The present president, Joshua L. Baily, whose membership dates from 1851, has been connected with the society longer than any other living member.
In the first year of the existence of the society about 150 gentlemen of Philadelphia were connected with the organization. Their object was to discover “such degree and modes of punishment” as might restore our “fellow-creatures to virtue and happiness.”
An annuity of the value of about $70, the donation of John Dickinson, was the only permanent revenue of the new society.
In 1788, the society addressed the following letter to John Howard, the great apostle in the work of ameliorating the condition of prisons: “The Society heartily concurs with the friends of humanity in Europe in expressing their obligation to you for having rendered the miserable tenants of prisons the objects of more general attention and compassion, and for having pointed out some of the means not only of alleviating their miseries, but of preventing those crimes and misfortunes which are the cause of them.” A year or two later John Howard left on record an expression of appreciation of the work of the Philadelphia Society. The following sentiment was found among his papers: “Should the plan take place during my life of establishing a permanent charity under some such title as that at Philadelphia, viz: ‘a society for alleviating the miseries of public prisons,’ I would most readily stand at the bottom of a page for five hundred pounds.”
The organizers of the society had a tremendous task before them, and they went at their work with energetic diligence. Very little effort had ever been made to carry out William Penn’s injunction that “all prisons should be considered workhouses for the employment of criminals and of the idle and vicious.” There was an ill-constructed prison at the corner of High and Third Streets with subterranean dungeons for those under sentence of death. At least half a dozen crimes were punishable by death. “In one common herd were kept by day and night prisoners of all ages, colors and sexes. There was no separation of the most flagrant felon from the prisoner held on suspicion for some trifling misdemeanor. There was no separation of the fraudulent swindler from the unfortunate, and often estimable, debtor.”
The society early resolved that two leading elements of the desired reformation were to find employment for the inmates and to interdict the use of intoxicants. They also insisted that there must be a segregation, not only of the sexes, but also that there must be an individual separation in order that the penal institutions should not become “schools for crime.”
From the first the society has advocated separate confinement and individual treatment, but has not stood for absolutely solitary imprisonment. There is no objection to work being done in groups, provided the prisoners are under direct supervision of the proper officials. Visits from the officers, from ministers, from all properly concerned persons, have been encouraged. Visitations by members of the Prison Society began under peculiar difficulties, as it is on record that the keeper, with loaded cannon, for the purpose of maintaining order, allowed the prisoners to assemble to hear the preaching of the gospel, but the beneficial effect of the visits were soon officially recognized, and have been maintained with great regularity to the present day, the Acting Committee in 1909 having reported 10,951 visits to prisoners. In the year 1829, when the Eastern Penitentiary, whose plan and management at that time represented the most advanced ideas in prison construction and discipline was built, the members of the Acting Committee of the Society were, by enactment of the State Legislature, constituted “Official Visitors” of prisons.
In 1794 the society succeeded in securing the abolition of the exaction of fees by the jailers as a condition of release, and a competent salary was authorized to be paid to the prison officials. About the same time it was decreed that capital punishment should be inflicted only for the crime of murder. Barbarous methods of punishment, such as the pillory, branding with hot irons, the whipping post, were soon dispensed with as reformatory measures.
In 1844 the society issued the first number of “The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy.” At first this periodical was published quarterly, but for many years it has been an annual. In the columns of this Journal every phase of prison reform, every measure affecting the management of prisons, every act of penal legislation for nearly seventy years, has received attention.
For about fifty years a special agent has been employed who devotes his time to sympathetic care of prisoners from the time they arrive until they have received their discharge. Legal aid is found for those whose cases seem to require it, and where there are mitigating circumstances the charges are often withdrawn and so the accused is restored where often his services are needed. Attention is given to their physical needs at the time of their discharge and effort is made to provide them with employment.