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  VOLUME I, No. 6.      JUNE, 1911

  THE REVIEW

  A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE
  NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION
  AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

  TEN CENTS A COPY.      SEVENTY-FIVE CENTS A YEAR

  E. F. Waite, President.
  F. Emory Lyon, Vice President.
  O. F. Lewis, Secretary and Editor Review.
  E. A. Fredenhagen, Chairman Ex. Committee.
  James Parsons, Member Ex. Committee.
  A. H. Votaw, Member Ex. Committee.
  G. E. Cornwall, Member Ex. Committee.
  Albert Steelman, Member Ex. Committee.

  CONTENTS      Page
  The National Conference                  1
  Report of Committee on Lawbreakers       2
  The Suppression of Moral Defectives      7
  The Abolition of the Jail                8
  Mental Defects and Delinquency           9
  Treatment of the Mental Defective 
      who is also Delinquent              13
  Placing Misdemeanants on Probation      14

THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE


The national conference of charities and correction was held in
Boston from June 7 to June 14. The committee on lawbreakers had the
opening session, on Wednesday. Three section meetings were held by the
committee during conference week.

The REVIEW prints in this issue many of the papers prepared for the
sessions of the “lawbreakers,” as they were facetiously called. Other
papers will be printed next month. This is a small monthly, and some
papers have been crowded out.

The keynotes of the “lawbreakers” sections were: (1) Need for the
abolition of local and county jails as prisons for convicted offenders
and the establishment in their places of state district workhouses
or houses of correction; (2) full and impartial consideration by the
national conference of the problem of prison labor; (3) more rational
and adequate treatment of the mentally defective delinquent; (4)
the imperative need of a change in our treatment of misdemeanants,
especially vagrants, inebriates and offenders under the age of 21; (5)
the necessity of standardizing the methodology of probation work; (6)
the need of far greater organization of parole work; (7) the necessity
of developing crime statistics and statistics regarding offenders so
that records may be of real value.

Many other notes were struck. The spirit of the sessions was
optimistic, but questions and comments were frank and searching.

The committee on lawbreakers has a very definite place on the program,
even though, as this year, the name of the committee may be changed,
the committee for 1912 being called “committee on courts and prisons.”

During the conference strong sentiment was developed in accord with
the recommendation of the committee on lawbreakers that prison labor
be made an important part of the program of the conference for 1912.
It was stated by members of the committee on organization of the
conference that the matter was thoroughly discussed in the committee,
and that the understanding was that the title of the committee for
1912 admits of the introduction of this subject at the next national
conference. It remains now for the members of the committee on courts
and prisons to see that this subject is placed on the program.

The conference as a whole was characterized by the excellence of
the papers, the fundamental nature of the topics discussed, the
high-water mark in attendance reached, and the hospitality of Boston’s
representatives at the conference. Year by year the conference departs
more from the technical discussion of institutions and methods,
concerning itself increasingly with the problem of the general
improvement of social conditions. The next conference will be held in
Cleveland, Ohio, in 1912.




REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON LAWBREAKERS

National Conference of Charities and Correction, O. F. Lewis, General
Secretary of New York Prison Association, Chairman.


The Committee on Lawbreakers presents to the National Conference of
Charities and Correction a partial survey of needs not yet met in
the field of the treatment of the delinquent. In October, 1910, the
eighth international prison congress met for the first time on American
soil. Never before had this country been under so comprehensive or so
discriminating a scrutiny by foreign criminologists. As one newspaper
man put it: “The world’s spot-light was turned on American prisons and
American treatment of prisoners.”

In April, 1911, Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, the Chairman of the English
prison commission, and president-elect of the next international
prison congress of 1915, reported to his government. He commended in
general American state prisons and reformatories, but condemned the
systems, or lack of systems, in vogue in city and county jails. “Among
the jails,” he stated, “many features linger such as called forth the
wrath of John Howard, the great English philanthropist, noted for his
exertions on behalf of prison reform at the end of the 18th century.
Promiscuity, unsanitary conditions, absence of supervision, idleness
and corruption--these remain features in many places,” says the report.
“Until the abuses of the jail system are removed, it is impossible,”
concludes Sir Evelyn, “for the United States to have assigned to her by
general consent a place in the vanguard of _la science penitentiaire_.”

This is not pleasant reading, yet the question with us tonight is not
whether this criticism makes us as Americans pride-sore, but as to the
truth of this friendly but stinging criticism. On our program this
evening we have a distinguished gentleman, son of the eminent American
founder of the international prison congress, who will testify that the
English comments of Sir Evelyn are mild as compared with the American
reality.

Rome was not built in a day. As in Chicago you find still in immediate
context the mansion and the hovel, we have, in our treatment of
delinquents, in close juxtaposition the prison and the jail, the
reformatory and the workhouse, children’s courts and lynch law,
probation and short term sentences, the indeterminate sentence and
industrial prison idleness, parole and definite sentences, prison
hospitals for tuberculosis and jail pens for syphilis-infected tramps.
Civic pride in great modern prisons exists side by side with civic
indifference as to filthy lock-ups or town jails.

At the beginning of the second decade of the twentieth century--the
century of hoped-for social justice--let us face frankly certain
problems yet unsolved in the treatment of delinquents. Far from
feeling that we have reached the thumb-twiddling stage of complacent
satisfaction, let us see where our methods still break down.

First, _the local and county jails_. Not stopping with the remark of
Thomas Holmes at the international prison congress that “every jail
I saw on the American trip ought to be wiped off the face of the
earth,” and that nowhere in Europe do such conditions exist, we find
Professor Charles R. Henderson as chairman of a special committee
of the American Prison Association of Chicago in 1907, uttering a
scathing arraignment of revolting and demoralizing jail conditions.
We find Frederick H. Wines more recently in Maryland arraigning jail
conditions in many parts of the country. We find Warren F. Spalding of
Massachusetts writing in the Sage Foundation volumes on Correction and
Prevention about the jail friendships that make of the novice a life
long criminal, of the contamination of women prisoners, the herding of
juvenile offenders with adults, the dearth of attention to physical
conditions in jails, the deplorable lack of proper ventilation, the
ravages of disease among jail inmates and the absence of that rigid
vigilance without which the ordinary jail cannot be kept in a sanitary
condition; overcrowding, night buckets, monotony, filth, poorly cooked
or tainted food, unconvicted prisoners and convicted prisoners in
unrestricted communication, the fee system, local inattention to the
fundamental principles of penology.

