The Review (Vol. I, No. 5)

Warden J. T. Gilmour, Central Prison, Ontario, Canada.

When we speak of criminals, we are very apt to picture in our mind’s eye the great criminals, those who commit atrocious crimes. But that class forms but a very small percentage of every prison population, and the methods of dealing with this class are much more clear and definite than dealing with the much larger class that are not quite so dangerous to society. When we speak of criminals we are apt to think of them en masse as a congregation of a few hundred or a few thousand men walled within a prison. Carlyle dissipates this view when he says: “Masses? Yea, masses, every unit of whom has his own heart and sorrows—stands there covered with his own skin; and if you prick him he will bleed.”

In dealing with delinquency there are two basic facts; that the great majority of criminals are made in their youth, and that the great majority of youthful criminals are handicapped in life’s race either by physical, mental, or moral defects. That prince of sociologists, Victor Hugo, evidently appreciated these conditions when he gave us that beautiful injunction to study evil lovingly, and then, later on, he gave the key when he said: “There are no bad weeds. They are only bad cultivators.”

Two or three weeks ago a young man came into the corridor of our prison one day and asked, “Warden, will you take me out to the farm?” (A prison farm, of which I hope to speak a little later). I said, “No, Smith, I cannot take you out.” Over in our country when we wish to conceal a man’s identity we always call him Smith; and if we are particularly careful, we call him John Smith. This man was a repeater; he was doing his fifth term; the four previous terms he had been a very difficult man to get along with; but this time he had done very well. We could take no exception to either his conduct or his industry. He said to me, “Have I not done well this time?” I said, “You certainly have.” “Well, then,” he said, “Won’t you give me a chance?” Of course, he had me there; I couldn’t refuse him. I said, “Yes, I’ll give you a chance.” I took him up to the farm on a Monday; he worked well on Tuesday and on Wednesday; and on Wednesday night he skipped. The following Friday we got him again, in a town one hundred and fifty miles from home; and I pitied the poor fellow when he came back, he looked so dejected and so crestfallen; but I blamed myself entirely. I had imposed a burden of self-denial and a responsibility of conduct upon that man that he was not able to bear. He was one of that class, typical of a considerable percentage of our prison populations, that is on the borderland between sanity and insanity; and all the prison officials who are here to-night will recall scores of that class who form a part of their prison population.

As I say, I had made a mistake with this boy; but it only goes to show that penologists are not infallible, not even the youngest of them. If we were to stop to speculate upon the place that this element occupies in the divine scheme, we might tread upon very dangerous ground. It is enough for us to know that the God that made them is the God that will judge them; and herein lies our consolation. I had a man come into prison a few weeks ago to do two years; and yesterday afternoon, just an hour before I left home for coming down here, his wife came into my office leading a beautiful child five years of age by the hand. She came, as so many poor women come, to see if it were not possible to get some relief from her almost intolerable position. As the cruel truth dawned upon her that it was impossible for me to exercise clemency in regard to her husband, the women turned to me and she said, with much emphasis, “If they would only send me and my child to prison, how much better it would have been.”

And the woman expressed a great verity. This little episode I relate to show you that society has two obligations: one to the man shut up within the prison, and perhaps an even greater obligation to the poor woman and children dependent upon the man shut up within the prison. It is necessary to lock up a certain class of men that society may be protected, and that these men may be improved; but when we do that, are we going to put their families in a position in which they will be impelled into either vice or crime? I think it is Milton who asks the pertinent question:

