MASSACHUSETTS STATE REFORMATORY, CONCORD.
Receives men from 18 to 35; if guilty of crime more than three times, cannot be sent here. The training-school is very much like Elmira, N. Y. After they become proficient in these schools, they pass into the industrial department and are employed at various kinds of productive labor. Sloyd system work is very prominent, forenoons spent in the trades schools, and afternoons in the shops. Prisoners alternate, so that both shops and industrial training-schools are in full operation all of the day.
Products of the shops are furnished other State institutions. They manufacture cotton and woolen goods (having a $35,000 plant of machinery). All weaving is done by hand-looms, made in the institution. There are over twenty industries and the institution uses all the money it earns.
The average convict’s stay is fifteen months, yet it is possible he may work out in a year, and he may be kept two years if convicted for a felony. About half the prisoners remain full time for which they are committed. They have 300 acres of land, and twenty acres are inside the prison walls, 1022 cells; prisoners go out on good records made in school and shop.