The case against the average jail seems proved. Has not the time come
to make a general national campaign against this “school of crime?”

Mr. F. G. Pettigrove of Massachusetts dissents from the above
statements regarding jails as follows:

“I do not approve the unqualified general denunciation of jails. Nobody
who is familiar with the Massachusetts jails would make such an attack
upon them as is implied by the form of the reference to that subject.”

_Prison Labor._ Prison labor is an unsettled problem; one that we
must face; a problem complicated by local and state conditions, and
one in which the motives of men and even communities have often been
impugned. Scanning the titles of papers read at the national conference
of charities and correction during the last decade, we have found only
in the committee report by Mr. Whittaker in 1908 and in the paper of
Dr. James H. Leonard, Superintendent of the Ohio State Reformatory,
definite and extended treatment of the prison labor problem, this
fundamental problem of penology.

Has the problem been solved? Are prisoners everywhere earning their
maintenance? Has any one system proved satisfactory? Is there general
consensus of opinion that the prisoner shall not be utilized for
private gain? Is there no demoralizing idleness in so-called model
prisons? Is there no high tension labor in so-called model prisons?

No, prison labor has not reached a satisfactory solution when we can
still cite a recent article of Dr. A. J. McKelway in Volume II. of
“Correction and Prevention” regarding prison labor in the South: “The
leasing of convicts whether to corporations or individuals, is a system
that has been abolished by some of the southern states, but which still
prevails in some of the states, accompanied as it always has been with
indefensible abuses (p. 72). I make bold to affirm that such abuses as
were found to exist in Georgia will be found to exist in a greater or
less degree in every state where the leasing system still prevails.”

We learn that in Alabama even the wardens and the guards are employed
by the contractors. We find that in Ohio in connection with the
discontinuance of contract labor and the development of the State use
system the state penitentiary was plunged into the most deplorable
idleness. We find in Pennsylvania an archaic legal compulsion to
utilize only hand power machinery, and but thirty-five per cent of
the prisoners at any one time. We find under the present status of
the state use system in New York that the State prisoners earn only
about one-fourth of the cost of their maintenance, and a nominal sum
of not more than 2c. a day, which earnings can be radically reduced by
fines. We find loud protests in Rhode Island because the State lets the
services of able bodied prisoners to contractors at 30c. a day, and we
find in Maryland under the contract system a penitentiary which is said
to have returned to the State treasury in 1910 a surplus of thirty-five
thousand dollars from the earnings of prisoners, while the over time
work earned for the prisoners themselves $41,928. We find the Detroit
House of Correction on the State account system earning a profit in 11
years of $368,000, paying its prisoners from ten to twenty-five cents
a day wages, and planning to distribute to the families of prisoners,
through the city poor master, $15,000 during the year 1911 in addition
to the surplus which it expects to turn over to the city. We find
the Minnesota State prison under the State account system making the
following report for the last ten years:

  Total earnings       $2,210,880
  Total expenses        1,199,248
                      -----------
    Excess of earnings $1,011,632

The binder twine plan in the ten years has made a profit of $1,653,290,
of which $352,553 was paid to the support fund for convict labor.
Quoting again from Dr. McKelway, we learn that in Texas the convicts
are worked on the leasing, contract, public account and public works
system. “But a legislative investigating committee has recently
discovered horrible abuses in all these systems. A number of convicts
were found who had been literally beaten to death during the last year
(1909) and the prisoners seemed to dread the prison farm as much as
work within the prison wall, if not more.”

We find Warden Gilmour of the Toronto Central prison stating that
on the prison farm of that institution the inmates work cheerfully
and without guards. And so, ladies and gentlemen, your Committee on
Lawbreakers respectfully suggests that the general subject of prison
labor, in its various phases, be made the chief subject of this
committee at the next national conference. Prison labor is not simply
an administrative problem; it is an industrial problem and a health
problem, and concerns vitally the training and efficiency of scores
of thousands who, leaving prison, are potential subjects for charity
of a public or private nature. It is a vital problem for the national
conference of charities and correction as well as for the American
prison association. The problem of the proper utilization of prisoners
is a fundamental problem in every American state.

The fact that a separate organization, the National Committee on Prison
Labor, has been established to study the prison labor problem, and the
further fact that the newspaper and magazine press has manifested much
interest in the field which this committee occupies, are evidences of
the extent and importance of the field.

Frank L. Randall, General Superintendent of the Minnesota State
Reformatory and a member of the Committee on Lawbreakers, makes the
following suggestion:

“If the recommendation of the Committee on Lawbreakers be adopted to
make the subject of prison labor a feature of the next conference the
leaders of organized labor should be invited to participate. We should
ask the labor representatives, if they urge the state use plan, to
concede to the prisons the field, so far as the products are paid for
with public funds.”


_The Treatment of Defective Delinquents._

There are undoubtedly thousands of feeble-minded persons in
correctional institutions. In recent annual reports, of Elmira
Reformatory, it has been stated that about 35% of its inmates
are mentally defective. The presence of the feeble-minded is a
detriment to many plans that have been adopted for the instruction
and training of prisoners. The complete exclusion from the ordinary
prison of persons afflicted with tuberculosis has improved the
healthfulness of those prisons and has also supplied a better and more
hopeful means of treatment for the unfortunate sufferers. The same
treatment--segregation--should be applied to all those to whom special
treatment would be a benefit, or whose ailments are of such a nature
as to endanger the welfare of others. Dr. Henry E. Goddard of Vineland
estimates that 25% of delinquents are mentally defective. “All mental
defectives would be delinquents,” he states, “in the very nature of
the case, did not some one exercise some care over them. The mentally
defective must be cared for as we care for irresponsibles.” Mr. Ernest
K. Coulter, for many years clerk of the Children’s Court of Manhattan
and Bronx, New York City, states his belief that the most important
step to be taken by the state in its slow abandonment of antiquated
methods of dealing with child offenders and victims of bad environment
and neglect must be the establishment of institutions for the special
treatment of the mental defectives of this class. In the great state
of New York, there is no special custodial institution to which the
criminal feeble-minded can be committed and transferred. So important
is this matter, that it has been made the subject of one of the section
meetings of this Committee on Lawbreakers.

