A Prison Twine Plant in Wisconsin.—On January 13th a bill was introduced into the Wisconsin senate providing for an appropriation of $400,000 as a fund to be used in operating a binder twine plant at the state prison at Waupun, $200,000 to be available May 1st, 1911, and the remainder May 1st, 1912.
A bill will be introduced, it is reported, into the Ohio legislature providing for the sterilization of criminals and insane.
Points in Prison Reform.—The Chicago Record-Herald of January 17th, says editorially: A Harvard professor advocates systematic experimentation on prisoners in state institutions with the different chemical poisons used in food preservatives. Such doings, he thinks, would be mild and humane as compared with those which are constantly being tried on the non-criminal public by the manufacturers of food products.
The professor probably has in mind the experiments conducted by Dr. Wiley on government employees at Washington. But submission to such treatment was voluntary, and the work was under competent supervision. That such favorable auspices could be guaranteed in an average prison is open to doubt.
One finds a spirit more human than that of the Harvard professor in the warden of the state prison at Walla Walla, Wash. The latter declares that the striped suit and the lock step are undesirable relics of an outlived past. He has put his charges into plain gray clothes, with no distinguishing mark beyond the prison number, and has abolished the lock step altogether. If those two antiquated features represented affronts to the dignity of human nature, the compulsory consumption of poison might reasonably be held to represent still another. Its introduction might lay the base of a new error and abuse, which itself would have to be abolished in turn.
Life Prisoners Studied.—A thorough study of the subject of life prisoners has been made by Warden Henry Town, of Waupun, Wis. It is interesting to note the kindly feeling held generally by prison officials toward the “lifer.” Experience proves that the average character of life prisoners is higher than the short-term men, and fewer return again to crime, when given their liberty. This fact has increased the sentiment favorable to paroling life prisoners after they have served a reasonable period. The great majority of officials have expressed themselves as favorable to laws of this kind, and several states have already adopted them with satisfactory results.