Convicts make Brick and do other Work in Ohio.—Shipments have been started from the brick plant established by the State board of administration for the employment of penitentiary prisoners at Junction City, Perry county, Ohio. Mason Chilcote of East Liverpool, is the superintendent of the plant. Fifty prisoners are employed at the plant and as soon as a new dormitory is completed another fifty will be sent there. The plant can turn out 40,000 bricks daily. State Highway Commissioner James R. Marker says that his department can use the entire output of the plant for road building.
By using the convicts the State board of administration saved the State more than $2,000 in tearing down old buildings and excavating for the new administration structure at the Institution for the Blind in Columbus.
It required 24 convicts 8274 hours to do the work. They were paid three cents an hour by the State. The total was $248.22. The same number of hours paid for at 27-1/2 cents an hour, the prevailing rate of wages, would have cost the State $2,275.35.
Besides saving the money to the State the board furnished outdoor labor for the prisoners.
Work on the foundation of the new structure which is to house the board of administration, has been commenced. It is expected to have the building ready for occupancy by early fall.
Board of City Magistrates of the City of New York (First Division).—The annual report giving the work of magistrates in Manhattan and the Bronx in the City of New York is always anticipated with great interest, and is read with an increasing amount of satisfaction both in general progress recorded and in the improvement of form and statistical method. It is a great pity as Chief Magistrate McAdoo remarks, that the important strides toward significant criminal statistics that are being made in the magistrates’ courts can not be combined and developed, together with data from the higher criminal courts. There should be, in any event, a centralized statistical bureau, covering all the courts concerned with the criminal bar in Greater New York. “What was done with the man I held for keeping a gambling house, a disorderly house, or maintaining a public nuisance last month or the month before. I don’t know——.” We might add, “Nor does any one else know.” The report presents the work of eight district courts, a night court for men, and a night court for women, and two domestic relations courts. There is no end of interesting material in it. Perhaps the most interesting facts, however, relate to the extension of the use of the finger-prints to cases of disorderly conduct, “jostling” and “mashing,” with prospects of soon including automobile speeders; and the increase of the percentage of convicted among those arranged. The former will make it difficult for real lawbreakers to escape punishment after arrest, while the latter shows that the number of arrests of innocent persons is fast diminishing. A remarkable fact is also the diminution of the number of defendants placed on probation, directly attributable to the greater frequency of preliminary investigations of such cases by probation officers.
STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, ETC. of THE DELINQUENT.
Published monthly at New York, N. Y., required by the Act of August 24th, 1912.