_Parole._ The principle of parole is a fundamental complement to the
principle of the indeterminate sentence. Its successful application
requires an efficient merit system within the prison, a competent
parole board and adequate supervision of the post-prison parole period,
the co-operation of the employment giving public, and the persistent
following up, recapture and reimprisonment of wilful violators of
parole.

Only in a most general way do we yet know the results of the
administration of parole systems in the country. We find a general
belief based on long experience and some careful study of prison
statistics, that about 75% of paroled persons from reformatories or
prisons “stay straight” during the parole period. We still lack any
study of sufficient magnitude to admit of generalization in the case
of any state as to the proportion of criminal recidivism _after_ the
parole period. The New York Prison Association will shortly make public
an extended study of the careers of seven hundred inmates of Elmira
Reformatory, yet this number, though intensively studied, will be too
small for any comprehensive generalization but will rather indicate
both a statistical method of study of criminal careers and the great
inadequacy of present institutional or extra-institutional social facts
and social statistics of delinquents.

As regards post-prison treatment and aid of the released or discharged
prisoner, we find Amos W. Butler in Volume II of the Sage Foundation
series on “Correction and Prevention” reporting that only about 24
organizations exist throughout this country for this purpose, though
several of these societies spread their activity through a number of
states. We find also very varying periods of parole, some of six months
as at Elmira, some of seven months, as at Huntington, Pa.; nine months,
as at the Illinois State Reformatory, or until the expiration of the
maximum sentence, as at Concord, Mass., or at Bedford, or Albion in
New York. We find in Mr. Butler’s study state after state recorded as
follows: “State makes no effort to find work or keep in touch with
prisoner after his discharge;” “no provision for aftercare of either
paroled or discharged prisoners;” “no parole officers;” “no parole
agents;” “no provision for finding work or for visiting prisoners,”
etc., etc.

A prominent eastern reformatory superintendent recently said: “Why
spend nearly two hundred dollars annually to maintain one inmate in a
reformatory, and then spend only $1.50 per inmate during his period of
parole to help him not to go wrong?” This committee on lawbreakers
believes that the parole period of an offender is barely second in
importance to the period of imprisonment. The poorly supervised
parole period breeds recidivism, contempt for law, the alienation of
the sympathy of judges, the irritation and criticism of the public,
unintelligent scorn for reformatory methods, and immense ultimate cost
to the state in further loss of property or life.

_The Probation Movement_, long known and developed in Massachusetts,
has during this last decade made great national progress. Nevertheless
the probation movement faces grave dangers. It is on the defensive.
The methodology of probation is still in the experimental stage.
More important than the extension of the system is the building up
of an effective technique. In too many places probation is still
synonymous either with sentimental leniency or with perfunctory police
surveillance. The most essential factors in probation work are the
educative, reformatory and reconstructive work represented by home
visitation, the development of right mental habits and the rendering of
practical assistance.

The improvement of probation methods depends primarily upon the
appointment of interested, faithful and competent probation officers.
The tendency is strongly in the direction of increasing the number
of public salaried probation officers. Although this tendency is
inevitable and desirable, it brings in its trail the gravest danger of
which the probation system must meet, namely the danger of appointments
being made through the influence of partisan politics. Those interested
in the probation system should therefore look squarely in the face the
question as to how probation officers should be appointed; whether by
judges without interference by any outside regulations or authorities;
whether through civil service examination; whether upon the approval of
some outside body such as a state probation commission, or whether the
appointing power should be vested in authorities other than the judges,
as in local non-partisan, non-sectarian committees or commissions.

Ex-Attorney-General Julius M. Mayer dissents from the foregoing
paragraph as follows:

“I am opposed to the appointing power being placed in anybody except
the judges, which, to my mind, leaves open only the question as to
whether examinations should be competitive or non-competitive.”

In a further letter Judge Mayer writes:

“There cannot be any discussion as to who should appoint probation
officers. It is absurd to say that any person outside of the judge
should appoint. I personally should refuse, if a judge, to place
anybody on probation if the probation officers were appointed by any
one but the court or judge. As a matter of fact I doubt seriously
whether in New York State there would be any legal power in any other
body to make any such appointment. The suggestions, in this regard,
are, to my mind, utterly absurd and unworthy of being dignified by
being incorporated in our report.”

A problem in administrative efficiency that must be worked out is the
co-ordination of probation and parole systems. There seem no valid
reasons why in general the same persons cannot do both probation and
parole work in the same localities. At present parole supervision is
usually exercised by persons who are not probation officers and often
the parole officers are itinerant officers obliged to travel over wide
areas. The effective supervision and aid of those on parole requires
that those exercising the parole oversight shall confine their efforts
to a comparatively limited area. The efficiency of parole service would
undoubtedly be greatly strengthened in communities where it is not
practicable to have special parole officers, if the parole work were
entrusted to the local probation officers. This combination of work, if
properly carried on, can be carried on with mutual advantage to both
systems and without any detriment to either of them.

_The Wives and Children of Prisoners._ The dependency of these often
innocent victims of the delinquency of the breadwinner is closely
allied to the problem of prison labor. Any plan is paradoxical that
removes a breadwinner to prison idleness and leaves a despairing family
to exist by charitable help or by the bounty of impoverished neighbors.
The state having the right to protect itself from crime by imprisoning
the offender, has also the duty to make work for him, first to pay for
his own maintenance, and secondly, to contribute, so far as possible,
to the maintenance of his family. No explanations of alleged necessary
idleness, of lack of orders for prison goods, of political interference
with extension of prison labor systems, or of the need of the payment
of prisoners’ earnings to a tax-ridden state should prevail against
the fact that the state or the political subdivision of a state owes
to the stricken family the partial fruits of the toil of the prisoner
and _must_ develop such a system of industry as will both make the
prisoner self supporting and bring to his family some return for his
labor. Inability to accomplish less than this is a confession of
state-inefficiency that should not be tolerated and that invites the
fullest scrutiny.

