EVENTS IN BRIEF
[Under this heading will appear each month numerous paragraphs of general interest, relating to the prison field and the treatment of the delinquent.]
Road Work and Farm Work by Convicts—(In the clipping service ofThe Delinquent, road work and farm work by prisoners has become the most frequent single item of news. All over the country prisoners are working, or are “being worked.” We cite this month a number of items, taken at random, and showing the wide scope of the movement to use prisoners for out-door occupations that will benefit the community and the men also).
The first gang of convicts from Sing Sing prison are working on Catskill roads, and are camping. Most of them are short-term men.... In Pennsylvania, at Bellefonte, it is expected that the State will raise 10,000 bushels of wheat and 5,000 tons of hay on the State prison farm.... A bill providing that Federal prisoners kept in State penitentiaries or jails may be used for improving the public roads of any State has been introduced into the House of Representatives....20 prisoners have been at work in Franklin county, N. Y., and are netting $20. a day to the taxpayers, putting in stone roads.... The State prison of Wisconsin is running two prison camps. The preliminary work in constructing the new industrial home for women is being done by the prisoners, making the roadbed, building a railroad spur, laying the sewer system, digging the tunnels and otherwise excavating. The workers wear khaki trousers, work shirts, overalls and straw hats. The road the other camp is working on is the regulation road with a fifteen-foot macadam driveway.... At Ames, Iowa, the convicts have had a “raise” in wages, as a result of their first week’s showing. They were receiving twenty cents an hour; now they get twenty-five. They have been working for the Iowa State College, first doing “odd jobs” around the institution, then oiling and cutting roads. “Adams, the guard with the men, is virtually losing his job as guard and becoming merely time-keeper for the bunch.” ... There are now three road camps in New Jersey, with 40, 60, and 60 men respectively. The State Road Department has a large appropriation for hiring prisoners to improve the roads of the State.... At the farm of the New York City Reformatory for Misdemeanants, now under construction in Orange county, the results are as follows: “Two hundred tons of hay and two thousand bushels of potatoes already. A promise of ten thousand tons of fresh vegetables each season.” This farm was started only last spring, and less than fifty young fellows have been at work on it. The produce is shipped to the Department of Correction in New York City.... Sussex county, N. J., requires its prisoners to work on the roads.... Warden Sanders, of Iowa State Prison, has 175 prisoners at work on farms near Fort Madison. With a big auto truck he can take gangs of laborers thirty or forty miles from the Penitentiary where help is needed.... At Auburn Prison, N. Y., a road camp of long-term men has been established, and the prisoners to be sent out in this camp have been chosen by the Mutual Welfare League, who stand sponsor for their good work while outside. Several men of the gang had never seen an automobile.... In Mesa county, Colo., prisoners in the county jail will next summer be allowed to choose whether they will make hay, build or repair roads. This summer it was hay or the rockpile.... Dr. O. F. Lewis, general secretary of the Prison Association of New York, has issued a public statement supporting the plan of Commissioner Davis to establish a municipal farm of 500 acres on land reclaimed from the sea in Long Island Sound, to be worked by prisoners of the Department.... Only one desertion from the Ames, Ia., prison camp had been reported up to July 22.... Residents of Tybee, Ga., have petitioned the county commissioners to use convicts in building roads.... Governor Major of Missouri will ask the next legislature to purchase a farm of at least 1,000 acres across the river from the State penitentiary, for the production of vegetables and meats. He estimates that 400 convicts could be employed. Contracts under the contract system expire at the end of this year.... Provisions of a bill before the Georgia legislature are that the county chain gang shall work four months of each year within the city limits of Macon, under the direction of the mayor and council.... A survey of the proposed prison farm of Ohio has been made by students of the engineering department of Ohio State University. The farm consists of 1,455 acres.... Jefferson county, N. Y., is contemplating purchasing a county jail farm.... The sheriff of Washington county, N. Y., is using a garden for prisoners’ labor, partly because “weeding an onion bed is about the most tiresome work you can put a tramp to, and you won’t see the fellow again after his term expires.”