CHANGE OF TREATMENT URGED.
At the discussion on criminals, before the State Board of Charities and Correction, Albany, N. Y., last December, a change of treatment was urged, that “Reformation and not punishment should be the end sought.” Dr. Wm. P. Spratling, Medical Superintendent of Craig Colony for Epileptics, said in part: “I would recommend the following: First—Prevent insanity, epilepsy, imbecility, idiocy, and feeble-mindedness as far as possible by making it impossible for them to marry. Second—By building less expensive structures in which defective and dependent State charges shall live. Third—Maintain at less cost the cases that are chronic and incurable, and maintaining at even greater cost those that probably can be cured. Fourth—By giving those that ought to have it an education that they can use in the institution that cares for them, or that they may use in the outer world when they leave the institution.”
Thomas Sturgiss, of New York City, chairman of the Board of Managers of the Elmira Reformatory, read a paper on “The Treatment of the Criminal.” The object of the discussion was to devise some plan for the adoption of a true system of treatment in any and all penal institutions, and the plan determined was
“First—Centralization of prisons of every kind other than those of temporary detention only, under State control.
“Second—That all prisons shall be taken out of politics, and that they shall be administered by men who are making this profession a scientific study and a life work.
“Third—A classification of all criminals, and a division of them among institutions according to such analysis.
“Fourth—The specializing of such institutions to the end that each may receive only that class or classes to the treatment of which its situation, its staff, and its system are deliberately adapted.
“Fifth—Experience shows that such classification cannot be made by the courts, for lack of time and absence of expert testimony. Provision should be made for such analysis by the head of the institution to which the prisoner is first sent, and that subsequent transfer in accordance with such analysis should be legalized both as to the power of the transferring officer and of the prison to which the transfer is made.
“Sixth—The adoption of the principle that reformation (reformation of character) and not punishment is the end sought by imprisonment, with such application of the indeterminate sentence and the parole system as the class and condition of the prisoner and the character of the management may justify.