In dealing with the wives and children, as well as with the prison inmates, over in our place, we find an immense help from the Salvation Army. We have a prisoner’s aid association and they work harmoniously together; but the Army has one or two advantages in this work that no other organization possesses. In the first place, they are not sentimentalists. They detail one man to give his time to it. He is as free to go into our prison as I am; and I think he spends as much time there as I do. He is there at night, on Sundays, on holidays, at noon hours; and he is going from cell to cell—he becomes thoroughly acquainted with every inmate. That gives that man an immense advantage in dealing with those men when their terms expire. The prison worker that expects to meet the discharged prisoner at the prison gate the morning he comes out, is much more apt to be worked by the prisoner than he is to work the prisoner. In three cases out of five he is clay in the hands of a designing man. One of our governors some years ago said that Canada was a land of magnificent distances. The same remark applies to your republic; but we get prisoners 1,300 miles from our prison. The Army, learning the condition of the families dependent on the man within the prison, writes to the corps, the Salvation Army corps in the town or the city where the man came from, and they are able, by their very extensive and highly perfected organization, to make a study of each family, in addition to having arrangements made there for the employment of that man when his term has expired. We try, just as far as possible, to get all of our ex-prisoners out of the city. We do not wish them to colonize; we try to get them back to their homes where they came from; for unless a man is willing to go back and face society, and live it down, the chances are that he will be driven into what is wrong sometimes through fear.

A year ago now, we started our farm. It is fifty miles out of the city; it contains 530 acres. I commenced by taking up a little detachment of 14 men; and I rapidly increased that until I had 180 men, housed in temporary quarters on this farm. The average term of the man on the farm was about five or six months, though I had several men there who had to do from one to two years. So far we have taken out to this farm 500 men, and out of that 500, four have escaped successfully, and three or four have attempted to escape—unsuccessfully. The other day a minister in our city was calling, and I gave him these statistics, and he looked very sad; he said it was a pity. I said it was; “but,” I said, “can you take 500 of your church membership and have 495 of them make good?” And he changed the subject.

I had a grand jury visit me the other day; it is a custom, over in our country, for the grand juries to come over a few times a year and tell us how to run the place (they sometimes stay an hour); and the foreman, before he went away, said to me, “Warden, I suppose you select the men whom you take out to the farm.” I said, “No, sir. I don’t.” He said, “How do you manage?” I said, “I select a very few whom I don’t take;” for I can take 90 per cent. About three weeks ago I was going into the farm one day; it was a cold, snowy, blowing, blustering day; the thermometer was about zero. When I came near to our building it was quarter to twelve o’clock; and I saw men coming from this direction, and that direction, and from every direction pass alone; no officers with them at all; and it impressed me, perhaps, much more than it would another one not engaged in this work; for I asked myself the question—“How is it? These are the very men that I have had in Toronto behind bolts and bars, watched over by guns and guards; and here they are out here, as free as this air that blows, and they are all coming in to sit down with each other at dinner.” I have asked our men on the farm—many of them, different types, at different places, at different times, and I have asked them all the same question:—“What do you find the greatest difference as between the prison in the city and the prison out here on the farm?” And without a single exception, in one form or another those men have invariably given me the same reply. We give good board at the prison, but it was not that; it was not this liberty, comparative liberty. They have said to me: “Warden, to get away from that cell! To get away from that cell!”

I asked a boy two weeks ago, a young man, and he said, “Warden, to get away from that cell; for,” he said, “to sit there on Sunday, every evening and on holidays and have that cell gate staring you in the face, it is hell;” and he didn’t say it to be irreverent or disrespectful, but it was his pent up emotions. I believe there is something debasing—debasing to a man’s personal manhood—about life in a cell that no one can describe. Our men plow, they harrow, they sow the grain, they reap it; there is no guard with them at all. Of course, these are men who are near the end of their terms, perhaps men who have three months or less to do; but every prison contains enough of that class to enable them to carry on this class of work, agricultural work, to a financial advantage. If we had to pay guards to be with these various men, we couldn’t do it; but we don’t. There is an indefinable something in God’s out-of-doors that has a beneficial effect upon humanity. I can not tell you what it is. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but thou canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth. So is every man that is born of the spirit.”