... The North Carolina Good Roads Association resolved in July that all State convicts who are suitable for road work should be used in theconstruction of public roads.... Prisoners from Great Meadow Prison, N. Y., are building a State road in the Adirondacks.... The Lancaster, Pa., Automobile Club asks convict labor for public roads.... Fifty more prisoners have been sent to the State Prison Farm of New Jersey. Ultimately about 300 prisoners will be busy there. There will be about 2,000 acres of land to cultivate.... Governor Stuart of Virginia has pointed out that there are 1,056 men in the jails of Virginia of whom no work is required, and he has urged the several State departments interested in the matter to consider ways and means to get these prisoners out on the roads.... It has been estimated that the State of Ohio has realized 88.8 per cent. profit in raising cattle on the penitentiary farm. 278 head of cattle were bought for 8 cents a pound in Chicago. It is estimated that the total gain of the cattle, which will be sold to State institutions, will be about $4,500. A large dairy will be established on the farm.... From the District of Columbia Workhouse Farm, which received a maintenance appropriation this last year of $130,000, $60,000 will be returned in revenue, coming from the sale of brick manufactured on the farm.... The city of Washington has purchased 1,800 more acres on which to build a reformatory farm.... Superintendent Peyton, of the Indiana State Reformatory, wants to teach his inmates scientific farming, after the foundry contracts expire in November, 1915.... Thomas Mott Osborne has been spending several weeks, working with the prisoners, at several of the Auburn Prison camps.... City prisoners in Burlington, Ia., will again work on the streets. Sometime ago the prisoners were removed, but it was found that the city was the loser thereby, and that the prisoners wanted to work on the streets.... West Virginia is working State prisoners on roads.... The Sheriff of Suffolk county, N. Y., says that a prison farm is a necessity, and he has started to get one.... A life convict has run away from the honor camp at Auburn prison.... It is claimed that at least a dozen prisoners have escaped in the last few months from the New Jersey State prison farm.... Motion pictures showing convict road builders from the State penitentiary of Colorado at work will be taken in a few days on the Boulder Canon road....
(And the list might be continued almost indefinitely. The above notes are from clippings received during the first two weeks of August).
Important Resignations Announced—A number of important changes are taking place in executive positions in well-known prisons and reformatories. Warden Wolfer is shortly to leave the Minnesota State Prison. Warden Bridges has resigned from his long service at the Massachusetts State Prison, Warden Brown has been succeeded in West Virginia by State Senator M. Z. White. Chairman Frank L. Randall of the Massachusetts Prison Commission is said to be resigning on September 1st, Superintendent Reid of the Minnesota State Reformatory is to take Warden Wolfer’s place, and Henry K. W. Scott, formerly warden of the New Hampshire State Prison, is to go to the position left vacant by Superintendent Reid.
Henry Wolfer has been in prison work 43 years. He began, says the Minneapolis Tribune, in a day when filth, vermin, brutality and torture were prominent features of prison life. He ends it as warden of a prison declared by many authorities to be one of the finest in the world. Warden Wolfer began as guard at Joliet Prison as a boy of 18. A recent number of the Delinquent ( ) contained an article about the Warden’s remarkable work as an administrator and as a business man.
Warden Bridges has been 21 years at the Massachusetts State Prison. The Boston Herald says that when he took hold, conditions were chaotic. The Warden has made a specialty of inmate education. The correspondence courses, run entirely within the prison, are noteworthy.The prison paper, the Mentor, is written entirely by hand, and facsimiled. The prison is a congregate, old, cramped structure. Recently, sports have been developed in the limited prison yard.
Warden Brown of the West Virginia Penitentiary seems to be making a place for another appointee. The Wheeling, W. Va., Intelligencer, says that the prison is losing the best and ablest executive it ever had. He had in three and a half years renovated the sanitary system, improved discipline, abolished corporal punishment, elevated the standard of the prison school, turned over to the State (by contract labor) $120,000 above expenses, instituted a prison savings bank, with $35,000 in prisoners’ earnings for the overtime work, and has developed a prisoners’ aid society for helping the families of convicts. He has also developed two camps.
