Various

“ The administration realizes that the inmates are criminals, sentenced to confinement on account of crime, and to convert a penitentiary into a place of recreation and amusement would be to pervert the purposes for which it was instituted. In our Canadian institutions, men are punished for criminal offences, and on this fact or basis only the mercy of a parole can be safely administered. One fact I desire to lay stress upon is that our convicts receive a wholesome, humane treatment which leads to the beneficial results of our parole system. ”

“ An error into which speakers and writers upon crime are prone to fall is that of regarding the statistics of crime as a measure of the total volume of crime committed in the country, affording an answer to the vital question: Is crime increasing? There are two fundamental facts relating to crime that must never be forgotten. First, that criminal statistics are, and must necessarily always be, confined to those crimes that are known and are officially acted upon by the police or the courts. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps the highest value of criminal statistics consists in the light they may throw upon the practical effects produced by penal legislation, by judicial procedure and by the administration of police and detective officers. For example, within the past decade, radical changes in the administration of justice have been established in this country by laws relating to juvenile offenders, and by the extended use of the suspended sentence and probation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the creation of efficient state bureaus, of the kind indicated, in the several states could only be secured, it is not chimerical to believe that through the dominating influence of the federal census bureau, tactfully exerted, a uniform system of statistical records relating to crime could ultimately be established throughout the United States. It is the first step that counts. ”

“ THE PAROLE SYSTEM IN CANADA [In the current annual report of the Minister of Justice as to the penitentiaries of Canada, appears an interesting account, partly historical, of the Canadian parole system. We print portions of the report.]
Adult criminals seem to have been under a “ticket of leave” system in England, as far back as the year 1666, in the reign of Charles II, when a statute was passed, giving judges power of sentencing offenders to “transportation to any of His Majesty’s dominions in North America.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.”
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. ”

“ Most of the rooms will enjoy direct sunlight at some period of the day through the outside window.
The building of this prison in Illinois will be watched with great interest by all those in the United States interested in the construction of prisons and in the proper housing of the delinquent. The circular form of prison is not entirely new. In 1901 a circular prison was built in Haarlem, Holland, to accommodate about 400 inmates. The Haarlem prison, however, has wooden doors for each cell which renders the supervision of the prisoners much more difficult. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The diversity and conflict of state laws are crying evils of our time, universally recognized and denounced, and yet the most strenuous efforts to bring about harmonious action between the legislatures of separate states have always failed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 meeting was then adjourned until 5.30 of the same date.
The adjourned meeting of the National Prisoners’ Aid Association was held at 5.30 P. M., October 16, 1911, at the Hotel Rome, Omaha. Vice President Lyon in the chair.
The nominating committee brought in the following list of officers and executive committee for election: President: Judge Carver of Topeka, Kansas; Vice President: William R. French of Chicago; Secretary and Treasurer: O. F. Lewis of New York; Executive Committee: General Edward Fielding, Chicago; F. Emory Lyon, Chicago; E. A. Fredenhagen, Kansas City ”