_Farm Colonies._ The campaign for compulsory farm colonies for habitual
tramps and vagrants has gained much impetus since 1907, when the
problems of vagrancy were discussed in detail, at the Minneapolis
national conference of charities and correction. In a half dozen
states farm colony bills were introduced last winter, but none were
passed. The press seems almost unanimous in favor of such colonies;
public opinion is expressing even greater annoyance at the so-called
“tramp-army.” Typical of the dissatisfaction with the present expensive
and palliative treatment of vagrancy is the reiterated statement of
the New York State Board of Charities that vagrancy costs the state
of New York about two million dollars a year from public and private
charitable funds.

The time certainty seems at hand for a systematic campaign against
the vagrancy evil. Drifting methods of alleviation and of passing-on
constitute only an aggravation of the situation. Vagrancy and crime
are closely akin. The Committee on Lawbreakers raises the question
whether the movement partially organized several years ago for a
national vagrancy committee should not at this session of the national
conference be organized with the aim of furthering systematic methods
for the reduction of vagrancy. A problem in European countries
sufficiently serious to be called one of the most fundamental social
problems deserves systematic and adequate attention in the United
States where the problem is still in its earlier stages.

Closely allied is the great problem of inebriety and its treatment. The
special United States census of 1904 showed that 54% of all commitments
to correctional institutions were due to intoxication, vagrancy and
disorderly conduct. A special committee of this national conference
of 1911 treats of this national question in a general session and in
section meetings. The committee on lawbreakers emphasizes the pressing
immediate need of state and national campaigns for the reduction of
drunkenness and the rational treatment of the drunkard.

_Prisoners’ Aid Societies._ Organized charitable work of private
societies in the correctional field is woefully slight in comparison
with the charity organization movement for the spread of the gospel
of social service. There are hardly a score of active prisoners’ aid
societies of fairly wide range in the United States. Yet the great
movement for probation and parole, for better prisons and for better
prisoners, for the help of released prisoners and for dependent
families of prisoners, for the reduction of vagrancy and inebriety, for
the better care of the mentally or physically defective delinquents,
for better laws and greater public information--these great movements
need the directing power of strong charitable organizations of the
prisoners’ aid kind. The field of delinquency needs the same thorough
development that in the last generation has been accorded to the field
of charity. A national prisoners’ aid society was organized at the
last meeting of the American Prison Association, to develop greater
co-operation between the now existing prisoners’ aid societies and to
extend the prisoners’ aid work. The national association publishes a
monthly journal of sixteen pages called the Review.

_American Criminology._ Tendencies in this country in the problems of
the treatment of the criminal have been overwhelmingly administrative
rather than analytical and academic. Our foreign guests in 1910 often
remarked that we characteristically experimented and did things rather
than debated and philosophized on the theories of criminology. The
extravagance of sole adhesion to the former method is increasingly
obvious, however, and has led, among other things, to the organization
of the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, a central
body for the inculcation of more scientific methods for the treatment
of the delinquent as well as for the extension of our knowledge of
the criminal. A recent conference in New York City on the reform of
the criminal law and procedure indicated the wide-spread belief of
the ablest members of the bench and bar that our criminal law and
its administration need radical reforms. In the fields of criminal
statistics, also, we need far more light even if such light shall only
indicate clearly that comprehensive and accurate criminal statistics
are practically impossible to collate. To the efforts of the American
Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology to advance in accuracy, in
dignity, and in usefulness our store of information as to crime and its
treatment, the national conference should give full credit and strong
encouragement.




THE SUPPRESSION OF MORAL DEFECTIVES

Abstract of Address of Charles W. Eliot, President Emeritus of Harvard
University


The prevention of crime through the isolation or extirpation of
criminals offers many analogies to the prevention of disease by the
isolation or death of diseased persons. These analogies are obvious,
and are based on observed facts and not on any theory that all moral
defects originate in, or are caused by physical defects. Opinions
might differ widely concerning the bodily origin of drunkenness,
inordinate sexual passion, or kleptomania; and yet persons holding
different views on this point might agree as to the wisest treatment in
practice of such moral delinquents. Let us compare society’s treatment
of moral defectives with its best treatment of physical defectives.
In the first place, a large proportion of the crimes committed in
our country are not treated socially at all, the criminals escaping
detection and arrest, or being acquitted when brought to trial through
the ingenious use of legal technicalities and delays. This is as if
victims of scarlet fever or smallpox should be left quite free to
move about in the community so far as their condition permitted,
society manifesting no active interest in their welfare and taking no
precautions whatever against the spread of their disease.

Secondly, in cases in which criminals are arrested and convicted
the penalties imposed by courts have, as a rule, no remedial and no
preventive effect. Drunkards, for example, brought frequently before
courts for sentence, are sent over and over again to jails or houses
of correction for terms too short for effectual cure, so that they
soon relapse into drunkenness when discharged. Or again, a burglar is
sentenced to a few years in prison, acquires while confined no better
disposition and no new means of earning a livelihood, and so when freed
naturally returns to his former criminal mode of life.

Thirdly, many researches into the history of criminal families have
made it sure that the propensity to crime, be it moral, or physical,
or both, is eminently transmissible; so that criminals, like imbeciles
and other physical defectives, will surely breed their like, if left
free to do so. To leave them free is to perpetuate and multiply by
inheritance the evils and losses which criminality inflicts on
the race. These comparisons suggest strongly that society needs to
revise its methods of dealing with criminals. In this revision, what
improvements should be aimed at? Better police protection, especially
in the detective department, so that fewer crimes should be committed
with impunity. This would correspond with the improving registration
and responsible social treatment of diseases.

