GOV. FOSS URGES THREE PRISON REFORM BILLS
Three messages on prison reform in as many weeks were recently sent to the Massachusetts Legislature by Governor Foss. This is an unusual record even in these days when a growing list of state executives are trying to rouse their people to prison reforms. Attention has heretofore been centered mainly on Governor West of Oregon, whose use of the honor system among the prisoners of that state has been stamped by many as one of the two most notable advances during 1912 in the treatment of the criminal; Governor Hooper of Tennessee who spent one night in prison to experience some of the conditions of cell life; Governor Donaghey of Arkansas whose sensational pardoning of 360 convicts has just resulted in the legal abolition of the lease system in that state; and Governor Blease of South Carolina, known as the “pardoning governor,” who complained that Governor Donaghey’s release of 360 prisoners in one day had “lain him in the shade.”
Governor Foss’s last message was accompanied by three bills. One provides for new buildings for defective delinquents; another calls for the appointment of an expert alienist to assist in the proper treatment of female defective delinquents, and the third directs the prison commission to report upon the best method of providing institutional accommodations for those now in prison and state care for all convicted felons.
The first measure is designed to change the present policy of trying to reform feeble-minded people by the methods employed for normal persons. It has been established in recent years that large percentages of those convicted for law-breaking are irresponsible mentally. The following table showing the percentage of mentally deficient persons in seven correctional institutions has been published by the Russell Sage Foundation:
| Per cent. | |
|---|---|
| New York State reformatory, Elmira | 37 |
| New Jersey State reformatory, Rahway | 33 |
| New York reformatory for women, Redford | 37 |
| Massachusetts industrial school for girls, Lancaster | 50 |
| Maryland industrial school for girls, Baltimore | 60 |
| New Jersey state home for girls, Trenton | 33 |
| Illinois state school for boys, St. Charles | 20 |
Governor Foss believes, as do more and more people, that these persons, if left at large in the community, constitute one of our gravest social dangers. “But neither the prison nor the asylum,” he adds, “is adapted to their incarceration, and they are rarely capable of reform.” He therefore recommends that two special cottage buildings for male patients of this type be erected at the state farm. In these they can be under the medical direction of the hospital for the criminal insane. For female defectives he urges the erection of two or more cottages near the present reformatory for women at Sherborn.
Declaring that “the county prison has no place in a model prison system and no logical reason for continued existence,” Governor Foss suggests that all such jails be taken over by the state, “with complete disregard of the personal interests and protests of county officials, who depend largely for their political power and patronage on retaining the county system intact.” While recognizing that this perhaps can not be done at once, the governor sees no reason why there should not be an immediate reclassification of prisoners, so that long-term men can be located in one kind of institution, instead of in three as now. Likewise those amenable to instruction and remedial treatment he thinks should be confined by themselves. The present system, he says, was constructed mainly at a time when no attempt was made at such a classification. For these reasons he thinks new prison accommodations must be provided.
Until the county jails are taken over by the state, Governor Foss thinks they ought to be improved. Accordingly he is in favor of a bill now before the legislature providing for prison schools. This measure permits the prison commissioners to maintain, in not more than five houses of correction, schools for the mental and manual instruction of prisoners. The state board of education is directed to devise plans for the organization and administration of these schools and to maintain supervision over them. The teachers and instructors are to be appointed by the prison commissioners from civil service lists.
It is declared by many persons engaged in prison administration that this apparent division of responsibility between the State Board of Education and the prison commissioners is disadvantageous to the best administration of prison schools. It is said that while there ought to be close co-operation between the educational and prison authorities the actual supervision of the schools should be in the hands of the latter.