STATE BOARD OF PUBLIC CHARITIES AND PRISON LABOR.
We gladly present the following facts which have been gleaned from interviews with Edward Wilson, Esq., one of the agents of this Board.
So far as prison labor is involved, the Board of Public Charities has been deeply interested in developing the possibilities of an Act which on their initiative was passed and approved in 1917. This allows the employment of prisoners on lands belonging to any county.
In 1915 Judge Isaac Johnson, in Delaware County began a system of employing prisoners which the Board desires to extend. In the year 1918, the receipts from the crops produced by the labor of prisoners amounted to $14,000, in addition to a large amount of vegetable products consumed at the prison. The net profit is near $7000. Report comes that Berks County will be able to supply the prison with vegetables for the winter. Northampton County employed fifteen to twenty prisoners on a small farm recently purchased. Dauphin County had a few prisoners at work on the almshouse farm. In Montgomery County from fifteen to twenty prisoners have been employed on the Poor farm. In Columbia County seven Italians are engaged in operating a war garden which it is said has been very profitable. In one or two counties with large population, there is no land available for such purpose. Mr. Wilson states that little or nothing has been accomplished in this direction in those counties whose jail population is small. At one time in the year 1918, there were 13 counties without a prisoner. In some counties prisoners have worked on the roads. A few counties have been willing for selected prisoners to be paroled to farmers.
Mr. Wilson is inclined to the belief that in some of our counties, the prevailing type of prisoner is too vicious to be allowed the freedom which belongs to the cultivation of the soil. From observations elsewhere we are inclined to the belief that the vilest man or woman, unless defective in mentality, will respond when treated with kindness and made to feel that he or she is trusted. Granted, however, that it may be considered unwise to send all prisoners without reservation to work on the farm, under the system proposed by the Commission to investigate Prison Systems, and whose Report to the General Assembly is found elsewhere in this number of the Journal, all the State Industrial Prison Farms are to foster some industry or industries aside from the horticultural and agricultural employments. On these farms there will be found opportunity for the employment of all prisoners, whatever may be their character or temperament.
Last year in a casual inspection of the prison at Wilkes-Barre, the secretary announced that he considered 46 out of the 75 prisoners would be available for an Industrial Farm. Mr. Wilson after a very careful study of the situation concluded that 11 could be sent to work on the outside. Now something depends on the viewpoint. If the State should own an Industrial Farm fully equipped for the permanent accommodation of prisoners with diverse industries, Mr. Wilson probably would add materially to the number which might be sentenced to the penal farm instead of to the county prison affording so little opportunity for continuous profitable labor. The secretary consents to some reduction of his estimates, if real employment with some remuneration can be supplied at the county jail. The tendency of this practical age is to give regular employment to all those whom we for a time exclude from community freedom, and to place over them officials who will direct these industries.