A lessened use of fines and an increased use of imprisonment for
convicted criminals of all sorts, a fine being an almost useless
penalty for crimes against the person, since it has no improving
or instructive quality whatever, is for the well-to-do a matter
of indifference and is often impossible to collect from the poor.
The habitual use of longer terms of imprisonment, that is, terms
of isolation and temporary exemption from temptation to crime. The
conversion of houses of correction, jails and prisons into places of
instruction and of instructive labor, with incidental confinement,
from being places of confinement with incidental labor, which is
often uninstructive or impossible of utilization by the individual
on his return to the outer world. Through this transformation houses
of correction and prisons would become agricultural or industrial
colonies, in which most prisoners would acquire the habit of productive
labor and some skill available towards livelihood when they should
again enjoy freedom.

Every person, male or female, who has been convicted of crime, should
be registered at many points with complete means of identification, and
should be kept under supervision for a long period after discharge;
and the new laws needed to secure such continuous supervision, if any,
should be promptly adopted in all the States. With such systematic
supervision should go assistance in the giving of employment.




THE ABOLITION OF THE JAIL

Synopsis of Address by Frederick H. Wines, Statistician, State Board of
Administration, Illinois.


The average county or municipal jail in this country is a school
for crime, a cesspool of moral contagion, a propagating house of
criminality, a feeder for the penitentiary, a public nuisance and
a disgrace to modern civilization. The public indifference to the
situation is attributed partly to ignorance. The county officials do
not know what a jail should be and the people do not know what their
jails really are. In plain Anglo-Saxon, the truth is that wherever
there exists local graft and political dishonesty the county prison
is its centre and its stronghold. The sheriff or the jailor makes
a personal profit from crime by charging a per diem for board for
prisoners and by the receipt of fees for locking and unlocking the
jail doors. That profit is a live wire. No local politician, possibly
no member of the Legislature or even of the State administration dares
monkey with it.

We have substantially won the fight for the reformatory State prison
and the indeterminate sentence because we concentrated our fire upon
a vulnerable point and made every shot tell. In attacking the county
jail system we have pursued the opposite policy. We have addressed our
arguments and remonstrances to the county authorities, of whom there
are in round numbers, 2,500 sets, instead of to the legislative bodies,
of which there are less than fifty. We have pleaded for new jails,
better jails, when we should have demanded their replacement by prisons
owned and controlled by the State and their emancipation from local
political control with its petty and selfish interests.

There was a time when local control was necessary and proper but that
was long ago. Today the county prison is an anachronism. We imported
it with other institutions from England, but conservative England has
outgrown it and dates the dawn of its regenerate prison system from
the year of its abolition. There is no good and sufficient reason
why the State which enacts a criminal code with its definition of
crime, its prohibitions and its penalties should assume the custody
and care of the man committed to prison for three years and refuse to
recognize its responsibility for the man sentenced for three months,
abandoning him to the haphazard mercies of the inferior jurisdiction
which is certainly ignorant, often brutal and sometimes dishonest. It
is not the majesty of the county but that of the State which calls for
vindication. The supervision of crime, let it take what form it may, is
the business of the State. The State should name, and it should have
exclusive authority over the executive agents to whom it entrusts the
discharge of this supreme governmental function.

The one hope of enlightened progress in dealing with the problem of
crime is the overthrow of the county jail system. To this end we must
direct our energy. With the State once in command, there can be no
question but it will find a way to right the wrong and remedy the
evils which inhere in the present organization and management of minor
prisons.




MENTAL DEFECTS AND DELINQUENCY

WM. HEALY, M. D.

Director, Juvenile Psychopathic Institute, Chicago


Reasons for the abundant ineffectiveness in the treatment of the
criminal are to be found in the historical development of the
situation. His case is handled by court procedure evolved, almost
wholly, from legal precedent and consisting of rules which appertain,
as it were, to a definite contest. As the result of this evolution it
has come about that even modern criminal procedure in several respects
fails to apply well established scientific knowledge and so lags far
behind the dictates of common sense.

It may be that the experiential wisdom of the ages, crystallized into
modern law, serves well enough as the setting for criminal trials in
which there is much presumption of innocence, as well as for civil
cases, although in this hour of testing mental capacities even some
points here seem doubtful. But what shall we say about the trial of
recidivists, those repeaters who make up the costly and dangerous
class, the confirmed criminals? If there is anything clear about
the matter to the man in the street it is that certain facts either
purposely avoided in court procedure, such as inadmissible evidence,
or not brought out on account of incomplete examination into the case
are frequently most important for decision from the standpoint of the
welfare of society and indeed often of the defendant’s own well-being.
The fact that the defendant has been convicted of crime and perhaps of
this particular type of crime before, that he has mental peculiarities
or physical infirmities that make him specially liable to commit crime,
that he comes from a family in which mental deficiency is inherited
or the criminalistic tendency is rampant--these points among others
are not only of scientific import, but seem clearly germane and most
valuable for deciding what ought to be done with him.

The facts of recidivism are startling enough to command
attention--whether one’s interest in the matter be economic, legal,
humanitarian or anthropological. The terrific cost of crime, the
failure of court methods to check criminalism, either in the individual
or as a whole, the impotency of ordinary penological efforts and
the considerable inadequacy of even the best reformatory type of
institution are causes for amazement. By even a superficial glance
at the facts we are thrown at once into an inquiry, what manner of a
person is this recidivist, this individual who in spite of admonitory
teachings and punishments goes on pursuing a career which leads him
into just the situation which he wishes to avoid. Justice Rhodes of
England writes an article in a medical journal, putting up the matter
squarely to the medical profession, asking them what it means when
out of 182,000 convictions in a year, 10,000 have been convicted more
than twenty times before. “On the face of it,” he asks, “doesn’t
this seem more like a problem for those who have to do with abnormal
personalities than merely for the law?”

Even if a statistical survey of crime and recidivism did not point
directly in explanation to the peculiarities of the unit offender, it
would in general seem as if the anthropological outlook, applied to
the criminal himself, would be easily the best point of vantage in
studying the crime situation. Here is a given individual, performing
acts inimical to his fellows and retributively painful to himself. What
leads him socially to react thus and so? Taking this view, common
sense would seem to demand study of the causative factors in every
case, and this means, first and foremost, investigation of those mental
characteristics which underlie conduct.