Whether Chairman Randall of the Massachusetts Prison Commission is to leave Massachusetts is at the time of writing unsettled. Rumor has it that he has been seriously disappointed at the practically absolute failure of his extensive prison reform program to pass the Legislature, and also at the failure of the Legislature to appropriate an increase in salary which he was given to understand would occur this year, in view of the fact that he left Minnesota last year at considerable financial sacrifice. There is no question that Massachusetts will be a serious loser, if Mr. Randall goes. There seems also a certain amount of hostility toward an “imported” penologist. This is a sad attitude of mind, but not confined solely to Massachusetts.
Extension Courses of California University in Folsom Prison.—The report of the university extension director, in charge of the work at Folsom Prison, is interesting:
“We began in January, and the official enrollment is now 324 students. As I soon found that many of the men had brains no better developed than those of a child of 8 years, classes were formed in elementary English, German and arithmetic.“The teaching is done by convicts who have proved themselves fitted for the positions, 15 being on the staff. Aside from financial reasons, this was done because the prisoners need teachers who are in sympathy with them.“All are not permitted to take the school work; some because of conduct, others because they are unable to keep up to the required standard; still others do not wish to take it. Any man who is unprepared twice in succession is dropped from the class. Many failed on this account when the work was first began as they were using it merely as an excuse to get out of their prison duties.“A man often wants to follow a profession or trade to which he is unsuited. Whenever one comes to me asking help in learning a trade, I find out what trade or profession he is best suited for.”When asked if the convicts appreciated the work, Mr. Jacobs’ face lighted up. “They do now,” he said. “My hand is still sore from the greetings they gave me when I returned from a trip East, but they tried all sorts of tricks to get men when the work was first started.”
“We began in January, and the official enrollment is now 324 students. As I soon found that many of the men had brains no better developed than those of a child of 8 years, classes were formed in elementary English, German and arithmetic.
“The teaching is done by convicts who have proved themselves fitted for the positions, 15 being on the staff. Aside from financial reasons, this was done because the prisoners need teachers who are in sympathy with them.
“All are not permitted to take the school work; some because of conduct, others because they are unable to keep up to the required standard; still others do not wish to take it. Any man who is unprepared twice in succession is dropped from the class. Many failed on this account when the work was first began as they were using it merely as an excuse to get out of their prison duties.
“A man often wants to follow a profession or trade to which he is unsuited. Whenever one comes to me asking help in learning a trade, I find out what trade or profession he is best suited for.”
When asked if the convicts appreciated the work, Mr. Jacobs’ face lighted up. “They do now,” he said. “My hand is still sore from the greetings they gave me when I returned from a trip East, but they tried all sorts of tricks to get men when the work was first started.”
Funds for Deserted Wives.—According to the Pittsburg Times, Pennsylvania’s law which went into effect a year ago, providing payment to wives of men committed to the workhouse for non-support and desertion during the time the husband is serving his sentence, is proving a wonderful aid to women of Allegheny county, as proved by a record of the first year’s results. About $5,200 has been paid to 107 women since July, 1913, when the law went into effect, the average having been $12.50 for each woman.
Lawrence M. Fagan, probation officer in Allegheny county, through whose hands these funds went, is enthusiastic. “It’s been an excellent thing,” he said, “an arrangement which has solved a problem that has confronted probation officers ever since the first man was sent to prison for non-support. Previously the wives were no better off while a man was in jail than they had been before and often were much worse off. They had nothing at all coming in in most cases. Seldom did they receive more than their earnings which in no case were large.”
These women now can expect help each month. Every man is credited 65 cents a day for every day he works and the money is given his wife. This hasamounted to $17.45 a month in some cases, although often it has only been a few dollars, but in every case it has been received with great welcome.
Mr. Fagan explained that men are sent to the workhouse only as a last resort. They are generally given a chance to support their families after being arrested for the first time and then if they fail they are committed to prison. The payments have averaged $400 from this source alone.
The general funds that pass through the hands of the probation officer from husbands who are supporting their families on order of the court, with the probation office as an intermediary, and from the workhouse to wives, reached $55,500 during the past six months. During June alone the total was $10,600.