Wednesday, September 19
MORNING
The session of the Physicians’ Association, held this morning, was most interesting, and was marked by some notable features. The President, Dr. S. H. Blitch, Ocala, Florida, presented a paper on “The Open versus the Close Penitentiary System of Handling Prisoners,” in which he took strong ground in favor of the former, especially in the South. He defined the “open” penitentiary system as that mode of social restraint according to which the prisoner sentenced to hard labor is required to perform skilled and unskilled service in fields, woods, and surface mining, and in such industries and occupations as do not necessitate his daily cellular or circumscribed confinement, as is the case under the “close” system. He claimed that in spite of criticism, the “open” system, wherever climatic conditions make it practicable, is far more conducive to the mental and physical rehabilitation of the convict than the “close” system. In the South, especially where the vast majority of prisoners are negroes who have been accustomed to life in the open air and to outdoor employment, the confinement in a “close” penitentiary would be most detrimental. The open-air system puts these men at work under conditions to which they have been accustomed from youth up, and the results demonstrate the wisdom of the plan.
In the discussion which followed this paper, Dr. Barrows said that many penologists felt that the Southern system had many advantages, but that other industrial and reformatory elements should be added. Dr. Wines saw an immense advantage in the Southern method, and claimed that Northern prisons would find it very beneficial to have farms connected with them for the outdoor employment of convicts.
The paper on “Prison Sanitation,” by Dr. W. D. Stewart, West Virginia Penitentiary, Moundsville, was followed by that of Dr. S. A. Knopf, of New York, on “The Tuberculosis Problem in Prisons and Reformatories.” The presentation made by this eminent specialist on tuberculosis was probably the most exhaustive on this subject to which the Congress ever listened. This very valuable paper, any condensation of which would do it injustice, is published in full in the New York Medical Journal, November 17, 1906, to which the reader is referred.
Dr. J. W. Milligan, Indiana State Prison, Michigan City, read a paper on “Mental Defectives Among Prisoners,” of which the following is a synopsis: Where reformation, not punishment, is the aim, a just estimate of the prisoner’s mental state is essential. Without this the indeterminate sentence cannot be successful. Communities as well as courts too frequently overlook mental defect as an important element in crime. Too many prisoners on admission are insane, epileptic, or feeble-minded. Epilepsy is not an infrequent factor, especially in atrocious crimes without motive, and overlooked because not of the pronounced type popularly considered characteristic of this disease.
Indiana prison records show among the defectives, a percentage for murder three times; for murder, manslaughter, and rape, twice; but for larceny, two-thirds that of the average for all classes. On admission, forty-four per cent. admit mental defect or criminal record, in the personal or family history. This tainted influx, and the fact that defectives are not paroled, explains why twelve per cent. of our population is insane, epileptic, or feeble-minded.
The psychosis are chiefly degenerative in type. Insane among prisoners are not especially difficult to manage; no harsh measures are ever justifiable. Indiana has as yet no institution for insane criminals; it needs one badly. A ward in the prison hospital gives good results, though far from ideal. Insane criminals should be judged in the light of modern psychiatry, and their rights and the safety of society carefully guarded.
AFTERNOON
Mr. C. W. Bowron, Superintendent of the Wisconsin State Reformatory, Green Bay, presented the Report of the Committee on Prevention and Reformatory Work, in a paper entitled, “Reformatory Sentences and Discharges,” which concluded with the following propositions:
1. That the authority to transfer prisoners from the reformatory to state prison is an essential safeguard to the successful management of a reformatory; and this power on the part of prison officials has been abundantly upheld by the courts.
2. That the so-called indeterminate sentence has been repeatedly held valid, but apparently upon the construction that it is a definite sentence for the maximum limit. It is therefore a misnomer.
3. That the fixing of a minimum period in the indeterminate sentence is illogical, and detrimental to reformatory purposes.
4. That the power of parole is purely an administrative function exercised in the establishment of a prison regulation, the validity of which has been upheld by the courts; and that the determination of parole should largely if not wholly rest with the principal officers of the institution.
5. That the parole system does not depend upon the so-called indeterminate sentence, or any other form of sentence, but stands apart from it as a separate and distinct reformatory element.
6. That a definite and uniform sentence fixed by statute, subject to modification through the legal powers of the administrative officers to parole and discharge, is not inconsistent with reformatory purposes, and in some respects is an advantage to reformatory management.
7. That final discharge after a suitable term of probation on parole is a just and essential feature of the merit system, in which the pardoning power should coöperate with the reformatory officials.
8. That the indefinite sentence does not exist, probably cannot constitutionally exist, possibly ought not to exist, and certainly would be the object of severe criticism if it did exist.
9. That a central bureau of identification operated by the general government is so essential to the proper ends of justice that its establishment would mark an important advancement in our criminal jurisprudence.
