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.
TheReviewprints 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.