A few months ago a professor from the University of Kansas wrote a little poem of two or three verses; and one of the verses reads like this:

Do you catch the spirit of those beautiful lines? They tell (what I should like to tell were I able) of the way God speaks to our delinquents out on the farm through the hazy atmosphere and the golden sunsets; they tell of the way God speaks to those poor fellows through the growing and the ripening grains, and of the message that God sends to them through the birds that sing and soar over their heads. It suggests that beautiful thought of Browning’s:

We are aiming at something definite in the construction of our new prison. We are going to try to give that large class of boys and young men that come to prison for the first time one more opportunity of going through life without being immured in a prison cell. In the construction of our buildings, our domicile accommodation will be largely of the dormitory type;—small dormitories, accommodating 14 beds, with a large, semi-circular bay window on one side which will serve as a sitting room; attached to which dormitory will be a completely equipped bedroom and dressing room. The corridor which runs along the side where the officers will patrol is divided from these rooms that I speak of by a glass partition, so that our men are thoroughly under observation every hour of the day and night, and there will be no opportunities whatever for some of those things that penologists so much dread. In addition to that, we have a number of single rooms and a number of cells; but in a prison which is destined to accommodate 600, we are only putting in 40 cells. The men who behave and who demonstrate that they can appreciate that dormitory life and maintain the condition of it, we hope to give ultimately a single room; and the men who fail to appreciate this dormitory life and don’t behave as we wish them to will then be demoted into a cell; but we are going to try, as I say, to get those boys through life, if possible, without the cell. Will we succeed? I don’t know. I don’t know. We have our critics; but this world will never be saved by the critics; it will be saved by the dreamers. The history of humanity is the history of indomitable hope. Emerson says that “Every thing is free to the man that can grasp it;” that “He who despairs is wrong.”

In dealing with delinquents, it is the personal touch that tells. Human nature craves for sympathy. Kingsley was once asked what the secret of his joyous, buoyant life was; and his ready reply was: “I had a friend.” Our Saviour was no exception to this rule; for as our Saviour approached Gethsemane, he yearned for a friend whom he could rely upon to wait and watch while he endured; and expressed it in that pathetic request to the drowsy Peter and his sleepy comrades. When we see a very simple duty staring us in the face in dealing with this class, we are too prone to say, “Lord, here am I. Send him.” It is an easy matter for a man of means to write his check, or give his cash; but it is an entirely different thing to carry that gift to some poor fellow who is down and out and sweeten it with the fragrance of personal kindness.

We have church service at our place every Sunday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon; one day our preacher failed to materialize. The men were in the chapel; and I did not wish to have them return to the cells without saying something to them; as I could not preach I thought I would do the next best thing, and I would read another fellow’s sermon; only, I gave the other fellow credit for it. I was reading a book just then that interested me very much; and I went down to the office and got it, and I read the first chapter; and when I finished, I asked if I should read more, and they said, “Yes, Warden.” I read a second and a third chapter; I read as long as my voice would hold out; and as I had finished, a man down in the audience said, “Won’t you be kind enough to tell me the name of that book, and the author?” I was very glad to have them ask the question; I told him. The next morning when I was going through the prison industries, the officers kept asking me what book I read, the previous day. I said, “Why do you ask?” They said, “The men are all talking about it.” I sent down town and got fifteen copies and sent it around among the cells, with instructions that no one man could keep it for more than a week. When we collected the books at the end of the first week, I found that a great many men had taken paper and copied out portions of it. This was practically a non-reading population. They had refused a lot of good books we had put in our library which I had thought were fine, much to my disappointment. Perhaps you would like to know the kind of book they so much enjoyed; and, with your permission, I will just read you the first page of the first chapter.

“Man has two Creators: his God, and himself. The first creator furnishes him the raw material of his life and the laws of conformity with which he can make that life what he will. His second creator, himself, has marvelous powers he rarely realizes. It is what a man makes of himself that counts. If a man fails in life he usually says, I am as God made me. When he succeeds in life, he proudly proclaims himself a self-made man. Man is placed into this world not as a finality, but as a possibility. Man’s greatest enemy is himself. Man in his weakness is the creature of circumstances; man in his strength is the creator of circumstances. Whether he be victim or victor depends largely on himself. Man is never truly great, merely for what he is, but ever for what he may become.”

Now, that is pretty good meat. And that afternoon I was the one who learned the great lesson; for I learned that if we approach this subject in the right way we can waken, even in dormant minds, a desire for good literature. And my little experience of the afternoon revolutionized my method of dealing with the boys in this respect.

My time is up.

(A Voice: “Go on!”)

