Parole. The principle of parole is a fundamental complement to the principle of the indeterminate sentence. Its successful application requires an efficient merit system within the prison, a competent parole board and adequate supervision of the post-prison parole period, the co-operation of the employment giving public, and the persistent following up, recapture and reimprisonment of wilful violators of parole.
Only in a most general way do we yet know the results of the administration of parole systems in the country. We find a general belief based on long experience and some careful study of prison statistics, that about 75% of paroled persons from reformatories or prisons “stay straight” during the parole period. We still lack any study of sufficient magnitude to admit of generalization in the case of any state as to the proportion of criminal recidivism after the parole period. The New York Prison Association will shortly make public an extended study of the careers of seven hundred inmates of Elmira Reformatory, yet this number, though intensively studied, will be too small for any comprehensive generalization but will rather indicate both a statistical method of study of criminal careers and the great inadequacy of present institutional or extra-institutional social facts and social statistics of delinquents.
As regards post-prison treatment and aid of the released or discharged prisoner, we find Amos W. Butler in Volume II of the Sage Foundation series on “Correction and Prevention” reporting that only about 24 organizations exist throughout this country for this purpose, though several of these societies spread their activity through a number of states. We find also very varying periods of parole, some of six months as at Elmira, some of seven months, as at Huntington, Pa.; nine months, as at the Illinois State Reformatory, or until the expiration of the maximum sentence, as at Concord, Mass., or at Bedford, or Albion in New York. We find in Mr. Butler’s study state after state recorded as follows: “State makes no effort to find work or keep in touch with prisoner after his discharge;” “no provision for aftercare of either paroled or discharged prisoners;” “no parole officers;” “no parole agents;” “no provision for finding work or for visiting prisoners,” etc., etc.
A prominent eastern reformatory superintendent recently said: “Why spend nearly two hundred dollars annually to maintain one inmate in a reformatory, and then spend only $1.50 per inmate during his period of parole to help him not to go wrong?” This committee on lawbreakers believes that the parole period of an offender is barely second in importance to the period of imprisonment. The poorly supervised parole period breeds recidivism, contempt for law, the alienation of the sympathy of judges, the irritation and criticism of the public, unintelligent scorn for reformatory methods, and immense ultimate cost to the state in further loss of property or life.
The Probation Movement, long known and developed in Massachusetts, has during this last decade made great national progress. Nevertheless the probation movement faces grave dangers. It is on the defensive. The methodology of probation is still in the experimental stage. More important than the extension of the system is the building up of an effective technique. In too many places probation is still synonymous either with sentimental leniency or with perfunctory police surveillance. The most essential factors in probation work are the educative, reformatory and reconstructive work represented by home visitation, the development of right mental habits and the rendering of practical assistance.
The improvement of probation methods depends primarily upon the appointment of interested, faithful and competent probation officers. The tendency is strongly in the direction of increasing the number of public salaried probation officers. Although this tendency is inevitable and desirable, it brings in its trail the gravest danger of which the probation system must meet, namely the danger of appointments being made through the influence of partisan politics. Those interested in the probation system should therefore look squarely in the face the question as to how probation officers should be appointed; whether by judges without interference by any outside regulations or authorities; whether through civil service examination; whether upon the approval of some outside body such as a state probation commission, or whether the appointing power should be vested in authorities other than the judges, as in local non-partisan, non-sectarian committees or commissions.
Ex-Attorney-General Julius M. Mayer dissents from the foregoing paragraph as follows:
“I am opposed to the appointing power being placed in anybody except the judges, which, to my mind, leaves open only the question as to whether examinations should be competitive or non-competitive.”
In a further letter Judge Mayer writes:
“There cannot be any discussion as to who should appoint probation officers. It is absurd to say that any person outside of the judge should appoint. I personally should refuse, if a judge, to place anybody on probation if the probation officers were appointed by any one but the court or judge. As a matter of fact I doubt seriously whether in New York State there would be any legal power in any other body to make any such appointment. The suggestions, in this regard, are, to my mind, utterly absurd and unworthy of being dignified by being incorporated in our report.”