Beginning such a study of the causative factors of crime and taking
account of deviation from the normal among the criminalistic, we
immediately see that mental defect looms very large. Just how extensive
this factor is we are unable to say, because thoroughgoing examinations
of delinquents have not yet been registered in sufficient numbers.
Sutherland, who has had a large experience and has well considered the
matter, states in his work on Recidivism (p. 50) that it is not wide of
the mark to say that one-third of criminal recidivists are pathological
specimens, “suffering from physical and mental degeneracy characterized
by mental warp, instability and feeblemindedness,” and that of petty
offender recidivists it is equally safe to hold that two-thirds are
pathological in the same sense. The British Royal Commission for the
study of the feebleminded looked at 2,300 prisoners in cursory fashion
and without mental tests decided that they could determine about
ten per cent. to be feebleminded. Incomplete work from many sources
testifies to considerable proportions of feebleminded among criminals.
We ourselves, in our Chicago Institute, are for several reasons doing
fairly intensive work, and I would at once disclaim that our figures
have much statistical value. Yet of 620 cases of youthful repeaters
carefully studied by us and classified in a scale of mental ability
and peculiarity, twenty-six per cent. grade distinctly below the class
which we call poor in native ability.

We found:

  Mentally subnormal--a class above the ordinary institutional      51  
  feebleminded types, but still well below the normal.         
  
  Dull from physical causes, including epilepsy.                    36  
  
  Feebleminded of the upper or moron group.                         48  
  
  Feebleminded of the imbecile group.                                5
  
  Psychoses (various types of mental disease).                      22
                                                                   ---
                                                                   162

Scattered for the most part through these classes we found 7-1/2 per
cent. of the total 620 to be definitely epileptic.

What a curious maladjustment it seems that while all this acknowledged
social failure is in progress, and while there is this obvious
incompetency of legal methods in ascertaining adequate facts for
betterment of the situation, there should be so very little study
of where the trouble lies. In courts for adult offenders there is
almost no opportunity for unbiassed investigation of the individual
criminal. In the juvenile court, with its advantages of intimate
relationships established there, how can the judge from his short
examination determine even this question of the mental status of
the delinquent? Opinion on this subject in courts is formed by the
questionnaire method, which from a scientific standpoint, for various
reasons, is notoriously unsafe. Not only in court room procedure is
there inadequate investigation of the individual, but all through the
situation in regard to the handling of delinquents the same is true.
Nowadays when the value of efficiency bureaus is everywhere recognized,
it seems strange that this most business-like bit of work should not
have been taken up. The outlay is millions and hundreds of millions for
repression, but practically nothing for the study of how efficiently to
repress.

In the past the legal disposition of offenders with mental peculiarity
has very largely hinged on the question of criminal responsibility. Now
this question, especially in the case of high-grade mental defectives,
involves some pretty fundamental philosophical points and probably this
most dangerous class will never have its responsibility completely
standardized and determined. We have in sight no likelihood of finding
a test or criterion of the power of ethical discernment and control.
The best thinkers have finally relegated the whole problem to the
common sense of juries. But a much more profitable way of looking at
the matter is whether or not the individual is going to do it again,
whether he is going to become a recidivist, a menace to society, and
whether he is to breed progeny of the same ilk. The self-protection of
society is herein involved. Why should we not drop the technical and
hardly decidable question of criminal responsibility and the idea of
mere punishment, and take up the much more vital problem of how society
is to protect itself?

Looked at as a matter wherein the welfare of society is the chief
concern, one most difficult point in the problem of mental defect grows
more readily soluble. I speak of those cases in which evidence of
feeblemindedness, although distinct, especially if studied by means of
tests, is minor in degree as compared with the ethical defect present.
These form a class of offenders most difficult to deal with because
so frequently, on account of good development of language ability,
they pass in the world in general, and in courts in particular, as
practically normal individuals. This type has been designated by
various terms. Anton has recently published a symposium monograph
on the subject showing that the consensus of opinion is that there
certainly exists a distinct group in which moral defect is out of
proportion to the amount of mental subnormality. The recent report of
the Massachusetts commission on the increase of criminals emphasizes
this very point. To those who doubt the existence of mental defect in
such cases I commend the use of psychological tests. Better study of
the individual will, in any case, give some indication of that most
important point for the welfare of society, namely, whether or not the
crime will be repeated.

Turning in the interests of society to the study of the individual
offender, especially the recidivist, we shall at once be led by
practical considerations into an attempt to decipher the causative
factors of his career. The great value of such intelligent study can be
shown in many types of cases, but nowhere is it more evident than when
the offenders are mentally defective. The recent work of Miss Moore for
the Public Education Association of New York shows the after-records of
some children formerly in the subnormal rooms in the New York public
schools and also of some of the feebleminded men who were paroled from
the Elmira Reformatory to New York. The financial and moral cost to the
community has been very great from such sources. We ourselves have many
such records, showing the terrible burden a criminalistic defective is
to the community. Dozens of times, indeed up to a hundred times in the
police stations, is the record of even some of the younger members of
this group, as we have observed them.

Intelligent study of the problem of recidivism means catching the
repeater as early as possible and making a diagnosis and prognosis
for disposal of his case at once or in the future. The advantages of
studying the recidivist when young are many, both from a scientific and
a reformatory point of view. It is often also of immense importance
to study the adult repeated offender. The disposal of him offers more
difficulties frequently than the adjustment of the juvenile case. There
is one matter in connection with adult offenders upon which I wish
to lay special emphasis. It is in regard to the parole of criminals.
It seems clear to me that if the whole matter of adult probation
is to be placed upon the most sensible basis, the scientific facts
which have bearing upon the situation must be brought into use. I
hold that no criminal should be released upon parole until enough of
a study has been made of his individuality and the causative factors
of his delinquency so that there may be some sort of a guarantee that
his offenses will not be continued. As it stands, almost nothing of
this sort is being done. It should be the first and main inquiry
of any board of parole to know whether or not the individual under
consideration is likely to be a recidivist. Several points of view
would be connected in such an inquiry, but the point we are concerned
with today is one of the greatest value for the decision. The first
question to be asked, if the matter is to be sensibly decided, is about
the mental status of the individual. This inquiry with its various
ramifications will often be found of great significance in answering
the vital question: “Will crime be committed again by this individual?”

