PLAN
APRIL, 1849.
VOL IV.—NO. II.
Art. I.—HOUSES OF REFUGE.
I. Twenty-first Annual Report of the Managers of the Philadelphia House of Refuge to the Legislature and to the Contributors thereto. 1849, pp. 32.
II. Twenty-fourth Annual Report of the Managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents to the Legislature of the State and the Corporation of the City of New York. 1849, pp. 50.
We need, in some parts of the United States, a grade of penal institutions between what are called Houses of Refuge, or of Reformation for Juvenile Delinquents on the one hand, and the highest and best class of penitentiaries on the other.
As they are at present, our institutions of this class are neither schools nor prisons. They employ the inmates at labor and instruct them, as far as practicable, in the elements of useful knowledge and thus far they resemble the Industrial Schools of Europe. But they are places of close confinement—they have regulations and a police, not unlike those of a prison, and their inmates are sent thither as offenders—though juvenile offenders. The worst that can be said of some of them is, that they are incorrigible truants—of others, that they are past parental control, (and in this respect, perhaps, “more sinned against than sinning;”) but some are adroit thieves and bold burglars—some skilful forgers—some incendiaries, and some assaulters with intent to kill. Their ages, too, range from eight to sixteen or even eighteen, and their size and physical strength are equally various.
This is a motley group to bring into the relation of schoolmates or fellow-apprentices, and their care-takers must possess rare endowments, so to administer discipline, as to prevent much harm from being done to some in connection with all the good they do to others. For, that they have done immeasurable good, no one who has investigated their operations and results, can for a moment doubt. They have fully justified the high anticipations which were entertained concerning them at an early period of their history. “No disciplinary institution in our country,” said the Rev. Dr. Alexander of New Jersey, “promises to effect more for society, than a House of Refuge for juvenile delinquents. If it were ever lawful to rejoice in an event produced by crime, it would be, that these unhappy youth are, by the commission of a crime, snatched from the sink of pollution in which they have been immersed, and put to regular business, and educated as well as most children in the land.”[1]