Chapter III: Part 3

“Most of the prisoners at the Jacksonville farm are drunks and petty offenders, and the steady work in the open air away from other workmen and congestion of one kind and another, has a salutary effect on their mental processes, which is highly beneficial. The average number of prisoners who come back to the farm for further offenses is relatively small, according to Justice Anderson. I think it is a step in the right direction.

“In Jacksonville persons who carry concealed weapons are sentenced by the police judge and not by the judges of the recorder’s court, as is the case in Detroit. A police justice also has the power of pardoning any person he sentences to the prison farm. Justice Anderson told me he would not be police justice if he did not have the pardoning power.”

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_Politics and Prison._--“Until politicians keep their hands off State prisons there is no hope for reforming notorious abuses in the system,” says Henry Solomon, President of the New York State Commission of Prisons. Mr. Solomon recently finished an exhaustive examination of Sing Sing Prison.

“We see no use in mincing words on this subject,” said Mr. Solomon. “We know it is not an easy thing to find the right man to run a prison, but we believe he can be found some where in this country, if it is really desired to find him.

“The present Warden at Sing Sing has so far as we know no particular experience in prison matters. He has however, made many improvements in the short time he has been there. We are perfectly willing to suspend judgment until he has had a further chance to prove what he can do. We must add, however, that there is much room for improvement and particularly in the industries.”

Mr. Solomon said that the suggestions of Thomas Mott Osborne, arising from his personal experience in Auburn Prison, had afforded valuable hints.

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_Some Reasons For Massachusetts Pardons._--The Governor and Council in Massachusetts granted 69 pardons in 1913. One man, sentenced to 18 months for polygamy, had had papers served on him back in 1902 for divorce, had been introduced to a man represented to be his divorced wife’s second husband and, supposing himself to be a single man, had married a Lawrence woman in 1911. Another, an 18-year-old sailor-boy, sentenced for assault and battery, had had no counsel at his trial. Another sentenced for second-degree murder, was at most, according to this statement, guilty only of manslaughter for striking a fatal blow at a huge negro in fear of repetition of revolting treatment. He had pleaded guilty to the greater charge on advice of counsel.

Among a long list of cases, somewhat similar in the showing made, is a curious one of a man released on condition that he go to the Long Island hospital and submit to an operation for the transfusion of blood to his mother, who it was believed could be cured in this way and would otherwise die.

Such a report lends strength to the plan Prison Commissioner Randall is urging before the legislature for an indeterminate sentence system, says the Worcester Post. It is a question on which much can be said pro and con, though the most advanced penologists are pretty well agreed as to its advantages when wisely administered. Indiana and Minnesota have found that it works with even unexpected success. Mr. Randall, in the recent hearing on his bill, urged that it

“Would relieve the courts from fixing the maximum and minimum of those committed to state prison, which was right, for the court’s duty is simply to find whether a man is guilty and it does not study his personality to any extent. The question of when a prisoner shall be released should be left to the parole board rather than to the court.”

As a practical consideration, also, it would relieve the Governor and council from work which now absorbs much of their time and energy. A competent parole board would specialize in the study of convicts and their needs and thus add to knowledge that is needed in our modern life and the duty to make it better by every means within our reach.

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_The Virginia Penitentiary._--According to the annual report of the State penitentiary board to the governor, the big prison not only made expenses last year, but earned a net profit of $20,412.31. Its operating expenses were $115,098.88 and its receipts $135,511.10. Of the total earnings $130,573 came from the hiring of the men on the contract system in the penitentiary shops. Defending itself from the charge of overworking the prisoners for the benefit of the contract holders, the board calls attention to the fact that the 800 prisoners released during the year ending September 31, were paid the sum of $10,575.85, which represents their earnings during imprisonment.

The board emphasizes the fact that the prisoners do not work more than an average of nine hours a day. The amount of the prisoners’ fund on hand on October 1, was $16,22.44, notwithstanding that $10,575.85 had been paid to discharged prisoners and $14,902.79 spent by the prisoners during the year on delicacies.

