An Honor Colony Hoped For.—The New Jersey Reformatory is a congregate institution run by trustees and officers that believe in individualization and classification. So, in the current annual report the Board of Managers urges the establishment of an honor colony. “This should be at some distance from the Institution, and should be utilized for those inmates who are near parole, and who have demonstrated that they are learning the lessons they have been sent to the institution to learn.... It has been for some years the custom to permit inmates to return to their homes when a death occurs in the family, unaccompanied by anyone from the institution, relying solely upon the promise of an inmate to return at a given time. In no instance has an inmate broken the promise or failed to show an appreciation of the trust reposed in him.”
The Limits of Reformatory Treatment.—Superintendent Frank Moore, of the New Jersey State Reformatory, writes in his annual report:
“The Reformatory can take that which has worth, even though it may be bent, twisted and corroded with sin, and making it plastic, it may form it over again, reform it; but that which is useless, which is only dross, it can do little with. The Reformatory can reform, but it cannot re-create. We may as well be candid about it. The idea has been created in the public mind that every reformatory is a miracle-working machine; that no matter what is run into it, it will return all material, no matter how good or bad, back into the world, made over into first-class men. The word HOPE in big letters has been written over the doorway of our reformatory institutions, and so it ought to be. There is no charitable or correctional institution of which society expects so much, and there is no kind of institution that has a greater desire to meet that expectation, but honesty and fairness demand that it shall be stated that the quality of human material given to it is of such a character as to, of necessity, greatly limit its results.”
Other Items From the Reformatory.—During the year 456 inmates of the New Jersey State Reformatory worked outside of the enclosure. There have been only two escapes, one from those working inside the wall, who was returned by the police, and one from the details working outside, who was captured and returned to the institution by other inmates.
The physical condition of the inmates now present in the institution is as follows:
Those who have increased in weight, 67 per cent.
No change in weight, 19 per cent.