National Probation Officers’ Association.—The national probation officers’ association will meet in Boston from June 5th to 14th inclusive, which will be immediately before and during the sessions of the national conference of charities and correction in that city. Judge Harvey H. Baker of the Boston juvenile court is president of the association, and the secretary is Roger N. Baldwin, Security Building, St. Louis, Mo.
A Radical Step Proposed in Pennsylvania.—A bill has been prepared by Representative Alfred Marvins, of Pine County, Pennsylvania, which provides for the transference to one vast farm of 2,000 acres of all the criminal, insane and epileptic inmates cared for by the various institutions of the state. Once there these classes will be segregated. It is planned that the criminal inmates shall work the farm and make it self-supporting.
Want Branch to Extend Work of Reformation.—A bill has been presented to the Massachusetts legislature empowering the state to utilize an empty jail in Fall River, surrounded by 12 acres of land, as a branch of the Concord reformatory. The project is favored by the local county commissioners as well as by Warren F. Spalding, secretary of the Massachusetts Prison Association. Concord reformatory is reported to have a miscellaneous population, including a considerable percentage who do not respond readily to reformatory treatment, thus tending to impair the work with the better prisoners. A need is strongly felt of some method of classifying the inmates. The utilization of the Fall River jail will also make it possible to give reformatory treatment to a greater number than now receive it.
Probation Manual.—The Massachusetts commission on probation in December published a probation manual of 61 pages. It states concisely the probation laws of that state, and gives a list of probation officers in the state. Each court in Massachusetts has the services of a paid probation officer.
Probation Commission Wanted in Pennsylvania.—Persons interested in the extension and development of the probation system in Pennsylvania are desirous of having a state probation commission similar in powers and duties to those which have been established in New York and Massachusetts. A bill has been introduced into the legislature providing for such a body consisting of five members, two of whom shall be women.