There were in the penitentiary on October 1, 1913, 728 prisoners, 300 at the State farm and 1,057 in the twenty-nine road camps, making a total of 2,118. On the same day of 1912, there were in the penitentiary 1,158 prisoners confined, 286 at the State farm and 691 in nineteen road camps, a total of 2,131. The daily average of prisoners confined in the penitentiary for the fiscal year ending September 31, 1913, was 1,012, as against 1,213 for the preceding year.

A total of 785 new prisoners were received during the year. By expiration of term, 487 prisoners were discharged, two were granted absolute pardons, fifty-six were granted conditional pardons, 169 were paroled, 31 died, 54 escaped from the road camps and nine were sent to insane asylums.

Of the 728 prisoners not fitted for work in the road camps, 139 are white men, 499 colored men, five white women and eighty-five colored women. Of the 785 prisoners received during the year 362 could read and write and 423 were illiterate; 373 were abstainers, 278 moderate drinkers and 134 intemperate; 277 were married, 489 single and two divorced.--(Roanoke News).

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_A Holiday at Auburn._--An unusual event took place in Auburn prison, when 1,400 convicts, observing Lincoln’s birthday, marched from cells to chapel and mess hall in charge of convict captains, elected by the inmates several weeks before, as their representatives in the mutual welfare league. The convict officers relieved the regular officers of their usual duties and maintained splendid discipline.

The holiday entertainment was furnished entirely by convict talent and included an oration on Lincoln by an inmate.

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_The Development of Road Work._--Thirteen States have passed laws during the present year allowing the use of convicts in the construction and repair of highways, according to a compilation by Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, assistant in social legislation in Columbia university and chairman of the executive committee of the national committee on prison labor. They are Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As many other States had previously passed similar legislation, but few of the forty-eight States have not adopted the policy of using prisoners to build and maintain public roads.

West Virginia and Iowa are the two States whose laws regarding the working of convicts on highways stand out most prominently. So anxious was the governor of the former State to secure an effective law that he went to New York and with the assistance of representatives of the national committee on prison labor, of the road department of Columbia university and of the legislative drafting bureau worked out bills making compulsory the employment of convicts on the roads. The West Virginia law authorizes the county courts to make appropriations out of road funds for convict work; it states that the court shall sentence any male person over sixteen to road work instead of to the county jail; persons charged with misdemeanors unable to furnish bail shall work on the roads and if acquitted when tried shall be paid 50 cents a day for each day’s work they perform; justices of the peace shall sentence to work on the roads persons convicted of crime whom otherwise they would send to the county jail.

Another feature of the West Virginia law is the establishment of a State road bureau to supervise any plans proposed by a county for using prison labor in road building. The plan approved, the county shall apply to the board of control for the number of prisoners required and shall state the length of time they shall be needed. The board shall, as far as possible, give equal service to each of the counties and shall determine which prisoners may be assigned to such work. The warden is to provide suitable and movable quarters, which shall be built, where possible, by convict labor. The convicts shall remain under direct control of the warden, their work, however, being under the supervision of the road bureau.

In Iowa the board of control of the State institutions with the advice of the warden of any penal institution, may permit able bodied male prisoners to work on the roads. The law specifically states such labor shall not be leased to contractors. A prisoner opposed to such work, or whose character and disposition make it probable that he would attempt escape or be unruly, is not to be worked on the highways. Although the prisoners are under the jurisdiction of the warden while building or repairing roads, their work is supervised by the State Highway Commissioner. Prisoners employed on the highways of Iowa receive such part of their earnings above the cost of their keep as the board deems equitable, the earnings either being funded or given to their dependent families. Before Iowa passed her present prison labor laws, George W. Cosson, attorney general of the State, made a thorough investigation of the prisons of his own and other States, and strongly denounced the contract system, under which the prisoners were employed up to that time. Mr. Cosson drew up the road bill and is of the opinion it will do much to drive the contract system out of the State.

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_The Cost of a “Chair.”_--The State of Tennessee’s new electric chair at the State prison is now in readiness.

