COUNTY JAILS.
The Western Penitentiary and the Allegheny County Prison have been regularly visited by one of our committees, and there has also been regular visitation of some of the county jails. The evidence afforded that this service has been acceptable and useful has been encouraging to us, and arrangements are being made for its extension to other parts of the state.
There is need of continual agitation to educate the public with regard to the necessity of some change in the administration of many of the smaller county jails of the State. They furnish little or no employment, herd a miscellaneous lot of lawbreakers in entire idleness, often keep the young and the old, the suspected, who may be innocent, and the hardened criminals in the same apartments, and thus become hotbeds for the dissemination of vice and lawlessness. We have already in these reports spoken of the usefulness of establishing district workhouses where employment can be furnished and where habits of industry may be engendered. The labor of the prisoners should so far contribute to the maintenance of the jails as to relieve the counties from the chief part of this burden. Sooner or later, we believe, all our States will adopt some such plan, and why should not the legislators of this great commonwealth give some earnest attention to the improvement of the county jails? Already we have in this State an institution which in many respects could be taken as a model for an industrial penal establishment. We refer to the Allegheny County Workhouse at Hoboken, Pennsylvania. Without infringing on the present laws of the State respecting prison labor, they give employment to all the prisoners. Located on a large farm, they supply their tables with vegetables from their own gardens and often have a surplus for the market. When new buildings are constructed, most of the work is done by the convicts. They have those who have been sentenced to terms of from twenty days to some years, and without difficulty they find work for all of them.
The legislature of Massachusetts has been considering a measure contemplating the establishment of such a system of district workhouses. It is quite possible that the State of Indiana may enact a measure of this kind within the next two years. Let Pennsylvania move forward in this work.