“But what does all this really amount to? In all the essentials of good prison organization and management, the new jail is no better than the old one; and the money spent upon it is simply an addition to the immense investment in a wretched and indefensible system. Instead of being an aid to reform, it is an obstacle to reform. It increases the weight of the already too heavy burden resting on the shoulders of the friends and advocates of the thorough and effectual reconstruction of our existing prison system, from the top to the bottom.
“It would therefore seem to be high time for a radical change in our method of attack. We must adopt a new plan of campaign, which will aim not at the capture here and there of an outwork, so much as at the occupation and destruction of the innermost citadel.
“... Does any one imagine that the abuses at which I have barely hinted could long survive, if all convicted offenders, major and minor, misdemeanants as well as felons, were in the custody of state instead of county officials? The initial result would be a diminution in the number of prisons. There are many times too many local prisons. Some of them stand empty from year to year; some are overcrowded, at least during the weeks immediately preceding a term of the criminal court. The needless multiplication of jails entails a heavy pecuniary burden upon the people.
“The massing of sentenced prisoners would admit of their classification, and of the introduction of reformatory methods of dealing with them—useful, healthy occupation both for body and mind, and some measure of education and religious influence.
“The officers in immediate charge would naturally be men of higher grade, their tenure of office would be more secure, and they would have no other duties to distract their attention from their proper work. They would have little time or opportunity for pernicious political activity. They could be better paid.
“The corrupt fee system, under which it is to the pecuniary interest of some official that arrests should be multiplied, would go by the board.
“We might hope to see the last of iron cages, and foreigners could no longer satirize our prisons under the generic term of menageries. The state would avail itself of the services of competent architects, and traveling salesmen would not be able to sell to unsuspecting and simple-minded commissioners and supervisors their illusory spectacles in shagreen cases.
“In a word, we should have an opportunity to replace irresponsible by responsible prison management, and competency would in time take the place of incompetency.
“This proposal implies, of course, the complete and final disseverance of the prison for men convicted of crime from the house of detention for those awaiting trial, whose guilt is yet unproven, and who may be innocent. From the days of Plato to the present moment, that has been a cardinal maxim of prison reform. The jail system has prevented the realization of this ideal.
“It is not the house of correction, but the house of detention, which constitutes the most refractory element in this complex problem. Let us lay that portion of it aside, for the moment, and consider the other, which is easier. There is no practical obstacle to the establishment of one or more state houses of correction in any state, except the indifference of the legislature; and that can be overcome by a campaign of education....