A Member: Who is the author of that book?

Dr. Gilmour: Dr. Jordan, of Boston, is the author of that book, and it is called “Self-Control.” If you hadn’t asked me that question I would have thought I had missed my mission here to-night. Briefly and hurriedly I have just tried to sketch some of the phases in dealing with delinquency. Who are they for whom we should do these things? What claim have they upon us? What is our relationship to them? Did you ever hear the story of the Scotch girl, the one who was carrying a crippled boy over a street-crossing in Edinburgh? A gentleman, seeing her burden, hastened up to assist and sympathize with her; and the girl looked up smiling and replied: “Ah, sir. I dinna mind it. He is my brither!”

John S. Whitman, Warden.

The Chicago House of Correction was established and is maintained by the City of Chicago in accordance with the provisions of an Act of the State Legislature, in 1871. It covers sixty (60) acres of ground, the total valuation of real estate, buildings and equipment being $1,618,688.00. During the year ending December 31st, 1910, there were 13,083 commitments to the institution. This total includes 1,383 women, 355 boys under 18 years of age and 11,345 men. The daily average population was 1,631 (a decrease from 1,766 in 1909, and this latter figure was a decrease from 1,852, which was the daily average during 1908). Persons are committed for violation of state statutes in cases of misdemeanor, and for violation of city ordinances. In the latter case the fine imposed is worked out at the rate of fifty cents per day; however, the maximum term of imprisonment for failure to pay fine is fixed at six months, and an allowance of three days per month is made for good conduct if the limit of imprisonment is served. For violation of the state statutes a fixed sentence is imposed by the Court, the maximum being one year. For violation of certain sections of the statutes an additional fine may be imposed, which, if not paid, may be worked out at the rate of $1.50 per day after sentence has been served. The law providing for the allowance of three days per month for good conduct also covers these cases if confinement is for six months or more.

All inmates over 18 years of age who are not incapacitated from work by sickness or old age, are furnished with healthful employment; the principal industries being those that furnish products needed and to be used by the City. A limited and comparatively small percent of the inmates are employed in the manufacture of articles placed on the market in competition with those manufactured by paid labor. For instance, the city uses a great amount of crushed stone in the repair and building of streets. This is quarried, crushed and loaded in the cars on our grounds by inmates at a great saving to the city. They are also engaged in the manufacture of sewer brick used by the city, the clay used in this industry being excavated within the walls of the institution. We also conduct a printing shop where most of the city’s printing is done.

The laundry work for the Police and Health Departments is done here at a great advantage to those departments. We manufacture all clothing, shoes, etc., that the prisoners wear. We make all permanent improvements to buildings and grounds as well as do the new construction work. About one-fifth of our inmates are engaged in the manufacture of chairs, broom and leather goods and these are the only articles placed on the market.

The actual receipts of the institution during the year 1909 were $210,591.48; this amount, however, includes $38,287.00 collected as payment on fines. In addition to the above, it is conservatively estimated that the earnings of the institution in making permanent improvements and in new construction work are not less than $148,873.00. The total expenditures including the purchase of materials for new construction and of amounts appropriated by the city to be used at the House of Correction in its management amounted to $291,053.03.

The per capita cost per diem for feeding inmates during the year 1909 was twelve cents; the cost per diem including all expenditures was forty-six cents. The cost as stated above is somewhat increased because of the fact that we maintain as one of the departments of the institution what is known as the John Worthy School. This is not a school in name only, but has all the facilities for giving the class of boys that are sent to us from the Juvenile Court the education and training they need; and their needs are greater than those ordinarily sent to the public schools, for most of them have not had the chance in life to develop physically or morally as boys have who come from well regulated homes where proper influence prevails, and where they are encouraged to profit by the educational advantages furnished by our public schools. You will find there not only the ordinary class rooms with a competent teacher in charge of each, but manual training facilities and a well-equipped trade school, an indoor gymnasium, as well as outdoor play grounds and a swimming pool. We also teach them to do gardening and in a limited way give them an opportunity to develop any inclinations they may have to follow an agricultural life.