“Methods of Reformatory Administration” was the subject of a paper by Mr. W. H. Whittaker, Superintendent of the Indiana State Reformatory, Jeffersonville. Mr. Whittaker claimed that in many institutions methods had not kept pace with advancing civilization. Ideal reformatory management must, first of all, have a solid foundation to stand upon. Said foundation consists of the men in charge of an institution. These, from the superintendent down, should be men of broad intelligence, good morals, and clean habits, who thoroughly believe that they are their brothers’ keepers, and who, in the discharge of all their duties, will constantly have in view the reformation of the prisoner. No good results can come from physical punishment or the employment of such methods as humiliate the prisoner. All methods should aim to secure the harmonious training of the heart, the head, and the hand, and should have for their one purpose the building of character.
In a paper on “The Delinquent Girl,” Mrs. Lucy M. Sickels, Superintendent of the State Industrial Home, Adrian, Michigan, pointed out that the real delinquent in most cases is the parent. The delinquent girl is not born so. She comes into the world with all the winning graces of babyhood; but when she reaches the years of girlhood, she is allowed to have her own way and to run wild. The mother is perhaps so busy attending missionary and temperance meetings, endeavoring to save others, that she has no time for her own daughter. If the girl has no mother, or a widowed mother, who, in order to support her little family, is obliged to go out to hard work day after day, until she becomes nervous, impatient, and petulant, an equally unfortunate situation again presents itself. Or parents are constantly quarreling, until divorce stalks in, breaks up the home, and sets the children adrift. In eight cases out of ten, ill temper and divorce in the home are the cause of delinquency. Delinquency or incorrigibility is only another name for parental neglect. What we want are laws to protect the children and punish the delinquent parent, for this is the root of all the evil we are striving and contending against.
Mrs. Sickels outlined the methods followed in the institution which she directs. “We go back to the first home principles, a mother and a mother’s love. A manager or mother is at the head of each family home, of which we have eight, each family having a kitchen, dining room, and laundry, just as complete in itself as you are from your neighbor. Each family cooks its own food, makes its own bread, and does its own laundry work. Each girl has a nice little room all to herself, in which is a single bed covered with a clean white spread, a pretty pillow sham on the pillow, a dresser, a mirror, a rug and a chair. Each room has a large airy window. The girl may beautify the walls and dresser according to her own taste and skill.
“The first requisite for a girl as she enters the Home is occupation, not work only. It may mean work, but instruction is given along all lines most necessary and useful to every woman in order to fit her to be a housekeeper and home-maker.” A chapel, in which two services are held each Lord’s Day, a schoolhouse and graded school with eight teachers, a hospital and trained nurse, a sewing school, a cooking school, a dressmaking department, a greenhouse, and an orchestra and brass band composed of girls, form part of the equipment. There is no wall or fence around the Home, but a clear open space and beautiful lawn, with walks and flowers, shrubbery and trees. The results obtained have been most satisfactory, at least seventy-five per cent. of the girls so far received having turned out good, true women, many of them being devoted wives and mothers.
EVENING
Mr. Alexander Johnson, General Secretary National Conference of Charities and Correction, Indianapolis, Indiana, spoke on “The Reformation of Jails.” Many county jails, he declared, are a blot on civilization. Should this be the case when we seek the reformation of the prisoner? Reform has begun at the top of the prison system, but the jails have made little progress upward, and a great number deserve to be called “schools of vice.” What is the remedy? The physical condition of the county jail must be improved. Each prisoner should be separately confined. The fundamental error is that the jails are used for two dissimilar purposes: for men awaiting trial, and for men who are sentenced. The two do not belong together. I have seen these two classes together in the same cell, and treated perfectly alike. When a man has been convicted he no longer belongs to the county, but to the State, and should be sent to a State institution. Then the jail would remain only as a place of detention for those awaiting trial. But why the State? Because the county would hardly be justified in going to the expense of supporting a real work-house. Another reform imperatively needed is speedier trials. It is infamous to hold a man in jail for months awaiting trial. “I hope the time will come when the question will be, ‘What kind of a man is this, that we may fit him for society.’ When we make our prisons hospitals for the moral reformation of men, we will realize that the jail will be the place in which to begin.”
“The Juvenile Court: Its Uses and Limitations,” was the title of a paper by Dr. Hastings H. Hart, Superintendent of the Illinois Children’s Home and Aid Society, Chicago. The juvenile court is an evolution. Some twenty States have juvenile court laws—all within about six years. This evolution is still in progress, and the matter still in its infancy.
The juvenile court is founded on three great ideas: 1. The value of the child for its own sake and for the community. 2. The abandonment of the lex talionis, i. e., the infliction of a punishment commensurate with the wrong done. This is impossible as well as a wrong. No man is wise enough to adjust the punishment accurately to the crime. 3. The recognition of the responsibility of the mother State for the children, especially for the erring and neglected ones.
The first essential feature of the juvenile court is the breadth of its scope: it deals with delinquents and dependents. The second is the character of its proceedings. “What is the best possible thing to be done for the good of the child?” This is the question which the juvenile court endeavors to solve every day. A third feature of the juvenile court is that it places the child in such hands as will do what is best for it. Having such a high character and such noble purposes, no jurist is too eminent to serve as a juvenile court judge. Another distinctive mark of the juvenile court law is the probation officer, who is the very heart of the work, and who not only learns to know the child in the home, but also represents it in the court. Finally the juvenile court recognizes the great fundamental principle that the home and family, when properly constituted are the great molders of character.