“The time has gone by when we seek to punish the criminal simply. Punishment as a deterrent has failed. We now seek to reform, if we can, and to seclude for the protection of society if we cannot. Education and training in self-control and in the ability to do useful wage-earning work, are the basis of reform.
“Whatever the system in any prison, it should contain, high above everything else, the element of hope. This should never be abandoned while life lasts, if the mental powers are normal. Omit this and you take away the strongest inspiration to reform and substitute despair. Include it and you give the guardian of the prisoner his strongest weapon; and to the prisoner himself, a gleam of light in the surrounding darkness, shining from the open door through which, if he wills it, he may once again pass to finish his life experience under the conditions of freedom.”
“Every prison from a jail up should be in some measure a reformatory, an institution where the inmates received instruction in industrial pursuits, in wage-earning labor, in letters, and moral precepts.”
Secretary McLaughlin of the N. Y. State Prison Commission, stated that the present prison population of the State in custody was 10,350 (being a decrease in five years of 2,311) of these 1,197 were women of which 342 were in the workhouse, Blackwell’s Island.
Among the State improvements suggested were:
1. In order to furnish the convicts with employment under the present Constitution, further legislative restriction should cease and officers and institutions should comply with the law in good faith.
2. The state should furnish the prisons with new and modern buildings, especially at Sing Sing and Auburn.
3. The hope to see the lock-step and the prison stripes suppressed among the prisoners of the higher grades in every prison.
4. When prisoners, whose education has been utterly neglected are received, there should be compulsory education in the common English branches.
5. An efficient parole law should be adopted applicable to the State’s prisons. Such a law is recommended by the Commission and by the Superintendent and wardens of prisons.