The board emphasizes the fact that the prisoners do not work more than an average of nine hours a day. The amount of the prisoners’ fund on hand on October 1, was $16,22.44, notwithstanding that $10,575.85 had been paid to discharged prisoners and $14,902.79 spent by the prisoners during the year on delicacies.
There were in the penitentiary on October 1, 1913, 728 prisoners, 300 at the State farm and 1,057 in the twenty-nine road camps, making a total of 2,118. On the same day of 1912, there were in the penitentiary 1,158 prisoners confined, 286 at the State farm and 691 in nineteen road camps, a total of 2,131. The daily average of prisoners confined in the penitentiary for the fiscal year ending September 31, 1913, was 1,012, as against 1,213 for the preceding year.
A total of 785 new prisoners were received during the year. By expiration of term, 487 prisoners were discharged, two were granted absolute pardons, fifty-six were granted conditional pardons, 169 were paroled, 31 died, 54 escaped from the road camps and nine were sent to insane asylums.
Of the 728 prisoners not fitted for work in the road camps, 139 are white men, 499 colored men, five white women and eighty-five colored women. Of the 785 prisoners received during the year 362 could read and write and 423 were illiterate; 373 were abstainers, 278 moderate drinkers and 134 intemperate; 277 were married, 489 single and two divorced.—(Roanoke News).
A Holiday at Auburn.—An unusual event took place in Auburn prison, when 1,400 convicts, observing Lincoln’s birthday, marched from cells to chapel and mess hall in charge of convict captains, elected by the inmates several weeks before, as their representatives in the mutual welfare league. The convict officers relieved the regular officers of their usual duties and maintained splendid discipline.
The holiday entertainment was furnished entirely by convict talent and included an oration on Lincoln by an inmate.
The Development of Road Work.—Thirteen States have passed laws during the present year allowing the use of convicts in the construction and repair of highways, according to a compilation by Dr. E. Stagg Whitin, assistant in social legislation in Columbia university and chairman of the executive committee of the national committee on prison labor. They are Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, New Jersey, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Vermont, West Virginia and Wisconsin. As many other States had previously passed similar legislation, but few of the forty-eight States have not adopted the policy of using prisoners to build and maintain public roads.
West Virginia and Iowa are the two States whose laws regarding the working of convicts on highways stand out most prominently. So anxious was the governor of the former State to secure an effective law that he went to New York and with the assistance of representatives of the national committee on prison labor, of the road department of Columbia university and of the legislative drafting bureau worked out bills making compulsory the employment of convicts on the roads. The West Virginia law authorizes the county courts to make appropriations out of road funds for convict work; it states that the court shall sentence any male person over sixteen to road work instead of to the county jail; persons charged with misdemeanors unable to furnish bail shall work on the roads and if acquitted when tried shall be paid 50 cents a day for each day’s work they perform; justices of the peace shall sentence to work on the roads persons convicted of crime whom otherwise they would send to the county jail.