At Duluth, Minnesota.—Although the joint city and county work farm had been in operation little over a month by February 9th, prisoners sent there have already cleared the underbrush from nearly 20 acres. It is expected by spring over 200 acres will be cleared. During the summer the men will prepare the land already cleared so that it may be plowed in the spring of 1915.
According to Superintendent Fred Ward of the farm, all men now at the institution are apparently satisfied with conditions and appear willing to work. A few have been encountered, he says, who at first refused to do their share.
In all 52 men have been sent to the farm from municipal and district courts. Four men have been discharged, leaving 48, the limit, now in the toils.
Ending an Old Abuse.—The Boston Transcript thus characterizes the effort of the War Department of our country to modernize its treatment of military prisoners. “The bill for the revision of the Articles of War, which was passed by the Senate recently without dissent, and almost without debate, is intended to be the legislative expression of Secretary Garrison’s advanced ideas on military penology. It will be remembered that in September last Secretary Garrison issued an order applying the principle of endeavoring to make the military prisoner better instead of worse for his imprisonment. This is a familiar purpose in civil penology, but an innovation in the military code. Secretary Garrison could proceed but tentatively in putting his reform—for reform it is—into operation, but now, if the House concurs, he will have the authority of unquestionable law with him in substituting detention barracks for military prisons.
“The scope of Secretary Garrison’s new departure becomes apparent when it is said that heretofore criminal and military offences have been regarded almost from the same point of view, and the offenders have been treated along the same lines of punishment. Men were sent to the army prisons, where they were worked hard and were made to feel their disgrace whenever possible, only to be finally dishonorably discharged, which included the forfeiting of all the rights of citizenship. Naturally, this kind of treatment was not exactly fair to all the prisoners, for many of the offenders had made serious mistakes through an ignorance of military matters, or through the yielding to some outside influence, such as deserting to visit a sick relative. Such men as these were not really bad, but nevertheless they were made to serve time with the ultimate disgrace of dishonorable dismissal hanging over them along with men who were convicted of acts of moral turpitude.
“The military prisoners now are practically divided into two classes, a classification that the proposed law will maintain:
1. Soldiers convicted of offences against the discipline of the army; that is, purely military offenders; and
2. Those convicted of statutory and common law offences.