Partly because English prison and crime statistics are better and more centralized than ours the annual reports of the English Prison Commission are always well worth reading. In the year ending March 31, 1912, the proportion of persons committed to prisons in England was the lowest within statistical record, 439.2 per 100,000 of the population of England and Wales. The commitments for serious crimes particularly show a decrease. The bane of the English prison system is still the short sentence for misdemeanants, 81 per cent of all prisoners having been sentenced for one month or less. Over 50 per cent of those committed to prison are sent in default of paying a fine. This is considered by the Prison Commission one of the most urgent social problems demanding the attention of Parliament.
The commission still regrets that the committing magistrates do not take advantage of the chance to classify prisoners when sentencing them. The Borstal Institution (the English Elmira) continues to satisfy; it has now a population of over 400. The Borstal Association, a released prisoner’s aid society for Borstal, has placed 250 out of 270 lads received. Of these about seventy-five out of one hundred cases turn out well. The “Borstal girl” from the girl’s reformatory has proved satisfactory in conduct after prison in twenty-nine out of fifty-four cases.
An interesting feature is the development of a modified Borstal (or reformatory) system in the local prisons for the younger prisoners, just as though in New York state we introduced into the county jails and penitentiaries a modified Elmira system. The problem of payment to prisoners is engaging the commission.
The Preventive Detention Prison on the Isle of Wight had been running but a few months when the report was prepared. Little can be said about it as yet. The idea is not novel, but “advanced.” Following the serving of a sentence for a specific crime, the more professional or habitual criminal may be sentenced to from five to ten years of subsequent preventive detention in a prison with privileges of limited association with other prisoners: in short, a custodial treatment of the criminal who is dangerous to society because of his profession or his nature. Many other interesting features are dealt with in this report of Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise and his colleagues; much that our American prison boards and wardens cannot afford to miss.
O. F. Lewis.
ADMISSION TO AMERICAN TRADE UNIONS
By F. Wolfe, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins Press. 181 pp. $1.00 paper, $1.25 cloth; by mail of The Survey $1.08 and $1.33.
SOCIAL PROGRESS IN CONTEMPORARY EUROPE
By Frederick A. Ogg. The Macmillan Company. 384 pp. Price $1.50; by mail of The Survey $1.61.
Admission to American Trade Unions is a retrospective study brought up to the present of the methods by which American trade unions control the number and quality of their membership, through their regulations in regard to apprenticeship, competency, admission of women, aliens and Negroes, and the expulsion of members. The conclusions which the writer draws from his study are colorless, but the book presents a wealth of facts, particularly in the footnote references and quotations from primary sources.