I desire to call particular attention to a cell house recently built here for men, in which there are 334 cells, each having an outside window which can be operated by the occupant of the cell. Each cell is also equipped with high class plumbing, including wash basin; in fact, sanitary conditions are as perfect as it seemed possible to make them. You will find no dark corners in the building or places where the ventilation is not perfect. The valuation has been conservatively fixed at $225,000. The actual cost is less than $65,000.00. The difference between these amounts represents the value of the inmates’ labor and the product of the institution used in its construction. No mechanical superintendents were employed, our officers acting in the dual capacity of guards and instructors, the inmates performing all the labor, even the plumbing, electrical work, and, in fact, all of the labor required to finish the well-constructed up-to-date building. The center corridor is 260 feet long by 30 feet in width, which we converted into a dining hall. All the prisoners occupying cells in the building have their meals served in this space and the tables and benches used for this purpose are also used for carrying on religious and educational work among the inmates during the evening or on Sundays. This is an entirely new innovation in prison management, but is being carried on with success.

The many advantages of a cell house like this one, built on the plan of the center corridor, are becoming more and more apparent as they are put into practical use. The outside window in each cell goes a long way toward preventing the spread of that dreaded disease, tuberculosis. Light and airy cells not only mean sanitary conditions, but afford an opportunity for the inmates to look out through windows and over walls and witness natural, if not pleasant scenes, which have a tendency to inspire them with more wholesome thoughts than if their gaze rested continually upon stone walls and iron bars. The entertainment of wholesome thoughts is much more apt to be an inspiration to better citizenship than can be suggested by dismal surroundings.

The experience we have had in this cell house has shown that the objections raised by some to a style of construction that would permit the prisoners sitting in cells facing each other across a center corridor is not justified. We have had no difficulty whatever because of this. The discipline maintained has been of a higher order than in the old-style cell houses and has been obtained with comparative ease. It is the intention of the management of this institution to prevail upon the city authorities to grant an appropriation for a series of cell houses built on the center corridor plan to take the place of the old-style ones.

Society nowadays expects more of the management of penal institutions than merely to keep its inmates safely. Some inmates may be lacking only in moral or religious training; with others it may be of the utmost importance that they receive medical or surgical attention; and again, educational advantages often prove to be just the needed inspiration to the unfortunate. Proper physical or mental development is nowadays acknowledged to be the panacea for the delinquent youth, and to some extent the adult. The consideration of these facts will tend to inspire the inmates with at least a wholesome respect for the law, and I believe that a more helpful discipline can be maintained among the inmates when they can be satisfied that something is being done for their benefit and enlightenment. This has been proved to be true in the handling of the delinquent youth in our modern institutions who are no longer looked upon as or called criminals, but young men who can be developed into good citizenship, by first determining their needs and then finding ways and means of supplying them.

In my opinion what has been done for the youth can also be accomplished in a large measure with the adult, especially in a corrective institution such as this. The discipline in a corrective institution must necessarily be exacting but at the same time it should be permeated with that degree of kindness that would inspire the prisoner to his best efforts with the feeling that not only the right but the beneficial thing is being done for him. The law commits to our keeping the undisciplined, the unsocialized and the lawless, who have perhaps never realized the importance of self-control. The discipline maintained among this class by creating only a fear of punishment will in most cases fail to bring about results that are beneficial; such discipline does not prove to be correctional, but on the contrary has the tendency to encourage the practice of deception, for often they have no other incentive when violating the rules than to show that they can avoid detection. It seems to me that discipline to be corrective should be instructive and educational; instructive to a degree that would satisfy the prisoner that the law is not revengeful, but that in restraining him from his liberty it wants to point out to him his weaknesses and to assist him in overcoming them; and educational to a degree that would teach him to formulate rules to govern himself so that he might become a useful member of society. Then he will be more apt to consider the rules made to govern his conduct while in prison as really for his good, and he will co-operate with them to such an extent, at least, that he does not resort to deception. If a prisoner can be taught the lesson of self-control he is better prepared to adapt himself to the outside world and to good citizenship. If all inmates are not susceptible to this form of discipline, a sufficiently large percent respond, and when the great number of first offenders in an institution of this kind is considered, it is well worth an extra effort to maintain a discipline that will appeal to them with beneficial results to the community.

