Families of Prisoners Excite Discussion.—The subject of prisoner’s pay for work done during incarceration is receiving wide-spread discussion in this country. The note constantly struck is the need for support of those dependent on the imprisoned bread winner.
In Rhode Island a bill has been introduced to the assembly increasing the wages of jail term offenders from 25 cents to one dollar a day.
The members of the board of control of the prison at Jackson, Mich., favor a change in the method of paying the inmates employed in the binder twine plant of the institution. The present law gives the men 10 per cent of the net profits of the plant each year. Some of the evils of this arrangement are thought to be that the men have to wait too long for their pay, and that they are kept in unnecessary doubt as to the amount they shall receive. The plan of the prison board is that they shall be paid from 10 to 15 cents a day for their services.
In Massachusetts the Springfield Republican, among other papers, has recently advocated the extension of the present law, providing that prisoners be paid nominal wages for the benefit of their families, to include the inmates of work houses and all places of detention. Says the Republican:
“In the workhouse the convicted mis-doer is set to broom making. Why should not his family have the aid of part of such earnings? Why should not all prisoners, in all parts of the country, contribute, through state officials, to the support of their hapless families? Wife and children have not broken the law—they should not then be left to starve.”
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Finds Canadian Prisons Better Than Ours.—Considerable newspaper prominence has been given to a report on Canadian prisons made recently by the Rev. Dr. John Handley, who was commissioned by the Governor of New Jersey to visit Canada and examine her prisons. The Tribune of Providence, R. I., concludes from this report that Canadian prisons are “somewhat in advance of ours in some respects.” The Tribune thus
discusses Dr. Handley’s report:
“The Canadian idea is that reformatory should be a large custodial school rather than a penal institution; that it should be removed as far as possible from the thought of felony and the disgrace that attaches to any young man or boy who has violated the law and thus become subject to a reformatory sentence. And in accordance with that idea each Canadian prison has a large farm attached, to which prisoners are sent to work. From the federal prison at Toronto, for example, at least half the prisoners are put to work on a farm where there are no surrounding walls, no regiment of guards and no rigid surveillance, and yet from which in two years only five prisoners attempted to escape.
“Dr. Handley has returned to New Jersey strongly in favor of this farm idea as an aid in reformatory work. It is not, however, an altogether new idea in the States. In several of our penitentiaries men are allowed to work out of doors even a long distance away, under only a light guard, and very few have attempted to escape. The State homes, too, ordinarily have no high walls around them, and the inmates are allowed many liberties.