Prison population

“ Now, many of the folks in prison absolutely belong there – our streets are safer thanks to the brave police officers and dedicated prosecutors who put violent criminals behind bars. But over the last few decades, we’ve also locked up more non-violent offenders than ever before, for longer than ever before. That’s the real reason our prison population is so high. ”

“ If we apply this rather pragmatic psychology to the problem of planning a new prison, we find it obvious at the outset that a prison population forms, together with its dependencies, a complete segregated community and therefore presents few phases which have not been successfully solved in the various treatments of community houses in past eras. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The high rate of recidivism in the Local prison population limits the number of individual women in the community who are sent to prison annually to a comparatively small total. Statistics show that over 32 per cent. of the total committed on conviction in a given year are sent to prison more than once in that period. This rate applied to the total receptions for 1919-20 would show that the whole Female population of prisons for that year was limited to slightly over 8,000 individuals. ”

“ Our rehabilitation policies and improved parole system are attracting nationwide attention. Fewer parolees are being returned to prison than at any time in our history and our prison population is lower than at any time since 1963. ”

“ In small prisons it would be applicable on a limited scale, the smallness of the prison population preventing proper classification.
But all prison systems, however excellent in theory, are comparatively useless unless conducted in an enlightened spirit by competent and sagacious officials. The best of systems if worked, as sometimes happens, by a mere martinet, with no horizon beyond insisting on the letter of official regulations, will be productive of no good whatever, and, on the other hand, an indifferent system will achieve excellent results with a competent person at the head of it. ”

“ Year by year in a country of presumably sane people this deplorable condition of things continues, and I am bold enough to say that there will be no reduction in the number of our prison population till proper treatment, training, and, if need be, detention, is provided in places other than prison for our afflicted youthful population when they become offenders against the law. ”

“ The prison is unquestionably a much less effective weapon for dealing with crime among Continental peoples, and in the United States, than it has shown itself to be in Great Britain; but this failure arises in the main from the laxity and indulgence with which criminals are treated in foreign prisons. A prison to possess any reformative value must always be made an uncomfortable place to live in; Continental peoples and the people of America have to a large extent lost sight of this fact; hence the failure of their penal systems to stop the growth of the delinquent population. ”

“ What thoughts passed through those minds, what fierce hate, what hopeless despair may not have swept over them as they listened to the summing up of their case?
Prison communities come from no uncivilized island where they form a different species of the human family nor are they drawn from one section of the population confined to the slums. They are from the great, wide world at large. Some have had homes of ease and comfort and have been educated in our finest colleges and schools. ”

“ These State Institutions are under the control of the Prison Commissioners, and form part of the Prison administration. They are controlled by minute regulations, approved by Parliament, and their function is to reconcile, as far as possible, a strict custody and control with certain alleviating conditions and privileges for those who deserve them. Their population is however, relatively small, the average for the three years prior to the War not having exceeded nineteen Males and fifty-seven Females. ”

“ Standard life table techniques were used to prepare estimates of the lifetime likelihood of going to prison based on rates of first incarceration during a 12-month period derived from inmate surveys conducted in 1974, 1979, 1986, 1991, and 1997. ”

“ Many people are of opinion that it is, and the idea is at present diligently fostered on the platform and in the press that we have at last found out the secret of dealing successfully with the criminal population. As far as I can ascertain, this belief is based upon the statement that the daily average of persons in prison is constantly going down. Inasmuch, as there was a daily average of over 20,000 persons in prison in 1878, and a daily average of about 15,000 in 1888, many people immediately jump at the conclusion that crime is diminishing. ”

“ Percents represent the chances of being admitted to State or Federal prison during a lifetime. Estimates were obtained by applying age-specific first incarceration and mortality rates for each group to a hypothetical population of 100,000 births. ”

“ By the construction of an additional cell house in the space indicated by the dotted lines on the ground plan, and by the construction of an additional kitchen and mess hall between the present mess hall and the power house, the population of the prison may be doubled. The present prison is designed to accommodate 800 prisoners on a basis of five men to the large cells. By putting six men in the cells, however, the present population may be increased to something over 900. By constructing an additional mess hall and kitchen, racial segregation may be more completely effected. ”

“ Estimates of the prevalence of ever having gone to prison were derived from generation life table techniques. The prevalence of ever having gone to prison includes adults currently in prison and living former prisoners. ”

“ A majority of labor colony inmates were political prisoners and, if there were a few of them that had not completed their sentences or were not released in amnesties by the mid-1960s, they were probably transferred to penitentiaries. Increased use of judicial commissions for petty crimes and an accompanying change minimizing confinement in lesser cases have further reduced prison populations and eliminated the need for separate categories of correction institutions. ”

“ To the mind of the Governor no steps in this direction should be taken until the entire felon population of the State has been studied, with a view to the construction of buildings which will provide for the classification of such offenders, and the establishment of a system of grading and separation of men who need different methods of treatment. This may involve the use of the modern part of the present prison for the worst men, and the construction of new buildings elsewhere, for other classes, with ample facilities for outdoor work for those who can be trusted. ”