A total of 2,300 volts are to be used in operating the death chair. The equipment is said to be the most up-to-date in the United States. It cost the State of Tennessee $1,750.

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_Land Reclamation Plans in Massachusetts._--Under the provisions of the so-called wet lands reclamation act passed by the legislature of last year, the State boards of agriculture and health are contemplating the purchase of about 300 acres of swamp land in Walpole, to begin work which is eventually expected to reclaim between 100,000 and 200,000 acres of land within 30 miles of Boston, and including the towns of North Billerica, Lincoln, Concord, Bedford and Carlisle.

Most of the land will be available for agricultural purposes; other portions will furnish manufacturing sites.

Chairman Randall of the prison commission is considering the advisability of using prison labor on the work, and an effort will shortly be made to obtain from the legislature provision whereby a portion of the wages earned by the prison laborers can be given to their families.

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_Convict Farm in Arkansas Condemned._--Here are some of the conditions alleged by Officer W. M. Rankin of the Arkansas Humane Society to exist at the Monroe County convict farm. Mr. Rankin made the following charges:

That when the prisoners were brought in from their work at six o’clock in the afternoon, they were chained to a long chain which extended the length of their room and that they were thus kept chained all night. They were kept chained thus from six o’clock Saturday night until they went to work Monday morning, being released only to take baths. Mr. Rankin states, however, that he was told by the prisoners and by one of the guards that the chaining was discontinued about a week before he visited the place.

That he found eight white men confined in a room about twelve feet square. That he found ten negro prisoners in a room 12 by 14 feet.

That the bed for the white prisoners consisted of some straw mattresses placed on planks that had been nailed to the wall, four comforts and no pillows. That the bedding for the ten negro prisoners consisted of two straw mattresses and a few comforts, all of which were covered with vermin.

That all clothing given the prisoners was charged to them and that they were forced to work out the amounts charged except for rubber boots furnished them.

That the food furnished the prisoners was insufficient; that they were furnished with neither knives nor forks nor a table and were compelled to stand or sit on their bunks while eating.

That prisoners were whipped on their naked flesh with a heavy piece of leather about four and three inches in width.

That sanitary conditions were awful.

Mr. Rankin further charges that he found men working on the farm who had been convicted in the court of the mayor of Brinkley and also that he found that many of the negro convicts had been detained for a considerable period after their terms had expired, according to the records of the mayor’s court.

Three white men are mentioned as being illegally detained. One was Claude McKinnon, and Mr. Rankin said that he has in his possession a certified copy of the docket of the court of Mayor Camerone of Brinkley, which shows that McKinnon was tried January 13, on a charge of loitering and discharged, despite which fact, he was found confined at the county farm.

Another white man, says the report, was W. Van Beek, who was sentenced from the mayor’s court January 6. The report says that Van Beek was still on the farm February 1, and that if the mayor’s docket was correct, he had then worked seven days overtime.

He also says that Frank Lynch, fined $10 and $4.30 costs in the mayor’s court, December 29, was released from the farm February 1, and that if the mayor’s docket is correct, he has worked 14 days overtime.

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_Transportation Again?_--The Buffalo (N. Y.) Express states that

the question of exiling habitual or professional criminals is being
agitated in England. In a recent report of the British prison
commissioners it is noted that the number of persons having previous
convictions has in late years risen from 78 to 87 per cent. The
latest available figures show that in England only 118 of 916
sentenced to penal servitude had not been previously convicted, and
that the greater number of old offenders had from six to twenty
convictions against them. It is estimated that at the present time
there are in London alone 20,000 habitual criminals. “The only way of
dealing with these habitual criminals”, says an English authority,
“is to expel them from the community against which they wage
incessant war. A third conviction should cause the prisoner to be
deported to some island and reduced to a state of industrial serfdom,
in which he could earn his living.”

