Convinced that the state charitable and correctional institutions are facing a serious crisis, New York social workers are protesting against certain of the recommendations of Governor Sulzer’s Committee of Inquiry which they fear the Legislature may act upon. This committee, which was appointed by the governor to examine into the administration of the state’s departments in the furtherance of economy, has made recommendations, relative to state charities and corrections, ranging from the repeal of the act establishing the state industrial farm colony for tramps to the refusal of large part of the sums asked for repairs on state institutions. The Prison Farm for Women, Letchworth Village and the State Training School for Boys are among the institutions that would be most seriously affected. The Committee of inquiry also recommended that the State Probation Commission, a non-salaried body, be merged with the Prison Commission.
All told, there are fourteen state hospitals for the insane and sixteen state charitable institutions with a total of 42,000 patients and inmates. The Committee of Inquiry, partly on the alleged ground that the state has little control over the expenditures of these institutions, has made sweeping recommendations for retrenchment on projects to which the state has already committed itself by legislation. Social workers who dispute the findings of the commission point out that it had but a few weeks in which to gain an understanding of the workings and relations of the state institutions to various supervisory and administrative state bodies and that its statements as to excessive cost of housing the inmates are apparently made without a comparison of the situation in other states.
The Committee of Inquiry recommends that the state charitable institutions in some way ought to be consolidated, This, social workers urge, could not be done except by putting together state wards of entirely different types since the only institutions having a capacity of less than 300 are the State Women’s Relief Home, an institution for aged veterans and their wives; the Thomas Indian School; the State School for Blind: the State Hospital for Crippled Children, and Letchworth Village for the Feeble-minded.
For many years the state has been gradually building up a group of institutions for the care of the insane and feeble-minded, the epileptic, and delinquent cases requiring reformatory treatment. The insane are increasing at the rate of about one thousand a year. There is an accumulation at the present time of 5,000 patients in excess of the certified capacity of the fourteen state hospitals. To delay appropriations for new state hospitals already started, it is claimed, is only to put off what must be eventually done.
For the feeble-minded and epileptic New York has provided four institutions in the central and western part of the state which care altogether for about 4,000 inmates and one, Letchworth Village in the southeastern part of the state, which as yet has less than 100 inmates. This, when completed, will serve New York city and vicinity where more than half the population of the state centers.
The next largest group of institutions is the reformatories of which there are two for women, one at Bedford and one at Albion; one for girls at Hudson; and two for boys, of which the State Agricultural and Industrial School at Industry is known the country over as a model of its kind. This institution for caring for boys outside the metropolitan district, social Workers urge, should be paralleled without further delay as suggested by the Committee of Inquiry by one in Westchester County for the boys of New York City and its vicinity.
The state has also undertaken to round out its reformatory and penal system by providing a state farm for women over thirty years of age, the age up to which they may be received in reformatories, and the state industrial farm colony for tramps. These institutions are planned to care for offenders who now cause much expense to localities. Both of these institutions were established after long study of the subject by organizations and individuals expert in dealing with dependents and delinquents but the committee recommends the abandonment of the second and further investigation as to the desirability of the first.
After discussing the situation at a meeting held in New York on April 3, a committee consisting of Henry Morgenthau; Homer Folks, secretary of the State Charities Aid Association; John A. Kingsbury, general agent of the New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor; the Right Rev. N. G. R. McMahon, supervisor of Catholic Charities, and Mrs. John M. Glenn, was appointed to confer with the governor who has given the committee assurance that he is considering the situation as a whole and will not make separate judgments on each institution by itself.
A similar meeting was held in Buffalo. At this delegates were also selected who have interviewed the governor in behalf of the important humanitarian projects undertaken by the state in the last ten years which are now threatened.
