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.]
Convicts Put at Road Making.—With the coming of open weather the question of the relation of convicts to road making is reviving in different parts of the country.
W. M. Gammon, Rome, Ga., chairman of the Board of Commissioners Roads and Revenue, Floyd County, writes to the Manufacturers’ Record:
“The road from Rome to Chattanooga will be a graded macadamized road, with concrete-steel bridges over all streams and concrete culverts over all drains. Through Floyd county it will be of the same class as that of the government road through the Chickamauga Park to Lafayette in Walker county, with which this road will connect.
“The road will be built with convict labor. This county has two gangs of 50 convicts each, 60 mules, seven road graders, two traction engines, with teams of steel cars and road rollers. The bridges and culverts will be built by a bridge gang of trained convicts. These convicts have become really experts in this line and will construct the bridges at about one-half the contract price. In fact, we find the concrete culverts with this labor about the cheapest we can build—about $3 per cubic yard. With this gang we have built over 30 miles of this class of roads the past 18 months, 30 concrete-steel bridges and 120 concrete culverts.
“If all the States would adopt the Georgia convict system, we would in a few years revolutionize road building in the South and have first-class roads from the Potomac to Mexico.
“Chattanooga county and Walker county will only have about 16 miles to build of this road, and they propose to connect with our road and the Government road at Lafayette.
“This county has already built two roads of this character from Rome to the Alabama line, and with the co-operation of the Alabama counties expect to continue them to Birmingham. This county will also complete this summer one road to Polk county and another to Barlow, and with the co-operationof the other counties expects to continue the roads to Atlanta.
“We expect in the near future to have a through line from Chattanooga to Birmingham and Atlanta, passing through Rome. We advocate putting all convicts on the roads, and when the people understand the great benefits to be derived from this work we will soon have a splendid highway from Washington through Virginia, Tennessee and Georgia to the Gulf Coast in Florida.”
The new Kansas law allowing the prisoners of county jails to work on roads will greatly relieve congestion in the Wyandotte county jail, save that county thousands of dollars and improve the roads.
The Commissioners of Wyandotte county are planning to have steel cages built, each one to hold four “bunks,” to care for the prisoners while they are working in the quarries and on the roads. In this way the men can work eight or nine hours a day and no time will be consumed in bringing them to and from the jail. The cages will be built on wheels, so that they can be drawn from place to place.
George Junior Republic During 1910—The annual report for 1910 of the George Junior Republic, Freeville, N. Y., looking, with its pictures of open cottages and stretches of unwalled country, like a real estate company’s advertisement of rural sites, or the prospectus of a summer camp, is out. One imagines, as he reads, that he has in hand not the annual statement of an institution for delinquents, but a breezy report on the growth of a modern village, or a pamphlet boosting some “Summerville—1915” movement.
On October 1, 1910, there were 137 “citizens” in the George Junior Republic. A “citizen” is simply an inmate. During the year there had been discharged 89 boys and girls, and just the same number had been received. With the exception of four, concerning whom it is not stated how they were received, the report shows that these had been taken in either for delinquency or for improper guardianship, from poor officers, from parents or guardians, or by their own application. Eleven are listed as having been received for delinquency, and 15 by their own application.
The Republic is a training school for all classes of boys and girls. The only qualifications for membership are sound minds and bodies—no mental defectives or cripples, deformed or sickly children are retained—and an age of at least 14 years. The Republic is a big farm of 350 acres, having upon it a modern village with its own system of water, sewerage, steam heat, roadways, and cement walks. Perhaps the two main reasons for its interest to most people are its form of government, with legislative, judicial, and executive departments, and the independent basis of self-support which every boy and girl within its bounds is obliged to maintain.
It has often been said that a successful school in the George Junior Republic was an impossibility because of the heterogeneous character and training of the pupils. From 1896 to 1905, a school for elementary pupils was maintained. In the latter year was opened what is known as the Hunt Memorial School. Later a high school was added. In June, 1910, regents’ diplomas were awarded to the first class of graduates from this high school. Four of the students entered college without conditions. The examinations in 1910 showed a decided academic awakening among the students. In June, 1910, the first prizes in the Owasco Valley prize speaking contest were awarded to a boy and girl from the Hunt Memorial School of George Junior Republic.
Existing without State aid, and with endowments which give an income of only $1,151, the Republic faced, on September 30, 1910, a deficit of $14,647.75.
In January, 1911, was opened a large gymnasium, the gift of friends of the Republic.
Some Bad Conditions in North Carolina—That all the county convict camps of the state be placed under a state board of supervisors is a recommendation embodied in the annual report for1910, just issued, of the Board of Public Charities of North Carolina. Thirty-nine counties maintain these camps. Reports of the county commissioners show that in 17 of these counties the prisoners in the camps are chained together at night. Sixteen counties report that whipping, administered usually by the superintendent or foreman, is resorted to as a form of punishment in the camps.
The report urges also that the burden of executing the conditional release, or parole law, be lifted from the Governor, on whom it now rests, and placed upon the prison board of directors, who should be made a parole board with power to release conditionally every prisoner except those sentenced for life.