To adopt this suggestion means a return to the old system of
convict colonies. An obstacle to the segregation plan under present
conditions is the scarcity of lands available for such purposes.
Suitable island territory is at a premium. Continental land except in
isolated cases is not desirable for the location of convict colonies,
because of the opportunities for escape. The alternative is the
establishment of prison farms--a system experimented with more or
less during recent years. Here, too, the opportunities for escape are
many. The prison farm is most suitable to first termers. But that
still leaves the question of disposition of the professional criminal
unsettled.

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_Idleness Reduced at Ohio Penitentiary._--The Columbia Journal says that “a remarkable change in penitentiary conditions has occurred since Warden Thomas was put in charge of the institution last summer by Governor Cox. At that time there were 750 idle men in the institution; to-day only 200 men are in the idle house. Within the next two weeks the idle house will be more than conspicuous by the absence of occupants.”

The new school and the woolen mills nearing completion will result in the depletion of the ranks of the idle house. This is the final solution of one of the biggest problems at the penitentiary, which Governor Cox insisted should be met when he placed Warden Thomas in charge. The prisoners in the school will attend six-hour sessions.

“The White City,” said to be the finest example of cell-block construction in the country, is the name given by prisoners at Ohio penitentiary to the new cell block which replaced one built in 1874. “The White City” houses 580 men. It is known officially as cell blocks “C” and “D.” It has 280 cells, built in five ranges or stories, with 28 cells to a range.

Two prisoners sleep in each cell on steel bunks, which can be raised up against the wall like the upper berths of a sleeping car. The entire cell block and all equipment in it are built entirely of steel. It is fireproof throughout, the only inflammable things in it being the hair mattresses used by the prisoners. “The White City” is modern and sanitary, with running water, electric lights and toilet facilities in each cell.

The prisoners in “the White City” are men of excellent behavior and “100 per cent.” men. This cell block is about the only part of the present penitentiary that will be used in the new prison farm. It was constructed in such a way that it can be moved to the prison farm in sections.

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_Another Item From Colorado._--“We have built between 1,200 and 1,500 miles of State highways under this system at a cost of about $389 per mile for labor,” says Warden Tynan. “These roads are built of disintegrated granite and are fine boulevards--not ordinary roads. We are now driving a road through solid granite, 16 feet wide and well surfaced, which costs us about $1,000 per mile for labor, and that is the hardest kind of construction. The roads are maintained in good condition by the use of drags. They cost about $4 each, and are effective in keeping the road well surfaced, if used after each heavy rain.

“The State does this work for the counties by furnishing a dollar in labor for each dollar that the county provides for road work. The money the State puts up is used to maintain the camps, an expense of 32 cents per day per man.”

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_Cleaning Out a Prison._--Governor Cole L. Blease expects to clear the South Carolina Penitentiary of about four hundred prisoners by next August, according to his statement during an inquiry into the conditions at the State Hospital for the Insane by a special legislative committee. The governor urged that the prison be converted into a tuberculosis hospital for negroes.

D. J. Griffith, Superintendent, said there were not enough convicts left to do even such work as waiting on the table. There were more than 1,300 prisoners in the penitentiary when Gov. Blease assumed office three years ago, but he has extended Executive clemency in more than a thousand cases. “In January sixty-four convicts had been the recipients of clemency and if the Governor continues at his usual rate it will not be long until the penitentiary will be cleaned out.”--So speaks the New York Evening Sun of February 5.

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_An Ex-Convict Running For Governor._--Al J. Jennings, ex-train robber and federal prisoner, who won the Democratic nomination for county attorney of Oklahoma county, Oklahoma, in 1912, has announced his candidacy for the governorship of the State of Oklahoma.

“My object is to clean up the party in Oklahoma. I intend to fight double dealing political thieves, with whom no self-respecting outlaw of former years can associate.

“All I want is to see absolutely honest men at the head of the government, and after I have announced my candidacy if some man whose integrity and uprightness are unquestioned becomes a candidate I shall withdraw and support him with all of my ability.

“Some people do not seem to be able to understand how an outlaw, an ex-train robber and federal prisoner can become sincerely law-abiding and a reformer in politics, but the explanation is simple. I made a mistake and defied the law. I was caught and punished--kept five years in prison--and then saw how I had been wrong to become an enemy of society. I decided to reclaim my place in society and set about doing it. As soon as I became a free man, living in a free community, I began to appreciate the differences in lawbreaking and the consequences thereof, and that made me a political reformer.

