A report of the efficiency division of the civil service shortly, will recommend that the city use the convict labor, and will criticise the present system as wasteful and disgraceful. It is expected that a recommendation will be made for the employment of an administrative officer to act as a business manager, in charge of the operating part of the house of correction.
Vermont’s State Prison Warden Resigns.—Following closely on our recent account of Warden Lovell’s “honor system” in the Vermont State Prison, comes the following from the Boston Post, under date of February 24th:
“The nine years of novel ‘elastic’ treatment of prisoners carried on by Wilson S. Lovell, superintendent of the State prison, came to an end to-day when Lovell resigned. It was believed the resignation was due to a fire of criticism from Governor Allen M. Fletcher and members of the penal board.
“Some of the administration have openly criticised the Lovell rule as “too soft,” and declare that “a more impersonal and severe ruler of the prison is required.”
“The Lovell system aroused nation-wide interest among humanitarians and social workers. One of its startling features, which is said to have shocked the more staid citizens of this State, was to let chosen prisoners go to work about the country without any restraint of any kind.
“Another was a plan for paying men for overtime work in the prison factories, so that convicts were often able to pick up a comfortable little sum for themselves.”
Prisoners’ Wages Reduced in Ohio.—Owing to an overstock of labor in the Penitentiary and the Mansfield Reformatory, the State board of administration has been compelled to cut the wage scale two cents on the hour. Hereafter, prisoners in the two institutions will receive a maximum of three cents an hour instead of five cents. The minimum of one cent an hour remains unchanged, says the Columbus Journal.
Under a law passed by the legislature last spring, prisoners were compensated at the rate of from one to five cents an hour, according to their character and good behavior. From September 16, last, until February 15, this year, there was paid to Penitentiary prisoners on this scale, $33,000. The amount paid to prisoners in the Mansfield Reformatory was $24,000.
At this rate, the estimated annual cost of prisoners’ compensation to the State would be about $140,000. The general assembly last month appropriated only $75,000 for this compensation; hence the revision of the scale downward. Where the maximum earning power of prisoners under the old scale was forty cents a day, or $2.20 a week on a basis of five and one-half work days each week, the new maximum will be 21 cents a day or $1.17 a week. No strike, however, is predicted because of the cut, but much complaining is looked for.
Prison officials have detected many schemes of prisoners to beat the State’s philanthropy. The law requires that 90 per cent. of their earnings shall go to their dependents. The remaining 10 per cent. is held in a fund against the prisoner’s release to tide him over the period he is looking for work until settled. A scheme of the older prisoners to obtain all their money was to represent that some relative in the country was in urgent need of support. The money would be sent to the “friend,” but soon returned to the prisoner.