THE MARYLAND PRISONERS’ AID ASSOCIATION.
(Although the following article is an account of a single association, it contains material of such general interest that it seemed desirable to print it in full. The article appeared in the forty-first annual report of the Prisoners’ Aid Association of Maryland, for the year ended April 30, 1910.—The Editor)
The objects of the Prisoners’ Aid Association of Maryland are the uplift and rehabilitation of the criminal.
When we consider that it is the only agency in the state whose mission is that of giving aid to hundreds of discharged prisoners each year and the only organized body equipped for the work of systematically caring for offenders who are placed on probation by the courts, we believe it important that information should be carefully compiled by the Association upon the actual work that it is doing and upon the larger subject of the treatment of the criminal.
Morrison has well said, “The supreme if not the only object of a properly constituted penal system is to prevent the offender who has been once convicted from repeating the offense,”—so the importance of our work; but just as important are the methods used in our penal systems in aiding rehabilitation of the prisoner.
Our prison and reformatory managements should stand in the same relation to the violator of the law as does the management of our insane hospitals to the inmates entrusted to their keeping.
The purpose of both is the protection of society; the aim of both should be such treatment as will if possible rehabilitate the unfortunate so that he may regain his position in society.
In the prisons and reformatories the inmates should be taught the habits of industry and obedience to law and order, under humane and strict discipline.
There should be a complete separation of the first offender and the individual subject to reformation, from the weak-minded, physically deformed, and old and confirmed criminals; a reformatory for boys and first offenders, a separate prison for women and an industrial school for girls, with a parole system in each of the institutions.