Various

“ A woman under our present system of life ought to have a court of this kind in which she may take refuge, because the world at large is, at the present time, so unfair to women. A woman can serve a man for years, bear him a large family of children, and suddenly be deserted and left with the burden of support for herself and family on her. If her husband is faithless, all she can do is to appear before the supreme court and apply for a divorce, but in this domestic relations court the judge will make her husband contribute to her support and to the support of his children. ”

“ We cast around for explanations of crime waves, increasing tendency to criminality, and a growing disregard by young men in New York City of the principles of law and order. I fail to see how any young man going through the experience now daily undergone by hundreds of our young men can emerge from New York City’s prisons without a vindictive attitude of mind toward the city which maltreats him thus. ”

“ That there should be only three such courts in this country is a striking commentary on the life we lead when it has been proved and demonstrated so extraordinarily by the domestic relations court in New York city that the need is so great. A visit to the domestic relations court will not insure a pleasant afternoon or an amusing hour, but it will prove an enlightening experience. ”

“ The remedy is more money—more money for more cells and more prisons. For some years a new workhouse has been contemplated. It is as necessary to have an up-to-date workhouse as an up-to-date police force. If we are to have a night court for men, to save the innocent from overnight imprisonment, we must have a night prison which will not condemn the guilty to intolerable conditions of imprisonment. ”

“ Any woman without a dollar in the world can walk into the domestic relations court, tell her troubles to the clerk of the court, and then if her case is a worthy one, she is within a few minutes placed on the witness stand, where she can repeat the recital to the judge. The whole proceeding of bringing her husband to the bar of justice and getting the court to forcing him to provide for her is speedy and absolutely without cost. ”

“ In a word, the economic progress in prison labor shown in the legislation of 1911 is toward more efficient production by the elimination of the profits of the leasee, more economical distribution by the substitution of a preferred market where the profits of the middleman are eliminated in place of the unfair competition with the products of free labor in the open markets, and finally the curtailment of the slave system by the provisions for wages and choice of occupation for the man in penal servitude. ”

“ The introduction and extension of industries in the penitentiaries is of vital importance. The present idleness of the prisoners in all the penitentiaries (except New York and Onondaga county penitentiaries, where the product can be increased fifty per cent) is tending to destroy their future usefulness and turn them into loafers. It is the duty of the state commission of prisons to present the evils of this idleness to the public and to endeavor to have the county authorities furnish employment for all the prisoners, as required by law. ”

“ If sending a man to prison provided his wife and children with bread and butter and rent it might frequently be a good thing for society in general and the family in particular to have the man locked up. Unfortunately, a man sent to Blackwell’s Island for six months is obliged to do work for the state, but this precludes all possibility of his contributing to the support of his family during the period of his incarceration. ”

“ A state reformatory for misdemeanants, where boys between the ages of 16 and 21 can be committed on an indeterminate sentence and receive instruction in trades and letters, is the most necessary and urgent prison reform under public discussion. These boys can now be committed only to penitentiaries and jails, except in the city of New York, and the penitentiary and jail associations and treatment confirm them in criminal habits. ”

“ Society as a whole is responsible for all its members.”
The growing amount of crime among women was discussed. One-seventh of the number of women committed to prison are old offenders. The growing activity of women in industry was declared by President MacChesney to be responsible for a surprising increase in crime.
“In Massachusetts crime among women is much more an economic than a moral problem,” said Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly. “The overwhelming majority of women in industry are low wage earners, often victims of seasonal trades with their alternate periods of over-work and semi-starvation. ”

“ When she has finished the defendant takes the stand in the usual way and the judge questions him with a similar desire to elucidate the trouble. If the case is flagrant it is within the power of the court to sentence the man to the workhouse for a period of not more than six months. Many women urge that their neglectful husbands be sent away, but it is in this connection that the law is perhaps not all that it should be. ”

“ That is why the state interests itself to the extent of providing a counsel for complainants, in order to protect itself from the burden of caring for helpless women and little children, whom some individual has simply deserted. There are people who pretend to find amusement in the rehearsal of the marital woes of the poor. ”

“ Working at machines and trades that are soon learned, they are entirely at the mercy of their employers.
“In our Massachusetts prisons the population falls as prosperity increases in the great centers of industry, but immediately there is a shut-down in the mills of the State we are then forced to note a pitiable increase in the number of women who fall into evil ways.” ”

“ In the light of such classification the convict labor legislation of the current year shows definite tendencies toward the state’s assumption of its responsibility for its own use of the prisoner on state lands, in state mines and as operatives in state factories; while in distribution the competition of the open market, with its disastrous effect upon prices, tends to give place to the use of labor and commodities by the state itself in its manifold activities. ”

“ Furthermore, the law will not allow the prosecution a second time of a man who has just served a term of imprisonment for non-support or abandonment within one year of the first prosecution, so that if a woman asks the court to lock up her husband and the court complies, that woman voluntarily surrenders all legal right to take further action against him or collect money from him for a whole year. ”

“ Another feature of the proposition is that the prisoner loses his citizenship when he is sentenced, and its restoration rests with the governor, to whom the board of parole is to certify when it grants an absolute release, stating the reasons for the release.
Addressing himself to the merits of the general proposition, Mr. Hall declared that the deterrent of crime is not the punishment, but the fear of conviction. What any person respects more than anything else is his honor, and he shrinks from being branded as a criminal. ”

