Read Ebook: The Review; Vol. 1 No. 4 April 1911 by Various National Prisoners Aid Association Publisher

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From a state convict at Montgomery, Alabama, comes a criticism of that state's treatment of the criminal, and a series of recommendations for improving that treatment, which read like an extract from a report of a state board of charities. The author of the article is Albert Driscoll, who is serving a four years' sentence for safe-blowing. The article was addressed to the members of the legislature and was printed in a Montgomery newspaper. Driscoll recommends the indeterminate sentence, a prisoners' aid society, and suppression of the names of those placed on parole. Parts of his article follow:

"There have been several sporadic attempts to have an improved parole system inaugurated in this state, but somehow or other they have never materialized in any legislation. If there is an individual or an association in Alabama today who has the moral welfare of the two thousand odd convicts really at heart and wishes to benefit them, now is the time for them to get busy during the present session of the legislature.

"The crying need of some legislation on this subject is self-apparent. This State as represented by its prison system is not abreast of the spirit of the day. The old punitive method of dealing with crime as against the reformative system is still in operation. No attention is paid to the old axiom of an ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure, as regards those unfortunates who by environment, hereditary tendencies or pure cussedness for the criminal class. It is a large and constantly growing class and from a moral as well as a economic viewpoint it demands attention.

"The old idea of the State revenging itself on the malefactor still obtains and beyond securing as much revenue as possible from the convict during his incarceration, no attention is paid to his moral betterment except for the weekly sermon conducted by the prison chaplains. The man in stripes is regarded as a commercial asset solely. Several commutations from the capital penalty to life imprisonment have been secured in years past by being based on the argument that a life convict would be worth so many more thousand dollars than a dead one. Ye shades of Shylock! Has this rich State no other source of revenue than its convicts?

"When the pound of flesh has been exacted, he is abruptly turned loose to his own devices without a cent nor any equipment to help him to earn an honest livelihood. In every casual glance he will read suspicion and in his search for friends and sympathy he will be more than apt to search out other discharged convicts in former congenial haunts and from that it is but a short step to a life of habitual crime.

"Would it not be better to sentence every offender under an indeterminate sentence law, so that when the experts who have him in charge are convinced that he is thoroughly reformed, that on their recommendation and with the pardon board's approval, he could be paroled and turned over to a prisoners' aid society? This society should be a branch of the state convict department and it should retain control of paroled prisoners and sustain them until they could be placed at work. The great desideratum should be secrecy and the names of the paroled men should never be made public nor anyone made acquainted with their prison record except the direct head of any firm that might give them employment. Convicts are human and sensitive and they should be given a fair chance with a clean slate and not be handicapped at the start with a lot of notoriety. Give a man a bad name and he will very likely be forced to live up to it, except he has a strong character, and the class we are considering is not noted for strength of character, or they would be in other ranks of life. To the contrary, those who have slipped and fallen are entitled to special assistance and every manly man should feel in his heart a desire to help the under dog and to give him a chance to regain his manhood and self-respect.

"I do not ask you to receive a paroled convict as your personal friend, nor to put him up at your club, but I do ask you to aid the enactment of such legislation as will give him a fair chance in life. It will cost you nothing although the fees of the sheriffs and jailers may be reduced. We need an indeterminate sentence law, a parole system based on merit, a trade school for youthful offenders, and a state aid and employment bureau for paroled convicts. The whole convict department should be taken out of politics and higher salaries would attract a better class of men as officers.

"Corporal punishment is a relic of the middle ages and in substituting a better and more humane system of maintaining discipline the morale of the wardens will be elevated. The writer, who has served seven years as a state convict, knows by personal experience and observation that this method of punishment is degratory to the administrator as well as to the recipient.

"My heartfelt desire and my object in writing this article is the hope that it may inspire somebody to befriend the prisoners. We can't maintain a lobby at the capitol. The idea of a delegation in stripes soliciting votes is ludicrous. I do hope, however, that some broad-minded member of the legislature will advocate our cause."

IN THE PRISONERS' AID FIELD

PROGRESS IN CONNECTICUT

The retiring president of the Connecticut Prison Association recently wrote:

The past nine years have been years of progress. Five important steps have been taken, which bear directly upon the treatment of the criminal. Not one of these originated in Connecticut. We are not roadmakers. We slowly adopt courses which have been to some extent tried and proved efficient by others.

In 1901 was passed the indeterminate sentence law. Our late secretary was an indefatigable worker for its passage. Coupled with the parole law, the operation of the indeterminate sentence law promises much. It marks a great innovation. Naturally it must work its way slowly and must demonstrate its true worth to the community by years of experimentation.