Concerning the county jails in the state, the report says:
“Generally speaking, the prisoners are not kept in as cleanly a condition as they should be. The bedding and cells more particularly should be especially cleansed whenever not occupied and ready for the next comer. The great difficulty is the fact that prisoners wear their own old clothing into the jail and thus introduce dirt and vermin which require a continual fight from those in charge. A limited number of suits could be provided by the county and the men required to bathe and put these on while their own are fumigated. There is no excuse for the filth in some of our jails.”
English Progress—In the Providence (R. I.) Sunday Journal, of April 9th, the London correspondent of that paper quotes Thomas Holmes, Secretary of the Howard Association of London, as follows:
“If some of the American methods were grafted on to the English prison administration, the effect would work remarkably for good. I found that their probation system was worked much more effectively and thoroughly than it is in England. Their probation officers are fitted absolutely for the work. On this side there are no paid probation officers as such; they are either voluntary workers or servants of some charitable society, not state officials. At present we are only playing with the probation idea in England. If we could get men of character and capability, occupying fairly well-paid posts, we should have better results than you have in America.”
Secretary Holmes went on to say that in his opinion the weakness in the position of the American probation officers resided in the fact that the judges made the appointments. If the probation officer was a strong man he influenced the judge too much, and if a weak man he was apt to become creature of the judge.
He feels strongly that England is following the lead of America, slowly but surely, in the development of the parole system, though no legislation has as yet been passed in this direction.
“We are getting tired of judges inflicting very long sentences—practically life sentences,” he says. “There is a constant agitation always going on behind the scenes to get sentence commuted. Again and again the Home Secretary—whom I know and respect—has to reconsider the sentences prisoners are serving. This puts him in a delicate position. He has to consult the judges who passed the sentences. If the Home Secretary commutes the sentence it is a snub to the judge.
“What we want in England at each prison is a board, consisting of the governor, chaplain, doctor, a representative of the Home Office and one or two visiting justices. They should have the power of releasing on parole any prisoner whose condition warranted that concession. But the American Board of Parole is not comprehensive enough; it is too much in the hands of one or two.”
The mercantile element in some of the American State prisons came in for some adverse criticism, but in the matters of greater space, better buildings, better equipped workshops, greater variety and volume of work and more recreation and education for the prisoners, the American State jails, said Secretary Holmes, are superior to the English. But in the construction and appointment of the local county jailshe thinks the advantage lies with the English models.
“Twice Born Men;” A Brief Review—Prisoner’s aid workers will do well to read Harold Begbie’s book, “Twice Born Men.” It is a striking psychological study of men who have sounded the depths of human degredation and misfortune. Its chief practical value to those who are dealing daily with all sorts and conditions of men, will be in throwing light on a checkered past which is often only partly revealed by the applicants themselves.
The reader may feel that the author holds a brief for the Salvation Army and its work. One might suppose that he was unconscious of any other religious work being done, except for the fact that he specifically discredits the efficacy of the ordinary prison chaplain’s work. It is probably true that the average chaplain might not have sufficient patience with the particular type of man with whom Mr. Begbie deals in this book. We cannot forget, however, that this is only one of many varieties of human experience, and the average prison chaplain might be far more effective than any one else with the larger number of men whom the Army might regard as “Hopelessly Good,” but who nevertheless need the regenerating and sustaining power of religion.
Notwithstanding this seeming limitation of the book, “Twice Born Men” is a splendid portrayal of the one more or less uniform type of the anti-social individual. We are especially impressed with the fact that the materials for this book were secured almost within a stone’s throw of the aristocratic West End of London. It is almost inconceivable that a cultured community would permit the continuance of such a festering sore at its very heels. Fortunately few American cities have such dangerous proximity of the more healthful districts to its insanitary cesspools. May we not take hope from the fact that with a wider separation between the Avenue and the congested district the American cities are insisting upon the extermination of the latter? Their darkness is being expelled by the substitution of social settlements for saloons, and parks and playgrounds for penny-ante and gambling dens.
No reader of “Twice Born Men” can fail to have his faith quickened in the possibilities of human reclamation. Wide experience may discover not only one but many motives that will prompt the transformation of different sorts of men. Nevertheless it gives a renewed courage to feel that when there has been apparent failure all along the line, and when all the resources of church and state have been ineffective in preventing men from reaching the lowest dregs of humanity, there remains the unusual and striking method of the Salvation Army in its appeal to the deep-seated and imperishable instinct of religion.
F. E. L.
Washington Strives for Inebriates Hospital.—The various citizens’ associations of Washington, D. C., will be asked to make a concerted effort to induce Congress to establish a hospital for inebriates and victims of the drug habit, to which persons can be sent for treatment or be lawfully committed, so that they can be restrained from access to either intoxicating liquors or injurious drugs. The board of trade and chamber of commerce also will be urged to take up the matter.
The Washington Evening Star says editorially: “The need of a local hospital as a place of special treatment for inebriates has long been known and admitted in Washington. The present practice of confining dipsomaniacs and drug victims in a penal institution is suggestive of a bygone age. These unfortunates need treatment, judicious encouragement and some measure of restraint. But what they do not need is punishment. The workhouse is not the best place for alcoholic slaves, but the District is under the necessity of sending them there.”
The Iowa legislature is considering a bill which provides that while the inmates of the state prison and reformatory are at hard labor and on good behavior, their wives and children under sixteen years of age shall be paid fifty cents a day by the state.