In my estimation, it is highly important in an institution of this kind to be prepared to give the best of medical or surgical treatment to those of the inmates who need it. We have a medical department well equipped with all the facilities of a first-class hospital. The regular staff of that department consists of four physicians and two trained nurses who live on the grounds, besides specialists who visit the institution at regular intervals. In addition to this we have a staff of consulting surgeons and physicians, each of whom visit the department at least once a week. No better attention is given patients in any hospital than our inmates receive. From fifty to seventy-five major operations are performed each month by as competent surgeons as there are in the city. The results obtained in this department have been most gratifying, and tend to prove that if permanent progress is to be made in the matter of the management of penal institutions, much assistance must come from a well regulated medical department, where the mental condition of the inmates is considered as well as the physical.

Frederick H. Wines, Secretary Illinois State Board of Administration.

[If the discussion which has followed the meeting of the International Prison Congress in Washington last October has brought anything clearly to the surface, it is that the county jail system of this country has succeeded in turning upon itself the spot-light of Europe. Why should we not take advantage of this borrowed illumination to become familiar with our own problem?—Editor.]

The following extracts give the gist of an interesting study of our jail system which was read before the last Maryland State conference of charities, and recently published in The Institution Quarterly of the Board of Administration of Illinois.

“So much has been said, and so well said, regarding the folly and iniquity of the county jail system in the United States, that it seems like a waste of breath to discuss it further.... No fault can be found with any one jail, that may not be found with scores or hundreds of others. There are jails that are too large, and jails that are too small; insecure jails, unsanitary jails, jails without light, jails without heat, jails without ventilation, filthy jails, jails that are not properly governed, palatial jails, and jails that are not fit for occupation as stables or pigstyes. I suppose that I have personally inspected nearly or quite one-fourth of all the jails in this country, and my attention has been drawn to every form of defect and disgrace by which a county prison can he disfigured.... But in what forum is the case to be tried? Who is to exercise the necessary jurisdiction? Where is the jury charged with the duty of rendering a verdict? Who will select the jurors? and when? and where?...

“It is not difficult, where the conditions in some county jail are shown to be shameful and intolerable, to arouse local sentiment in favor of some measure of improvement. If it is overcrowded, build an addition. If it is filthy, inaugurate a general house-cleaning. If it is unsafe, make it stronger. If it is unsanitary, it is easy to supply artificial light and heat, or to put in sewerage, water and modern plumbing. With these and other changes, it will do. If not, or if the sheriff needs a fine official residence, and the town wants a handsome public building and profitable contracts for its erection, then it may be possible to bring about the construction of a new prison.

“But what does all this really amount to? In all the essentials of good prison organization and management, the new jail is no better than the old one; and the money spent upon it is simply an addition to the immense investment in a wretched and indefensible system. Instead of being an aid to reform, it is an obstacle to reform. It increases the weight of the already too heavy burden resting on the shoulders of the friends and advocates of the thorough and effectual reconstruction of our existing prison system, from the top to the bottom.

“It would therefore seem to be high time for a radical change in our method of attack. We must adopt a new plan of campaign, which will aim not at the capture here and there of an outwork, so much as at the occupation and destruction of the innermost citadel.

“... Does any one imagine that the abuses at which I have barely hinted could long survive, if all convicted offenders, major and minor, misdemeanants as well as felons, were in the custody of state instead of county officials? The initial result would be a diminution in the number of prisons. There are many times too many local prisons. Some of them stand empty from year to year; some are overcrowded, at least during the weeks immediately preceding a term of the criminal court. The needless multiplication of jails entails a heavy pecuniary burden upon the people.

“The massing of sentenced prisoners would admit of their classification, and of the introduction of reformatory methods of dealing with them—useful, healthy occupation both for body and mind, and some measure of education and religious influence.

“The officers in immediate charge would naturally be men of higher grade, their tenure of office would be more secure, and they would have no other duties to distract their attention from their proper work. They would have little time or opportunity for pernicious political activity. They could be better paid.