“ To obtain the number of persons who had ever gone to prison, separate generation life tables were prepared for persons alive between 1974 and 2001. These tables model the first incarceration and mortality experience of each birth cohort as it proceeded through life. Estimates were made of the number of persons going to prison for the first time, by year of age, and the number who had been incarcerated and survived to each later age. ”

“ He has a very different population to deal with in your small state prison from the great population crowded in many of our all too unsanitary prisons of New York, New Jersey, etc. I have had scores of men come to me from state prison whose long prison terms had absolutely incapacitated them for work. Shattered nervously and physically, they have crept out into the world afraid to face the unfriendly crowd. I have taken men from prison who were blind with blindness that had come to them within those dread shadows. ”

“ But the authorities do not appear very happy over the reduction in the Riverside population. You understand the reason: the smaller the total, the less men may be exploited in the industries. I am not prepared to say whether there is collusion between the judges and the administration of the prison, but it is very significant that the class of offenders formerly sent to the workhouse are being increasingly sentenced to the penitentiary, and an unusual number are transferred here from the Reformatory at Huntington and the Reform School of Morganza. ”

“ Some four per cent. of the total population have shown themselves so desperately bad that it has been deemed unsafe to suffer them to leave the precincts of the gaol.
Every convict on first arrival is relegated to the close confinement of the cellular prison by way of breaking him in, and he is detained there under the most irksome conditions for an unbroken period of 151 six months. He remains in his cell all day and all night, save for a brief space spent at exercise with others, but in strict silence. ”

“ Not only in my own State but to every State in the Union the death-knell of the old penitentiary, with its noisome cells and dark dungeons, has struck. The bloodless revolution of the reform movement is irresistible simply because it is in line with human progress.
Not until the present generation of criminals has passed away can adequate results of the widespreading change in prison management be [Pg 281] expected; for a large percentage of our convicts to-day are the product of crime-breeding jails, reformatories, and prisons. ”

“ There is no reason why the farm colony system should not be extended to the treatment of all crime except that we have prisons, prison managers, and a prison administration which stand in the way of radical prison reform ”

“ The justice which, for the sake of society, restrains the freedom of the offender, yields entirely to the mercy that turns to that offender’s temporal and eternal good. This infliction, that separates him from his associates in felony, frees society from apprehension of his crimes.
We speak here of the infliction of the Penitentiary. The case of a convict in the County prison has in it much less of severity, and is proportionately therewith of less benefit to him and less advantageous to society. ”

“ In the prisons and reformatories the inmates should be taught the habits of industry and obedience to law and order, under humane and strict discipline.
There should be a complete separation of the first offender and the individual subject to reformation, from the weak-minded, physically deformed, and old and confirmed criminals; a reformatory for boys and first offenders, a separate prison for women and an industrial school for girls, with a parole system in each of the institutions. ”

“ It is now proposed to separate this class of prisoners from others; but is punishment operative on them at all? Is not their proper place an asylum?
In the third place, there is the discharge from prison; and truly, if the prevention of crime be a main object of society, it is just when a man is released from prison that, from a social point of view, there would seem most reason to send him there. For even if, whilst in prison, he has learned no dishonest means of livelihood, how shall he, when out of it, set about obtaining an honest one? ”

“ Sitting tonight in our lonesome cell, bounded on three sides by blank and barren walls of steel, through our two-by-six door, constructed of massive bars of iron, there comes to us the conversation of our fellow prisoners, as with head pressed close against the bars to catch the other fellow's words, we listen to the talk of the men "committed for crime"—men strong and healthy, who should be engaged in some honest labor, but, instead, are "doing time" for a broken law. ”

“ We are beginning to make use of a mass of data furnished by physiology, psychology, and sociology, and on the basis of these data to subject prisoners to individualized treatment. Instead of herding all offenders into a single institution such as the county jail or the penitentiary, we are beginning to inquire, first of all, whether the prisoner might not be treated most effectively outside prison walls. For those offenders who seem to require institutional treatment, we are developing a whole series of institutions, designed to care for special types of abnormality. ”

“ Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. The difference between that mode of dealing with the convict and the lesser evil, that of allowing him to perish in inactivity, and acquire strength in bad resolves, and instruction for future crimes, is what policy and unaided humanity have wrought out of the condition of the offender. The difference between the latter condition and that of the inmates of the Philadelphia County Prison, and especially the Eastern Penitentiary, is what results from the labor of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Prisons. ”

“ He also most strongly advocates separation of prisoners; insisting that "the mixing of prisoners together is radically bad, and should at all costs be done away with. Men who are imprisoned for first offences, whether it be in a county gaol or a convict prison, should most certainly be kept perfectly distinct from 'second-timers,' and not on any account be brought into contact with old offenders, who, in too many cases, simply complete their education in vice." ”