Hospitals For Inebriates.—The special committee of the New York Board of Estimate and Apportionment has unanimously reported in favor of carrying into effect a law which provides for the establishment of a board of inebriety and a hospital and industrial colony for inebriates for New York City.
The committee made an exhaustive investigation of conditions before reaching a conclusion. It found that the 29,461 persons arrested in New York last year and arraigned in the magistrates’ courts on the charge of public intoxication constituted more than one-sixth of all the arrests made for all causes. The records disclose that, of the 20,291 held for trial, about 15,600 were committed to workhouses, either directly or in default of payment of fine. Commenting on these and other statistics the report says:
Inebriety, therefore, furnishes a very large percentage of those who keep the police officers busy, clog the magistrates’ courts, and fill the workhouses and jails. It furnishes also a very large number of cases for treatment in our public hospitals. Seven thousand male drunkards are treated annually in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue and allied hospitals. Carefully compiled records show that in the one year ended May 1, 1909, 498 men were treated for intoxication more than once in that ward, and over 100 from four to twelve times, and that in the course of a few years some individuals have been treated in the alcoholic ward over twenty times and have been committed to the workhouse over sixty times.
The committee does not overlook the moral effects of the treatment of inebriates under the plan which it has approved, but it especially points out the economic features. It finds that New York is spending annually on Blackwell’s Island the amount of $80,000 for cases committed for intoxication, and in addition there is the cost of two overflow wards at Bellevue, amounting to not less than $65,000 per annum. The proportion of expenses in maintaining magistrates’ courts chargeable to intoxication is at least $125,000 a year, and a large additional expense is incurred in maintaining police officers for the city prison and for the alcoholic wards in hospitals. To use the language of the report: “As a result of all these expenses under the present system there is a complete lack of accomplishment. There is no pretense even that the individual is helped; quite the contrary, he is rather confirmed in his habits of inebriety and is permanently fastened on the community as an expense and as a bad example.”
A Prison Farm Proposed for Iowa.—According to the Dubuque, Iowa, Telegraph-Herald, Warden Marquis Barr of the Iowa State Reformatory, is of the opinion that it would be a wise move for the state to purchase a large farm and work the prisoners upon it, turning the money which they make over to their respective families. He declares that this age must solve the great problem of justly punishing a man for his wrongs without at the same time taking from his family its only means of support.
The logical thing for a state to do is to purchase a farm of about a thousand acres, with barracks for the prisoners to eat and sleep in. Over one-third of the men in the prisons of Iowa could be set to work upon this farm, raising grains and garden truck. They could be paid a certain wage and board in the same manner as the farmer pays his hired help, but every cent of these earnings should be turned over to the wife and children of the man who earns it. Not a penny should be given to him.
Warden Barr also said that he believed that if men knew that they would be compelled to work and work hard at a fair wage without themselves getting a penny of it, that there would be less crime. Many men during the fall commit crimes solely for the purpose of getting a warm place to stay during the winter and three good meals per day. They allow their families to shift for themselves. For the state to encourage this sort of a thing Mr. Barr says is absolutely wrong.
Charting Juvenile Crime.—The juvenile court of Detroit is reported to be greatly assisted in its campaign of saving girls and boys, by a chart which shows how many children are under the watchful care of the judge and his probation and truant officers, and how crime recedes and advances among the young at different seasons of the year; also what effect a big convention has on the city’s morality, and how greatly parks and playgrounds help in the fight for decency.