In 1901 was also passed a law calculated to protect the public from the incorrigible, and deter such from continuance in crime. I refer to the law which requires that the judge, in the case of a third-term offender, shall make the maximum term of imprisonment thirty years. It is a severe law. But no one need suffer from it. An incurable criminal should not be allowed to imperil the interests of the public. If this law were enacted and enforced throughout the land, the majority of professional criminals and degenerates would soon be under constant surveillance.

The probation law, passed in 1903, has rapidly come into favor. Its operation has told its own story wherever it has had any chance at all. It has proved especially advantageous in the management of delinquent children.

In 1909 a law was passed, having for its end the prevention of the line of criminals, which the laws of heredity might seem to guarantee. The method employed is sterilization. There is much to be said for and against this measure. There is much skepticism regarding it. Time will demonstrate the wisdom or wickedness of such a law.

In 1909 decisive steps were taken for the establishment of a reformatory. This move is of state-wide interest. We cannot see how we have delayed so long. It is in the interest of young men. We hope much from this institution. Since success depends largely upon the spirit and ability of those in charge,--God give us men.

I have mentioned the chief measures enacted for the improvement of penological conditions. There are many signs of promise that have not yet found expression in legislation. Deep interest is taken in the physical, mental and moral development of children. And a few are coming to study the cold, hard facts, in the limelight of political economy, as to the fruits, in insanity and crime, of the traffic in intoxicants. Some day the good sense of the people will assert itself, and the refuge of lies will be swept away, and the real situation will be faced.

Our present jail system is being weighed in the balances and found wanting. Many believe that state management of jails would be more economical, and conducive to better results than are now obtained. A state farm for the inebriate, with nourishing food, fresh air, sunshine and moral influences, and hard work for a good long term, would, it is believe, be a merciful solution of the distressing rounder problem.

The Connecticut Prison Association was first organized as "The Prisoners' Friends Corporation," Tuesday, March 9, 1875, at a general meeting held in the lecture room of the Center Church, Hartford.

Its first president was Judge Heman H. Barbour of Hartford, and at his death Rev. Dr. Joseph Cummings, president of Wesleyan College, was chosen president.

December 8, 1876, a reorganization was affected under the name of "The Connecticut Prison Association."

Hon. Francis Wayland, dean of the Yale Law College, was then elected president, and continued in that office until the time of his death, January 9, 1904, more than twenty-seven years.

Rev. H. M. Thompson, D.D., of Hartford, served the association as president from November 9, 1904, until October 27, 1910.

Mr. John C. Taylor was secretary of the association from March 9, 1875, until his death, October 4, 1909, more than thirty-four years.

The objects of the Connecticut Prison Association as expressed in the constitution are:

Since its organization the association has extended a friendly hand to hundreds of discharged convicts, has had a part in advocating progressive laws and in forming an intelligent public opinion on the problems of criminology.

SAVING GIRLS IN NEW YORK CITY

In New York City is Waverly House, a temporary home for young women released on probation by the courts. The principal problem of the New York Probation Association, which maintains the House, is the rehabilitation of the young women convicted or arraigned for prostitution. In the second annual report of the association, Miss Maud Miner, the society's secretary, writes:

"Among the girls who have been received into Waverly House this year, nine per cent have been pronounced deficient when examined by experts as to their mental condition, and a much larger percentage, approximately one-third, can be said to be borderline cases. They have not, except in three instances, been proper subjects for insane asylums or present institutions for the feeble-minded, yet they are distinctly below par mentally and not entirely responsible for their moral conduct. It is useless for the state and city to spend money for these girls in reformatory institutions, as has been done in several of these cases, only to turn them out after one, two, or at most three years, to be preyed upon in the community. In a custodial institution where they could have permanent care, a happy life would be possible and society would be saved from caring for them in prisons and reformatories, and from having the number of degenerates augmented by their offspring.

"It is important to study the psychology of the individual girls and women, and also to determine how far vice or criminality may be attributed to innate depravity, low grade mentality or a degenerate inheritance. Psychological and psychopathic experts should be appointed to observe those who come in conflict with the law, not only with a view to providing more intelligently for the individuals, but for the purpose of discovering actual causes and conditions, so as to prevent others from entering on a life of vice and to check the increase of numbers in these classes.

"How far immorality and prostitution are the result of work conditions and the inability to live on the wages paid, how far these are a primary or a secondary cause, we do not definitely know. It is true that nearly all the girls have at some time been employed and that many of them have been working under conditions which were not favorable.

"Girls who have worked in kitchens, restaurants, offices, factories, stores, on the stage and in different workshops have many strange stories to tell, and one realizes that girls going out into the world of work are subject to many temptations. Girls crave some fun and amusement, and it is a very natural, normal thing. They do not seek it in dangerous places, but the truth is that few others are open to them. To an increasing extent vice is being linked with amusement and recreation. The men who procure girls for immoral purposes from city and country, and who send them to the streets to earn money for their own enrichment, are responsible, to a great extent, for the constantly increasing supply of women who enter upon a life of prostitution."