“I had been a train robber, a crude, open defier of society, and I had been caught and punished. I saw all about me men who wore the best clothes and stood high in society robbing the people right and left and not getting caught or being punished. They were not as primitive as I had been in the method they chose. They did things in the dark and only appeared in the open when they had on their Sunday clothes, so to speak.

“I favor the adoption of a reformatory parole system,” he said, “by which first offenders can be given a chance to redeem themselves. I think that a young man who is convicted for the first time should be allowed to stay at home and work under the watchful eye of the State instead of being locked up in a prison where, in all probability, he will be made a confirmed criminal. There will be no wholesale release of prisoners if I become governor, but I will exercise the power of pardon and parole with the view of reclaiming for society every man I can. As long as there is a chance of making a good citizen of a man we should try to do so.”

Jennings was a train robber in Oklahoma and the southwest for several years before his final capture in 1897 and subsequent conviction in a federal court. He served a few years in the prison at Columbus, O., before being pardoned by President McKinley. His citizenship was later restored by President Roosevelt, and he began the practice of law in Oklahoma City. In 1912, he ran for the Democratic nomination as county attorney of Oklahoma county against six other candidates. Before the primaries five of the candidates withdrew to concentrate the vote against him, but in spite of this he obtained the nomination. At the general election he was defeated by a narrow margin by a Republican who was supported by both the Republicans and Democratic organizations.

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_More Road Work._--In June, 1912, the State of Massachusetts decided to start a camp and employ the inmates in road construction and reforestation work, and, accordingly, forty model prisoners were selected from the Worcester House of Correction and sent to the State reservation at Mt. Wachusett.

These men erected five buildings and cleared the land for a garden patch on which, by the way, enormous quantities of vegetables were raised this year, enough in fact to supply the camp and to some extent, the Worcester institution, for the past winter.

There were many who at first were strongly against the establishment of a camp on the side of the mountain, being of the opinion that the reservation would be spoiled for the State, and particularly for the town of Westminster, but this objection soon wore away. The measure of success is both in work accomplished and benefit to the prisoners, physically and mentally.

What first impresses the visitor to the camp is the total absence of anything suggestive of confinement and of a corrective institution. The inmates are free to wander within certain limits from the cluster of buildings and while they are garbed in the customary gray suits worn by other county prisoners, there is little to suggest the prisoner to the passerby in their actions and general demeanor.

So far, twenty-two miles of road have been constructed through the forest, at a small expense to the county, by the prisoners. A stone crusher and a compression drill are parts of the equipment of the road building gang, which is under the charge of the master of the camp.

Flanked on three sides by mountain slopes and by a large meadow on the other, the camp is situated in an ideal spot. Thankful are the prisoners for the change from indoor confinement, and in token of appreciation they work as hard if not harder than men on the outside who enjoy their full liberty.

Supplies are brought from the Worcester jail twice a week by auto truck which generally takes back a load of potatoes or turnips and an occasional term-expired prisoner. Only men who are sentenced for short terms are sent to Westminster and therefore the camps population is constantly changing.

Mr. Coombs, in charge of the camp, said that only three prisoners had ever made their escape, which was an extremely simple matter, and that this trio all returned and pleaded to be taken back into the fold. There are no locks or bars on the dormitory shed and it is an easy matter for a man to take “French leave” if he so desires.

Next year it is thought the State will add to the camp property by purchasing the Bolton farm across the road, and in this way fifty more prisoners will be accommodated.--Boston Herald.

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_Probation Results in Massachusetts._--The Worcester Telegram states that “the Massachusetts probation commission is approaching the millionaire class. In 1909 it handled less than $50,000, and in 1913 almost $218,000. That is money collected from people under court jurisdiction and paid to others for various reasons: For restitution of property taken unlawfully, $24,250.63; for non-support, which is turned into support of families of the delinquent, $140,773.96; for court expenses, $3,335.34; for fines in the case of suspended sentences, $49,304.09. The increase of such business throughout the State has been so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach the million list in the next five years.

