The New York City Charity Organization Society and the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor have rendered a country-wide public service in furnishing the report on "Vagrancy in the United States" by their joint agent, Orlando F. Lewis. It may well be the basis for better public policy here and everywhere.
Startling figures and facts were presented at the State Conference of Charities and Corrections at Albany by Arthur W. Towne, secretary of the Illinois State Probation Commission, regarding the extent of vagrancy and the habits of tramps in this state.
More than 31,000 persons, mainly vagrants, received free lodgings in New York State, in town and city lockups, during 1906, and the number in 1907 was larger. Seventy-five cities and towns thus provide for their wandering visitors. Half of these towns and cities also feed the wanderers free of charge.
A large number of places give lodgings also to boys, many of them as young as 10 or 12 years, thus encouraging the wandering spirit that makes the later tramp. With only one slight exception, not a single town or city required any work at all from the lodgers in return for the lodging or the food provided, thus giving absolutely no incentive to the wanderer to work for his board or meals.
It is urged that the system of allowing the police authorities to give these free lodgings, as well as the similar practice in some jails and almshouses, be abolished as a most direct encouragement to vagrancy, and that in their stead such free lodgings as are necessary should be furnished by the overseer of the poor, but only when repaid by some form of work, such as chopping wood or breaking stone.
Tramps Like Jail.
Mr. Towne also brought out the fact that tramps like to go to jail in winter. Instead of considering a jail sentence for that part of the year as a form of punishment, they welcome it as a chance to keep warm and loaf at the public expense. Forty-three per cent of the commitment of tramps occurs between November 1 and February 1. In short, the jail or the penitentiary becomes a sort of winter vacation resort for tramps. Many chiefs of police with whom Mr. Towne communicated said that tramps in winter would ask to be sent to jail, and that if this were not done they would sometimes commit offenses for the express purpose of being arrested and sent there.
It is declared to be significant that in the tramp's slang the word "dump" is applied to both lodging houses and jails.
With a cold winter the number of vagrants in penitentiaries and jails increases. In 1906 there were more than 10,000 tramps and vagrants in penitentiaries and jails, while in 1904, which was a very cold winter, there were more than 14,000. On the average, about one-third of the prisoners are tramps and vagrants. This means that the public is annually paying several hundred thousand dollars for the avowed purpose of punishing men for vagrancy, but in reality it amounts only to furnishing a free place of winter rest. Most of the chiefs of police believe that jails and penitentiaries do little good, if any, in their treatment of tramps. Another fact is that the sentences for this class of offenders are too short to accomplish any results. About 85 per cent of the sentences are from only one to sixty days.
