HOW PRISONERS LIVE AND LEARN IN INDIANA COUNTY JAILS.

They live in idleness at the expense of the taxpayer.

They learn vice, immorality and crime.

They become educated in criminal ways.

They degenerate both physically and morally.

In 1913 an appropriation was secured, the land has now been purchased, and work on the buildings will soon begin. The law contemplates that the construction work shall be done largely by State Prison and Reformatory men. The new institution is for men who have a jail sentence of sixty days or more, and prisoners may be transferred from the State institutions whenever room for them exists at the farm. Eventually there will probably be several such farms in the State, and this movement, with proper amendments to existing laws, should in time do away with the use of the county jails for the confinement of convicted offenders, and leave them only as places of detention.

We now look forward to the time when we shall have a form of indeterminate sentence for misdemeanants. The success of this form of sentence for felons in Indiana as in many other States justifies our belief that it will prove valuable in the treatment of misdemeanants. Certainly some improvement can be made over the present illogical short sentence, which benefits neither the individual nor the public, in whose name he is held.

New York has already taken an important step in this direction. Misdemeanants between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one are to be committed under an indeterminate sentence to the reformatory for this class of offenders, authorized by the legislature of 1912. The site for this new institution has not yet been located. It is the purpose of those interested to place it on a farm and to make it one of the most complete and modern of reformatories.

Another needed reform, State control of county jails, is receiving some attention. J. S. Gibbons, Chairman of the Prison Board of Ireland, said: “I tell you what I think you lose sight of in this country: That all these splendid reformatories deal with merely a drop in the ocean compared with the county and city jails to which your thousands of prisoners go, and where many are manufactured. We were in exactly the same condition up to 1877 when we brought county and city jails out from under local authorities in the United Kingdom. We found the antecedent to all reform was State centralization. In 1877 every prison and jail was put under central administrative authority, and the expenses paid out of the imperial funds. Three acts were passed simultaneously for the three kingdoms. We then began at the bottom, closing all the superfluous ones, and in that way we were able to close about half.”

I have the following statement from Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, of England: “The Prison Act, 1877, transferred the Local Prisons of this Country (i.e. prisons for the confinement of all classes of prisoners other than those sentenced to penal servitude) from the control of local ‘Visiting Magistrates’ to that of the State. The Act came into effect on the 1st of April, 1878, 113 Local Prisons being so transferred. Since that date, their number has been reduced to 56. At the time of their transfer, the Local Prison population stood at 21,030—the highest known. From that date a continuous fall was recorded until 1885, when the numbers reached slightly over 15,000. After a series of fluctuations below and above this number, the population stands at 15,000 at the present time. Relatively to the total population of the country, the figure for 1878 represented 686 committals per 100,000, while that for the year ended 31st March 1912 was the lowest on record, viz., 439 per 100,000.”

Massachusetts, perhaps, has led the agitation in this country for State control of county jails. In other States there has been some publicity in favor of such action. An offender against the federal law becomes a prisoner of the United States and is under the direction of the federal judge. Why should one who violates a State law not be a prisoner of the State? That is the theory that underlies the new law for jail supervision in Indiana. Offenders against the State law have been placed under the oversight and authority of the judge of the circuit or criminal court, who is a State official. This judge may say where and how the prisoner shall be detained, and if the jail is unsatisfactory he may condemn it. He is authorized to prescribe rules formulated by the Board of State Charities, which has supervision of all jails and other public charitable and correctional institutions. A violation of these rules, once entered in his order book, is in effect a contempt of court.

While these advance steps have been taken, the reform is by no means general. Most of the States continue to use, unchanged, the system long since discarded in Europe, whence it came. The results are not reformatory. On the contrary, they are destructive alike to the individual and those with whom he later comes in contact. Local jails are recruiting stations for our larger State correctional institutions. We should make greater progress in reformation if we did not first pollute the stream we are going to treat.

The outlook is not bright, but it is by no means hopeless. The evils which exist are the natural result of the system we adopted. Let us change the system. Let us begin at the bottom and study all the steps in the treatment of the offender—his apprehension, detention, trial, conviction, probation, confinement, treatment, employment, conditional release, final discharge. Let us set as our goal:

1. A system of police recognizing character, merit, and efficiency in the personnel and a proper social view for its operations.

2. A prompt hearing for every person arrested.

3. The establishment of juvenile courts for all children’s cases.

4. Provision for the care and detention of delinquent children outside the jail.

5. A probation system for adults similar to that of juvenile courts.

6. Separate trials for women offenders.

7. A modification of the present system of fines in order not to discriminate against the poor.

8. Classification of prisoners, confinement of individuals apart from each other and absolute sex separation in county jails.

9. The prohibition of the use of the jail for any other purpose than that of temporary detention.

10. The abolition of the fee system.

11. State control of all minor prisons.

12. The establishment of industrial farms for the convicted misdemeanants.

13. A form of indeterminate sentence for misdemeanants.

14. Their release on parole under supervision.

15. The abolition of contract labor.

The following members of the Committee on Corrections approve and sign the report:

Mr. E. Stagg Whitin disagrees with what is said about the employment of convict labor on public highways in the more thickly-settled northern States.