That the association has work to do is strikingly evidenced by the following table, showing the nature of the dispositions of cases in the night court for women.

"During the year from August 1, 1909, to July 30, 1910, 7,896 complaints were taken against girls and women in the night court, for offenses relating to immorality and prostitution. These included soliciting on the streets for purposes of prostitution, accosting men, associating with dissolute and vicious persons, and violating the tenement house act by carrying on prostitution in a tenement house.

"The disposition of the cases was as follows:

"Of the total number, 84 per cent were almost at once returned to the streets by being discharged, fined, or placed under a good behavior bond. Fourteen per cent of the remaining 16 per cent were committed to the workhouse, and in only two per cent of the cases was some helpful measure tried--probation or a reformatory.

"The association has during 1910 developed a plan for preventive work to aid more of those girls who are in danger and to seek to understand better the conditions in the different districts tending to bring the girls into trouble. Many of this class have already been referred to the association, and it has been possible to help them by putting them in touch with helpful influences in the neighborhood, or by securing their removal from the district. For the purpose of the preventive and after-care work, the city has been divided into six districts. Some of the work in these districts is being done by volunteer workers who are not able to devote sufficient time in view of the extent and character of the work."

NOTES FROM COLORADO

From a total of eighty persons aided in 1904 to total of 517 aided in 1910 has been the growth of the work of the Colorado Prison Association. That more care is being exercised in the aid given is indicated by the facts that during 1905-6 the average expenditure per person was , during 1907-8 it was , and during 1909-10 it was .

In the biennial report of the president of the association, Mr. E. R. Harper, says:

"The working of convicts on the public roads has attracted the attention of the world, and fully demonstrated that it is feasible and highly beneficial to so handle the men. It would have been difficult some few years ago to believe that penitentiary convicts could be placed in camps, in the wild and rugged sections of our state, in the mountains, the most ideal situation for safe 'get-aways,' without a guard or gun in camp, and yet not have wholesale escapes. But penitentiary prisoners, upwards of 300 in number, have been so handled during the past three or four years, under just such conditions, with the most gratifying results--a long step, indeed, in the right direction. And this condition was brought about partly through the work and influence of this association.

"However, to make such progress in these matters as ought to be, additional assistance is essential, mainly in the way of new laws. The most needful just now are: A law giving the trial judge the right to parole first offenders; an amendment to the present law regarding the feeding of jail prisoners, doing away with the possibility, if not the probability, of exorbitant and unnecessary expenses to the counties; a law providing for working jail prisoners on the highways, and for the work allowing them some little compensation to go toward the support of dependent ones. Measures to cover these essential matters have been introduced in the present legislature, and we earnestly hope for their enactment into law.

"Still in the future, but we trust not too far, Colorado should take the next important step and allow each penitentiary prisoner something for work done, so that it can either go toward assisting those depending on him, or be accumulated to his credit, in order that he may have at least a little with which to get out into the world of action and usefulness again. When that condition prevails, very much, if not all, of this association's work will be accomplished; and its charitable force can be directed in some other channel of service."

Though called in November, 1910, to take charge of the work of the Associated Charities of Denver, Colo., W. E. Collett has continued to act as general secretary of the prison association, serving in that capacity without pay.

THE PLEDGE AND OTHER WORK OF A CITY COURT

One of the features of the probation system, as practiced during the past year by Judge James A. Collins, of the City Court of Indianapolis, Indiana, has been the required "taking of the pledge" in a number of cases of persons found guilty of drunkenness. In his annual report for 1910 Judge Collins says:

"In all cases of first offenders charged with being drunk and in those cases where the defendant had others dependent upon him for support, the court has made it a condition on withholding the judgment or suspending the sentence that the defendant take the pledge for a period varying from six months to one year. At the close of the year one hundred and one persons had taken the pledge, and of this number all but ten had kept the same faithfully. Eighteen of these were women, of whom all but three are reported to have kept the pledge faithfully."

Judge Collins has also set aside Wednesday afternoon exclusively for the hearing of the cases of women and girls. Since the law provided for no paid probation officers, and since it was desired that for the separate trials of women and girls there be an adequate system of investigation and supervision, the Local Council of Women guaranteed the expenses of a woman probation officer.

The court has instituted also a "missionary box," into which is put all unclaimed money obtained in gambling raids. The funds so collected have been used to furnish transportation for runaway boys and girls, to provide necessaries for the destitute, and on several occasions to return veterans to the Soldiers' Home at Marion or at Lafayette.

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