What first impresses the visitor to the camp is the total absence of anything suggestive of confinement and of a corrective institution. The inmates are free to wander within certain limits from the cluster of buildings and while they are garbed in the customary gray suits worn by other county prisoners, there is little to suggest the prisoner to the passerby in their actions and general demeanor.
So far, twenty-two miles of road have been constructed through the forest, at a small expense to the county, by the prisoners. A stone crusher and a compression drill are parts of the equipment of the road building gang, which is under the charge of the master of the camp.
Flanked on three sides by mountain slopes and by a large meadow on the other, the camp is situated in an ideal spot. Thankful are the prisoners for the change from indoor confinement, and in token of appreciation they work as hard if not harder than men on the outside who enjoy their full liberty.
Supplies are brought from the Worcester jail twice a week by auto truck which generally takes back a load of potatoes or turnips and an occasional term-expired prisoner. Only men who are sentenced for short terms are sent to Westminster and therefore the camps population is constantly changing.
Mr. Coombs, in charge of the camp, said that only three prisoners had ever made their escape, which was an extremely simple matter, and that this trio all returned and pleaded to be taken back into the fold. There are no locks or bars on the dormitory shed and it is an easy matter for a man to take “French leave” if he so desires.
Next year it is thought the State will add to the camp property by purchasing the Bolton farm across the road, and in this way fifty more prisoners will be accommodated.—Boston Herald.
Probation Results in Massachusetts.—The Worcester Telegram states that “the Massachusetts probation commission is approaching the millionaire class. In 1909 it handled less than $50,000, and in 1913 almost $218,000. That is money collected from people under court jurisdiction and paid to others for various reasons: For restitution of property taken unlawfully, $24,250.63; for non-support, which is turned into support of families of the delinquent, $140,773.96; for court expenses, $3,335.34; for fines in the case of suspended sentences, $49,304.09. The increase of such business throughout the State has been so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach the million list in the next five years.
“The probation officials claim they have saved a great many, almost the entire list falling into their hands, from the kind of shiftless if not criminal lives they had been leading, and there is no doubt they have reported correctly. But there is that tremendous increase in the work and cash results of the Probation Commission and its officers, and at the same time the jails and prisons remain full and get still fuller. Then crime must be on the increase in Massachusetts, not only in occasional lapses of the people, but as a regular condition which grows with the years. The probation service of the State costs over $20,000 a year, but the receipts the last year were, for the benefit of the State, $80,000 more than that. The following from the commission’s report is worth reading by all the people:
“While the large sum of money collected by the probation officers of the state is not covered permanently into a public treasury, it is not less an actual financial benefit. Consisting very largely of enforced payments from other wise non-supporting husbands and fathers, it goes to the same extent and without diminution to the natural dependents. It relieves the state and the municipalities of the cost of caring for these neglected persons, and observation shows that this saving is substantially equal to the amount collected. Meanwhile the probationer who is made to contribute it is usefully employed, as he must be to provide for the payments, and the public is relieved of the expense of maintaining him in jail.”