The Secretary during the last year has paid some visits to a few of the county prisons. The tendency is toward improvement in the line of furnishing employment and in sanitary accommodations.
ALLEGHENY COUNTY (CITY PRISON).
Conditions are much the same as last year. The management is very ably conducted under Warden Lewis. The inmates are largely those who are detained for trial. Out of 445 prisoners, 50 were convicts. Bread is made in the prison, an economical feature whenever the population has an average of thirty or more. Here meats are generally served in the shape of hamburg steaks. We commend this practice to many of our wardens. The meat is eatable, palatable and all the coarser parts may be utilized. The cost of the food in 1916 was 8.4 cents daily for each prisoner, one cent more than the previous year. Considering the higher cost of all provisions, the additional cost is by no means surprising. Too many were detained for non-payment of fines. We trust they are now availing themselves of the law, passed by the late Assembly, allowing those held for costs and fines to be released on condition of agreeing to pay said charges by instalments. Most letters received for those awaiting trial are delivered unopened. Tho it would be a task to inspect all incoming letters, it seems to us that it would be wiser to have a universal rule providing for inspection of all letters.
ALLEGHENY COUNTY (THE WORKHOUSE).
The apartments of the women have been greatly improved. No women are now hired out. This may or may not be an improvement. If they work out under proper influences and can earn some wages, they may be improved thereby. Doubtless there are difficulties encountered in making satisfactory arrangements for their care. As there appears to be work for them at the institution, the necessity for their finding work outside is not apparent. The women now eat in a large dining-room at concrete tables with surface of rubber composition rendering breakage unusual and affording a surface which is readily cleansed.
The earnings last year of the farm and industries were $111,290—the largest amount ever reported by the institution. The overhead cost of each inmate is in gross 57 cents, but this is reduced to 14 cents in consequence of the splendid earnings. The time may come when this institution will become self-supporting.
BERKS COUNTY.
We are delighted to report some improvements in the prison at Reading. After strenuous effort by some members of the Board, a few men have been allowed to work on the poor farm. In 1917 they succeeded in raising several hundred bushels of potatoes and were helpful in drainage projects. The experiment is considered a success in every point of view. Next year under the law providing for the employment of prisoners on county land, which was approved July, 1917, more land may be cultivated and more prisoners employed.
Striped suitings, which it was once thought was a custom so firmly rooted as to be ineradicable at Reading, have been entirely abrogated, a plain jeans suiting being substituted.
We learned that 22 men were on parole, an increase over the report last year. These men were generally doing well. Thirty-two men and boys had been placed on probation, serving no part of their sentence in jail. They have a small yard in which the men parade thrice weekly for a half hour each time. This is insufficient. Measures should be taken at once to allow more time in the open air under the blue sky.