Don’t let your courage fade;
And even if you get a lemon,
Just make the lemon aid.
Night Court Proposed for Baltimore.—A night court, modeled after the Night Court of New York city, should be incorporated in the proposed reform of the police magistracy system of Baltimore, according to Justice Alva H. Tyson. He believes that the numerous instances of innocent people having to spend a night in a cell in a police station is a relic of a crude governmental system, beyond which Baltimore should have passed years ago.
Another great field in Baltimore for charitable endeavor has been exploited in New York—that is probationary systems for women. Under the present magistracy system of Baltimore, almost all women who are arrested on minor charges, unless hardened criminals, have to be dismissed. What is a magistrate today to do with a woman on her first offense of having too much to drink in the opinion of a police officer? There should be a probationary official to whom she could be released and who could look after her future conduct.
Farm Work for “Convalescent” Offenders.—A new plan, intended to give Kansas convicts a new idea of life, has been put into effect at the Kansas penitentiary, according to the report of Warden J. K. Codding to Governor Stubbs. Every man that is sent to the prison is given six months’ work on the farm just previous to his release. The men get out in the open. They are tanned and sunburned, have more liberty, less discipline, get close to nature and leave the prison with the hatred of men and laws gone and really wanting to try to live better lives. Since the new system has been tried not one released convict has come back. Warden Codding believes that through this system Kansas may gain a record for a minimum number of second-term men which will be lower than that of any other state.
Many years ago an island in the Missouri river was sold to the state. The island has never been used, and the lands owned by the state around the prison have never been used to any great extent for farming. Warden Codding began work two years ago, and the first thing he did was to give the prisoners half an hour’s liberty each day in the prison yard. The men can do anything they wish during that half hour. They can talk to each other and the guard, play ball, pitch horse shoes, play croquet or a dozen other games.
The prisoners had been morose and sullen, and there were twenty-two insane prisoners in the hospital and a half dozen tuberculosis patients. The plan was adopted to see if the insanity and tuberculosis could not be stopped. Not a new patient has developed in 14 months, and there is not a single prisoner in the tuberculosis hospital at this time.