Intelligent study of an actual or a potential recidivist means a fairly
complete investigation and is worth days of work if this be necessary.
It needs a combination of the sociological, medical and psychological
standpoints. We ourselves find particularly rich fields for explanation
of the case in getting the history of families and of developmental
conditions and in psychological examinations. The latter has been much
hampered in the past by lack of practical tests, but of late these
have been developed. At the present time any intelligent observer can
judge something of the mental capacity of an individual by seeing
his performance, under proper conditions, on a group of tests which
correspond to the normal ability of the child. The well-known Binet
tests, imperfect though they probably are in some respects, form an
epoch-making advance in the study of feeblemindedness. We ourselves
have been at much pains in the last two years in developing, with
the help of a number of psychologists, a group of tests directed to
the estimation of native mental ability in older and higher types of
individuals. We may hope for much greater standardization of tests in
the future, but, even as it now stands, there can be no doubt that just
such a practical mental classification as the work with delinquents
demands can be readily carried out by qualified persons.

If, avoiding _a priori_ standpoints, we enter upon a study of the
recidivist, we find such a considerable number of causative factors
determinable that this at once precludes the idea of crime being
anything like a disease entity. Indeed, one soon comes to feel that
many of the set notions about crime are academic and absurd in
the light of facts ascertainable by a free-minded, practical and
thoroughgoing investigation of the individual cases. Crime may be the
action of a Charlotte Corday or of a Jesse Pomeroy and in form, impulse
and factors of underlying causation may be found to be so varied in its
manifestations that many pseudo-philosophical speculations and legal
pronunciamentos on the subject are readily seen to be nothing but
slipshod generalizations. Quinton, a man of great experience, in his
recent work says, with apparently purposeful exaggeration, that there
are just as many classes as there are criminals. Mental defect is to
be considered simply as one of the causes of crime, but it is a cause
so obvious, so readily determinable in most cases and so certainly
irremediable and provocative of recidivism and moral contagion that
one of the first steps of reform in dealing with criminals ought to
be directed toward this. The mental defective is suitable neither for
probation, reformatory education nor punitive measures. Custodial care
alone is of service and in the case of the criminalistically inclined
defective the courts should directly commit and the state protect
itself by permanent guardianship.

The time is ripe for better methods of handling this class of cases.
The study of recidivism shows it as a blot upon our civilization,
and demonstrates that many recidivists are mental defectives. The
study, on the other hand, of the individual defective criminal
demonstrates him to be a source of great financial loss and much
moral contagion. Studies in heredity prove that he frequently begets
his kind. Developments along medical and psychological lines have
given us practical methods for diagnosis of mental defectives--even
the border-line cases being easily determinable as such--and give us
assurance of the social future of this class of cases. The work of our
own institute proves not only the applicability of common-sense study
of causative factors in general to court work in this country, but
directly demonstrates the overwhelming value of early differentiation
of a type of offender, who by the very nature of his mental make-up is
bound under ordinary social conditions to become a recidivist.

In order to get a more business-like administration of criminal affairs
so that there may be practical application of at least some points
which are scientifically demonstrable as imperative for the well-being
of society, certain things are necessary. Concerning our immediate
point, the needs are: first, better education of everybody implicated
in the criminal situation as to the part that mental defect plays in
delinquency. Then in connection with criminal courts, and especially
in connection with juvenile courts, where the development of crime can
be checked, there should be thoroughgoing study of the recidivist. The
court should be acquainted with the practical value of such study and
should act on it. No offender should be allowed on parole unless he
is known to have the mental make-up which, on the whole, will in his
environment tend to prevent his freedom from being inimical to society.
Then, not a difficult matter to insure, there must be better classified
institutional treatment. Finally, the court should have the power to
adjudicate cases of mental defect in the best interests of society.




TREATMENT OF THE MENTAL DEFECTIVE WHO IS ALSO DELINQUENT

DR. HENRY H. GODDARD, VINELAND, NEW JERSEY


Twenty-five per cent. of delinquents are mentally defective. While we
have no absolute statistics, there are many indications that this is a
safe estimate. All mental defectives would be delinquents in the very
nature of the case, did not some one exercise some care over them.

There is only one possible answer to the question, “What is to be done
with the feebleminded person who is delinquent?” He must be cared for,
but he must be cared for in a place where we care for irresponsibles.
The jail or prison or reformatory, is not for him, neither must he be
turned loose on the streets or sent back to the home and environment in
which he has already become a delinquent.

In the present state of our laws and customs, delinquency is the one
means by which we are able to get hold of a certain type of mental
defective and provide for him as he should be provided for. Many of
these feebleminded of the moron type come from homes or have attained
to such an age or position that we have no way of getting hold of them
until they do some wrong and come under the head of delinquents. But
when that has happened and we have them where we can prescribe for
them, it is worse than folly for us to let them go and turn them back
into their former environment where they must only repeat the offense
or even commit a worse one.

We must have enough institutions or colonies for the feebleminded to
care for all the feebleminded delinquents at least. As it is today,
even under the best conditions, many a judge recognizes mental defect
in the cases that come before him and would gladly send the child to
an institution for the feebleminded, but there is no room, and so he
is compelled to utilize some makeshift which oftentimes is worse than
nothing at all.

But the broadest treatment of this topic must go farther back than the
question of what to do with these feebleminded persons who have already
become delinquent. We must consider the cause here as we are trying to
do everywhere in modern methods, and treat the cause rather than trying
to cure. In other words, the feebleminded person should be taken care
of before he becomes a delinquent. Here the first problem is diagnosis.
How shall we recognize this feebleminded child of high type, this moron
grade, as we now call them?

Until recently we have been more or less helpless in this matter,
but now we may say with perfect assurance that the Binet tests of
intelligence are entirely satisfactory and can be relied on to pick out
the mental defective at least up to the age of twelve years. The public
schools will be the clearing house for all these cases, they may there
be tested and their mental condition found out, and they can then be
cared for as condition leads. We have too long attempted to treat all
children alike, whether in the public school or before the courts. When
we have learned to discriminate and recognize the ability of each child
and place upon him such burdens and responsibilities only as he is able
to bear, then we shall have largely solved the problem of delinquency.