“The corrupt fee system, under which it is to the pecuniary interest of some official that arrests should be multiplied, would go by the board.

“We might hope to see the last of iron cages, and foreigners could no longer satirize our prisons under the generic term of menageries. The state would avail itself of the services of competent architects, and traveling salesmen would not be able to sell to unsuspecting and simple-minded commissioners and supervisors their illusory spectacles in shagreen cases.

“In a word, we should have an opportunity to replace irresponsible by responsible prison management, and competency would in time take the place of incompetency.

“This proposal implies, of course, the complete and final disseverance of the prison for men convicted of crime from the house of detention for those awaiting trial, whose guilt is yet unproven, and who may be innocent. From the days of Plato to the present moment, that has been a cardinal maxim of prison reform. The jail system has prevented the realization of this ideal.

“It is not the house of correction, but the house of detention, which constitutes the most refractory element in this complex problem. Let us lay that portion of it aside, for the moment, and consider the other, which is easier. There is no practical obstacle to the establishment of one or more state houses of correction in any state, except the indifference of the legislature; and that can be overcome by a campaign of education....

“The point is to insist that the condemned misdemeanant, like the condemned felon, shall be committed to the custody of the state, which alone shall have the power to execute upon him, the sentence of the court. This simple measure may be relied upon to do away with one-half of our present grounds of complaint.

“I have no fear that, this first step taken, the state will not, sooner or later, see its way clear to take a second, and a third, and as many other steps as may from time to time appear to be expedient and practicable. ‘I do not ask to see the distant scene; one step enough for me.’

“I confess that I do not see how, at present, it is possible to dispense with the county jail as a house of detention. Ill-adapted as it is to that use, if we gain nothing, we at least lose nothing by conservatism as to this point. Consider the absolute necessity for having a place of confinement for prisoners awaiting trial. Consider the enormous cost of providing a new and improved house of detention in each county. If it should be said that so many houses of detention are not requisite, that the state might be redistricted for judicial purposes, or that prisoners might be carried back and forth between counties, remember that the witnesses would also have to be transported, at great expense. Neither of these suggestions is likely favorably to impress a practical mind. Possibly there are jails which might be remodelled, so as to serve reasonably well as houses of detention only; and there may be counties in which the present jails should be condemned as nuisances, and houses of detention, properly planned for that exclusive use, might there be built. These are details which may be left to take care of themselves. Why put off doing what we can do, because there are other things that we can not do? The time may come when we can do more. Why advocate reforms which are sure to provoke such a united opposition as to insure their defeat in advance?

“On this subject, however, there is one suggestion that may well be made. The population of our minor prisons might be materially reduced, if a more liberal use were made of the constitutional right of bail. The purpose of temporary release under bond is twofold; to relieve the public and to relieve the prisoner. It is expected that the courts will exercise this power in a liberal spirit, and they do. Some of them are authorized to release prisoners on their own recognizance, at the discretion of the court. Every court should possess this right, and greater use might well be made of it. In our large cities, there are many persons guilty of disorderly conduct, or charged with the violation of some police regulation, or some trivial or purely technical offence, who would face trial, without being held in custody, but are unable to procure bondsmen. In both civic and rural communities, there are also many whose family and business relations are such, that there is no reason to apprehend that they will seek to avoid trial by running away. The fact that such persons can not furnish bail is no sufficient reason for their imprisonment. In all such cases, the committing magistrate must of course use wise discrimination in the exercise of his right to waive the usual bail-bond.

“It is further desirable that the criminal code should provide for the probation of the accused, in advance of trial.

“By the adoption of these and other similar methods, fewer men and women would be exposed to the peril of moral contagion in prison, which, under our present system, affects even those who may be, and in fact often are, innocent. Moreover, it is an error to imagine that all who are guilty of the charges for which, under the statutes, if unable to pay a reasonable fine, they must endure a term of incarceration, are depraved. The boy who throws a ball through a plate glass window and is caught, is no worse than the boy who does the same thing and makes his escape without being arrested; nor the boy who can pay a fine, than the boy who can not.”