The prison suffered a serious loss by fire during the year, and from this and other causes the revenue of the institution is less than the expenses by $4,242 79.
The physician’s report is a modest and sensible document, evidently prepared with care. The sickness of the prison would be represented by an average of four patients a day in the hospital. Four hundred and twenty-five days of light labor were prescribed during the year, and about the same number of changes of labor. The general average of convicts during the year was 287; and Dr. Bemis thinks his report shows “a fair average degree of health fully equal to that of the community at large, and vastly superior to what would have been enjoyed by the same class of men in pursuit of their usual modes of living when at large.”—p. 21.
The three deaths were of consumption.
The following remarkable statement from the physician’s report, we cannot refrain from transferring to our pages.
“The average period of imprisonment of all those sentenced for life to the State Prison, since 1818, (amounting to 125,) has not exceeded seven years. Nineteen of this number have died in the Prison after an average confinement of seven years.”
The supply of a substantial suit of clothes and a sum of money, not exceeding five dollars, to each discharged convict, occasioned an expenditure last year of more than five hundred dollars. In consequence of the frequent instances in which the money thus furnished is spent indiscreetly, it has lately been proposed in the Legislature to entrust the dispensation of this bounty to the “Boston Society for the relief of discharged convicts,” and a bill was introduced for that purpose. We have not learned its fate. From a cotemporary print we learn that, in consequence of the great increase in the number of convicts at the Charlestown prison, it has become necessary to use other accommodations than those which belong to the prison proper.[4] The chief cause assigned for this increase is intemperance.
State Prison of Michigan.—It is said that 128 convicts are confined in the Michigan State Prison, and that the annual deficiency in the receipts ranges from $5,000 to $10,000. The Governor thinks that this sum is not more than a reasonable profit upon convict-labor, considering what is made in other State Penitentiaries within his knowledge! -
NOTICES.