PLACING MISDEMEANANTS ON PROBATION

JAMES A. COLLINS

Judge of the City Court, Indianapolis, Indiana


In the city campaign of 1909 I pledged the people of the city of
Indianapolis that if elected judge of the city court, I would introduce
a probation system as a means of helping delinquent men and women. The
enactment of a law by the legislature of 1907, under which courts may
exercise the right to suspend sentence or withhold judgment in the
cases of adults, made possible the application of a probation system in
the administration of justice in circuit, criminal and city courts.

The probation system inaugurated in the city court of Indianapolis has
covered:


_The Suspended Sentence._

The power to suspend sentence has saved many novices in crime from
undergoing the harsh punishment that would be otherwise meted out to
them, and that seems to be contrary to the constitutional provision
that “all penalties shall be proportioned according to the nature of
the offense.”

During the past year sentence has been suspended in 236 cases and
judgment withheld in 3,474. The majority of these were first offenders.
In those cases where the judgment was suspended, the court has had to
set aside the suspension of sentence and commit the defendants in only
two cases, and where the judgment has been withheld less than two per
cent. have been returned to court for a second or subsequent offense.

While there is no provision under the law for the employment of
paid probation officers, adequate supervision in 352 cases was made
possible by good citizens volunteering to serve in that capacity. These
probationers were required to furnish the court a monthly report signed
by the probation officer. Time will not permit the details of these
reports. Each tells its own story of heroic efforts toward right living.


_Paying Fines on Installments._

The old method of collecting money fines which compelled the defendant
to pay or replevy the same moment he was fined was always a source of
great hardship on the poor. It was unreasonable to expect a common
laborer arrested late at night and convicted in the morning to be
prepared to settle with the state. If he was unable to pay or make
arrangements to have his fine stayed for the statutory period, he
was sent to prison, not because the court had given him a term of
imprisonment, but because he was poor, which is in effect, imprisonment
for debt.

To aid this particular class there was introduced as a part of the
probation system a plan for the collection of fines in small payments.
In those cases where the defendant appeared deserving he has been
released on his own recognizance and the case held under advisement for
thirty to sixty days, as the circumstances seemed to justify, at the
expiration of which time he was required to report to the court that he
had paid in the amount designated as the fine and costs to be entered
against him.

At the close of the year 830 persons had been given an opportunity to
pay their fines in this way. Of this number, 64 were re-arrested and
committed for their failure to pay their fine, and the affidavits in
32 other cases are held for re-arrest. The balance lived up to their
obligation with the court and paid in more than $7,100.

This plan operates to the benefit of the defendant in several ways:
it saves him his employment; it saves his family from humiliation and
disgrace, as well as from the embarrassment incident to imprisonment;
but more than all, it saves him his self-respect. With but a single
exception not one to whom this opportunity has been given and who had
paid his fine in full has been in court a second time.


_Drunkenness and the Pledge System._

No unfortunates appeal more strongly to the court than the victims of
the liquor habit. 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
judgment or suspending sentence that the defendant take the pledge for
a period varying from six months to one year. At the close of the year
101 persons had taken the pledge, and of this number all but ten had
kept the same faithfully.

In the severe cases where the defendant was bordering on delirium
tremens, he was committed to the workhouse and the superintendent
informed of his condition. While there are no special arrangements for
the treatment of inebriates at the workhouse, Superintendent O’Connor
has successfully provided a separate department for such cases. With
these inadequate facilities a splendid work is now being done among
this class of unfortunate and harmless offenders.


_Medical and Surgical Treatment._

Men suffering from physical defects have frequently been before
the court charged with offenses entirely out of harmony with their
antecedents and environments. In these cases the court has been able
to call to his assistance some of the best-known surgeons of the city.
During the year three surgical operations were performed. Two of these
were brain operations and one was sterilization for degeneracy. Three
additional cases were successfully treated at private institutions for
the drug and liquor habits.


_Separate Trials for Women._

Acting upon the suggestion of Amos W. Butler and Demarchus C. Brown,
the court set aside Wednesday afternoons for the separate trials of
women and girls. A woman probation officer maintains an adequate system
of investigation and supervision.

During the seven months that the work among women and girls has been in
charge of a probation officer, 139 cases have been investigated, and of
that number only 11 were imprisoned, and adequate supervision provided
for 70 during the probation period.

In 18 cases of drunkenness, under the supervision of the probation
officer, pledges were taken, and all but three have kept the same
faithfully. In 15 cases of country girls coming to Indianapolis and
falling into bad company, resulting in their arrest, arrangements were
made, by this officer, for the return of these girls to their homes in
various parts of the state. In the balance of these cases investigation
disclosed that the defendants were more sinned against than sinning and
the cases were dismissed.


_Restitution._

The criminal code is absolutely silent upon the question of recovery
for loss or damage to property and injuries to the person growing out
of criminal acts except that in cases of malicious trespass the court
may fine a defendant a sum equal to twice the amount of the property
damaged. To fine a person double the value of the property damaged and
because of his failure to pay the same, place the additional burden on
the citizen of supporting him in the workhouse or jail seems in itself
an absurdity.

As a part of the probation plan the court requires every person charged
with any offense involving the loss or damage to property and injuries
to the person to make full and complete restitution to the injured
party before the final disposition of the case. Upon a proper showing
that restitution has been made the court is then in a position to take
such action as the other facts in the case justify. Under this plan
more than $1,800 in restitution has been recovered and turned over to
the proper parties.


_Results._

The results of the operation of any system of justice are not to be
measured by dollars and cents.

During the year 1910 the court disposed of more than 15,000 cases.
Notwithstanding this tremendous volume of business there was a saving
to the county in the cost of feeding prisoners in the county jail of
$1,393.61 and in the maintenance of the workhouse, $4,631.95.

Yet the reduction by fifty per cent. of the number of commitments
of persons to the workhouse, jail and correctional department of
the woman’s prison speaks with far greater force in favor of the
probation system than any saving in dollars and cents, for of greater
significance to the community is the moral uplift.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 69086 ***