“This is in keeping with modern progress in the treatment of criminals. When a man is tried and sentenced for a crime, full publicity is given to that fact, and when he arrives at the penitentiary that fact also is announced to the public. After that man has served the term to which he was sentenced, or when he has served a part of it and is released on parole, he has paid his obligation to society for his violation of law. He has a right to demand that he be permitted to re-enter the world unhandicapped by the renewed publication of the disgrace of his imprisonment. * * * * The attention of the Ohio prison managers is called to this progressive action on the part of the federal government. Its helpfulness would be just as important in state as in national criminal affairs.”
Organized Labor Opposes “Third Degree.”—A dispatch from New Haven, Conn., states that organized labor in the various states is called upon to exert its influence for legislation forbidding the police “third degree” to get confessions from prisoners in a letter sent out from the National Headquarters of the American Federation of Labor at Washington.
The letter, which is signed by Samuel Gompers, describes the practice as having no warrant for its existence “except the brute power of barbarism and the tradition derived therefrom,” and declares that “its practice on the part of the police is usurpation that must be stopped.”
Former Lieutenant-Governor E. H. Harper has been elected president of the Colorado Prison Association, which plans to draft a number of bills for the legislative session.
Penal Farm for Indiana.—A bill providing for the establishment of a state penal farm will be introduced into the Indiana legislature.
The bill provides that the location of the farm and the purchase of the land for it shall be made by the board of trustees of the state prison, with the approval of the governor. The location shall be determined by the advantages offered in providing work for the inmates. The labor for erecting the buildings shall be furnished by prisoners transferred from the state prison and reformatory. The farm shall be in charge of a board of four trustees appointed by the governor.
All male delinquents, who are above the age of commitments to the Indiana Boys’ School, who have been convicted of the violation of any state law or city ordinance, the punishment for which now consists of confinement in a county jail or workhouse, may be sent to the farm. Where the imprisonment shall not be more than thirty days it is left to the discretion of the trial court as to whether the prisoner shall be sent to the county jail or to the penal farm.