“You cannot hope to make a law-abiding citizen out of every criminally disposed boy, and you cannot say that, because a few cases have not been benefited apparently, that the House of Refuge is a failure. I believe, on the contrary, that it is doing a most excellent work in elevating the morals of the community.”
THE BERTILLON SYSTEM.
In the past year the Bertillon system has been introduced in several of the States (it ought to be in all). Iowa has just found it very desirable. New York State has had it several years, proved of great value, not only in identifying prisoners, but in the identification of several meeting with sudden deaths in railroad accidents. By this system identification becomes positive and certain, as often as the prisoner comes under the measuring instruments, it will be an easy task to lay bare a criminal’s history by referring to his card. If the Legislature would enact an indeterminate sentence or parole law, the effectiveness of the same would be wonderfully aided by this system of identification. There are some who contend that “the State has no right to use this system against the man”—then let us have something better—a law of the United States requiring every State to enthrone this system, and that a National Bertillon Bureau be established for all the convicts of our country. This would be of untold help, and many a time a man’s true character could be asserted before the Judge had pronounced an unjust or inadequate sentence. This present Congress will be implored to establish this National System, by the advice and recommendation of the National Prison Congress.
RESULTS OF TREATMENT OF THE INSANE.
Last fall the press often seemed to indicate a startling increase of insanity among the inmates of the New York State prisons, and it aroused scientific discussion. As the number was larger from those prisons where work was silent, it was held that the want of exercise was the cause. But when it was shown that from the Elmira Reformatory, where work is constant, 65 were transferred to the State Hospital at Matteawan, the State prison authorities cannot account for the sudden increase. Over 700 the past year were sent to this hospital from penal institutions.
Who can measure the value of services to those restored as producers, and who would lower the standard of care, if it would result in preventing a single recovery? Many live in hospitals surrounded with everything necessary to their comfort and who may never fully recover, but their burdens are lightened and lives sweetened so far as it is possible to do so.
Hospital treatment of the insane in this country has made great strides in the right direction past few years, by substituting proper and healthful employment in place of mechanical restraint, thus stimulating a return in the patient to normal conditions, and naturally improving the prospect of final recovery.
The hospital of to-day is not a prison. It is a place where those skilled in the treatment of mental and nervous diseases continually minister to those affected; where health-promoting vocations are encouraged; where books, magazines, music and entertainments contribute to the pleasure and restoration to health of patients.
It is a startling fact that of those who were discharged as recovered nearly one-half had been received at the hospitals within a month or two after the affliction, and most all of them were afflicted less than a year prior to their admission.
In view of this fact, it becomes the duty of friends and persons afflicted with insanity (whether in prison or out of it) to see to it that they are early placed in the hospitals, for the probabilities of recovery are greatly in their favor.