“The probation officials claim they have saved a great many, almost the entire list falling into their hands, from the kind of shiftless if not criminal lives they had been leading, and there is no doubt they have reported correctly. But there is that tremendous increase in the work and cash results of the Probation Commission and its officers, and at the same time the jails and prisons remain full and get still fuller. Then crime must be on the increase in Massachusetts, not only in occasional lapses of the people, but as a regular condition which grows with the years. The probation service of the State costs over $20,000 a year, but the receipts the last year were, for the benefit of the State, $80,000 more than that. The following from the commission’s report is worth reading by all the people:

“While the large sum of money collected by the probation officers
of the state is not covered permanently into a public treasury, it
is not less an actual financial benefit. Consisting very largely
of enforced payments from other wise non-supporting husbands and
fathers, it goes to the same extent and without diminution to the
natural dependents. It relieves the state and the municipalities of
the cost of caring for these neglected persons, and observation shows
that this saving is substantially equal to the amount collected.
Meanwhile the probationer who is made to contribute it is usefully
employed, as he must be to provide for the payments, and the public
is relieved of the expense of maintaining him in jail.”

“That shows a tremendous saving of money, as well as preventing the waste of the same money in idling away time and getting into closer touch with crime. What that means can be still more plainly seen from the report that in 1909 non-supporting husbands to the number of 617, contributed $25,218.13, but in 1913, non-supporting husbands to the number of 1,240 gave up $140,773.96. That shows a gain of 100 per cent. in the number of cases, but nearly 450 per cent. in the amount collected. That leads the Commission on Probation to ask for more money than it is allowed under the law, and a bill goes before the house at Boston to give the Commission more than the $5,000 it has now. The Commissioners do not draw salaries, but they have an office, with a salaried deputy and stenographer. They want a chance to enlarge their powers and work, because many courts are calling for probation officers and what business they do must come under the care of the Commission. But the serious question is as to what the State is coming to while it enlarges on the plans to make the delinquents pay their way as they do in the cases cited and still have an increase of crime and dependence on the public charity for support. The courts do no less, the jails and prisons no more, and still there is the claim that the people are being taught to do better.”

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_Scrapping Metal and Scrapping Men._--Governor Foss of Massachusetts recently said: “Let me add in all seriousness that the managers of my own shops and factories make a more efficient and intelligent sorting and reclamation of scrap metal than the laws have generally made of the living men and women that have been thrown upon the scrap heap of our jails and prisons.”

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Miss Margaret Elliott of Cleveland, Ohio, formerly connected with the Training School for Girls at Geneva, Ill., has been appointed superintendent of the Indiana prison. She will succeed Miss Emily E. Rhoades, who resigned last December.

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STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, ETC. of THE DELINQUENT Published monthly at New York, N. Y., required by the Act of August 24th, 1912.

NAME OF POST OFFICE ADDRESS
Editor, O. F. Lewis, 135 East 15th St., New York City.
Managing Editor, O. F Lewis, “ “ “ “ “ “
Business Manager, O. F. Lewis, “ “ “ “ “ “
Publisher, The National
Prisoners’ Aid Association, “ “ “ “ “ “
Owners, “ “
“ “ “ “ “ “ “ “ “

There are no bondholders, mortgages, or other security holders.

O. F. LEWIS, Editor and Business Manager.

Sworn to and subscribed before me this 30th day of September, 1913.

H. L. McCORMICK, Notary Public No. 6, Kings County.
My Commission expires March 31, 1914.

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Transcriber’s Notes:

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

p. 8: Item 2 is as presented in the original text.

p. 12: 3 and 8 on the first two lines of the table are not completely legible in the original text and could be either 3 or 8 in each case.

p. 26: Invalid date of September 31 is in the original text.

p. 26: A digit may be missing in a number in the original text, or a comma may be misplaced (was $16,22.44, notwithstanding).