“ Wyoming.—The state board of charities and reform and the warden constitute a state commission on prison labor, to regulate according to its best judgment the employment of the state convicts so that they may acquire a knowledge of a trade at which they can earn a livelihood upon release. The labor of the convicts is to be upon products for the state and sub-divisions of the state, and public officials cannot purchase in the open market, unless upon release by the commission. ”

“ Only two or three times since this court was established have French couples been obliged to appear there. A great many people classify themselves as Americans when as a matter of fact they are foreign born, so that the figures in regard to the number of Americans in this court are misleading. Negroes, however, turn up here in great numbers. Colored men often have no sense of responsibility [Pg 9] whatever and they are constantly forsaking their wives and families or going off with somebody else’s wife. The excuses offered by colored men who are haled into this court are often very amusing. ”

“ When the train finally pulled in, the prisoners were marched up the steps of a special car and down the aisles in regular order. Some difficulty was experienced in getting the men, impeded as they were, up the car steps, and they all smiled at the bystanders as if they were enjoying the little trip in the open air. ”

“ The usual penological analysis of prison labor into lease, contract, piece-price, public account and state-use systems is impossible to use in an economic analysis of the labor conditions involved. Economically two systems of convict production and two systems of distribution of convict-made goods exist; production is either by the state or under individual enterprise: distribution is either limited to the preferred state use market or through the general competitive market. ”

“ A man living in the ghetto of Warsaw or Bialystok or Wilna will decide to come to America to seek his fortune. Not having money enough to bring his wife and family, he starts out alone leaving behind him the assurances that he will return for them, or will send them money to bring them over. ”

“ Last year the sheriff had to send to the state farm for men to assist in the general work. Out of 100 who have been here and worked on the farm, 85 have made good. The sheriff believes that good treatment and outdoor work has good and lasting effects. One man who did work at the jail for nearly a year after his term expired was employed by the contractor, and worked every day thereafter until the building was completed. Several others who worked on the construction of the building have been working at the concrete business out in the free world ever since. ”

“ New Jersey.—The sale on the open market of the products of convict labor of any state penal institution is prohibited after the expiration of existing contracts. A preferred market is established consisting of all manufacturable articles consumed by the state and sub-divisions thereof. A prison labor commission is created to so regulate the penal industries that the greatest amount consumable by this preferred market will be produced. ”

“ Improvements like these in the production and distribution of the products mitigate evils, but in no vital way effect the economic injustice always inherent under a slave system. The payment of wage to the convict as a right growing out of his production of valuable commodities is the phase of this legislation which tends to destroy the slavery condition. ”

“ The convicts will no longer be regarded as dangerous and unmanageable animals, to be subjected only to hard labor, coarse diet and various degrees of punishment, but they will be treated as men: men facing a future filled with the opportunity of reformation, and the influences of prison life will be directed towards the development of their manhood and the creation of new hope in their bosoms.
In the prosecution of this new plan a prison library will be inaugurated, a school established, concerts given by a band to be formed among the inmates and games permitted in the leisure hours. ”

“ Yearly budgets are to be sent on October 1st to the commission by all purchasing officials in the state. The penal institutions are to report fully regarding all convict labor and its productive power together with the cost of production. A uniform system of accounting is to be established, together with a standardization of commodities to be manufactured, on which is to be affixed a fair price. ”

“ Sometimes the wife waits for four or five or six years before in despair she sets out in quest of her husband. Sometimes she finds him married to some American woman or some woman he has met over here, and then she goes to court with her trouble. ”

“ The citizens of Baltimore have every reason to be proud of this their one definite penal institution. It has reached an excellence of administration and a physical condition that place it easily among the foremost institutions of similar nature throughout the country. The improvements have been very marked, and from simply a correctional and detentional institution it has been transformed into a place of real helpfulness and reformation. ”

“ The out-of-place presence of these detained persons interferes with the work in the prison and in the reformatory. Mr. Osborne, warden of the state prison, concludes that reformation is an almost impossible achievement in the state prison, and Dr. Moore, superintendent of the state reformatory, is of the opinion that the presence of hardened criminals in the reformatory prevents the carrying on of efficient reformatory work in his institution.
Under the existing laws it is provided that the male first offenders between the ages of 16 and 30 years shall be sent to the reformatory. ”

“ Drink is frequently at the bottom of domestic troubles, but not nearly so often as most people would think. Drink, especially whiskey, frequently makes a man irritable and quarrelsome, which leads to family rows and frequently to disorderly conduct. ”

“ Transfer of prisoners is specially frequent because in Prussia practically all persons are under a central authority, the department of justice, which transfers prisoners according as fluctuations of population in the prisons occur. By arrangement with the railroads—which in Prussia are under governmental control and operation—specially constructed railway prison cars are attached to early morning or late evening trains, the cars being so constructed as not to afford public display of the prisoners. From the interior of the prison the prisoners are conveyed in vans to the railway stations. ”

“ To make this of material value the prisoner’s labor must be productive. The distribution of the product of the prisoner’s labor inevitably presents the problem of competition. The confounding of the evil of penal servitude with the methods of production and the methods of distribution which have grown out of it has produced a confusion in the thought underlying prison labor regulation by legislative enactment. ”