-defense, to follow their example.

“Other subjects treated by this same scientific method of study of actual cases, with all the preceding and following data that could be gathered, and then discussed in their general implications, are chronic beggars, seasonal and casual labor, interstate migration of paupers, homeless old men, the crippled, the defective, and industrial accidents. A number of appendices contain much statistical information and some articles on lodging houses. The book is published under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation.”