Other causes have, no doubt, helped to bring about this relative diminution in the number of commitments—amongst them the development of the Voluntary Labour Colonies with their ever-open doors—but at Benninghausen it is believed that the operation of the anti-vagrancy law takes the first place.
Probably the question has before now passed through the reader's mind—what becomes of the 300 or 400 men and women who are returned from the Labour House to liberty in the course of every year? When a prisoner has served his time a problem arises which requires the most circumspect handling. What shall be done with him? Shall he be simply turned adrift at the gates in the hope that he will continue to follow in freedom the path of industry which he has entered while under restraint? The Benninghausen Labour House makes no such wreck of its own reformative work. On the contrary, every effort is made to encourage the prisoner to persist in a regular and honest life. He is allowed to choose his destination, and the Police Authorities of the locality are communicated with beforehand, so that they may be ready to provide for his temporary lodging, and either to help him to work themselves or to enlist the offices of private persons able so to do. In towns there always exists some philanthropic society which is ready to take the case in hand; in the country the helping hand is often that of the clergyman, Roman Catholic or Protestant, as the case may be. Here also is seen the utility of the Labour Colony—and to Westphalia, be it noted, belongs the honour of having founded the original Colony, of which the thirty-three others scattered over Germany are copies—which frequently serves as a temporary refuge for men who, having passed through the mill of adversity and humiliation, and been given a glimpse of better things, have no desire to drift into the old demoralising ways.
[CHAPTER VII.]
THE BERLIN MUNICIPAL LABOUR HOUSE.
The Labour House at Rummelsburg, near Berlin, is an example of a house of correction for offenders of the classes dealt with at Benninghausen conducted by a municipality. This institution is maintained entirely by the City of Berlin, and while it exists to meet the requirements of the Imperial Penal Code, as already explained, there is attached to it a large hospital which closely corresponds to an English workhouse infirmary.
This hospital is intended for the reception of (1) persons suffering from incurable diseases, also infirm persons who are no longer able to look after themselves, even with the assistance of outrelief; (2) those, who, owing to their past irregular mode of life (intemperance, immorality, criminality, etc.), are unsuited to admission to the usual municipal infirmaries; (3) destitute persons who might still be given outrelief, but who, by reason of their irregular mode of life, as above stated, would be better provided for in a public institution; (4) those in receipt of relief who are believed to be likely to give way to mendicity; and finally (5) persons sentenced to disciplinary detention who are infirm or ill, and incapable of work. In general, the class of persons accommodated are the undeserving infirm poor who are not thought worthy of permanent association with indoor paupers of more or less respectable antecedents. Although under the management of the same Director, and administered by the same Committee of the Town Council, the hospital is entirely independent of the house of correction, and its inmates are disregarded in the statistical data which follow.
The numbers detained at Rummelsburg during the financial year 1907-8 were as follows:—
| Males. | Females. | Total | |
| Number detained on April 1, 1908 | 1,349 | 36 | 1,385 |
| Admitted during year | 1,428 | 102 | 1,530 |
| 2,777 | 138 | 2,915 | |
| Discharged during the year | 1,128 | 55 | 1,183 |
| Died | 21 | — | 21 |
| 1,149 | 55 | 1,204 | |
| Number remaining on March 31, 1909 | 1,628 | 83 | 1,711 |