The Delinquent (Vol. IV, No. 4), April, 1914Various
General
The Delinquent (Vol. IV, No. 4), April, 1914
Various
Prisons -- Periodicals
_Probation Results in Massachusetts._--The Worcester Telegram states
that “the Massachusetts probation commission is approaching the
millionaire class. In 1909 it handled less than $50,000, and in 1913
almost $218,000. That is money collected from people under court
jurisdiction and paid to others for various reasons: For restitution of
property taken unlawfully, $24,250.63; for non-support, which is turned
into support of families of the delinquent, $140,773.96; for court
expenses, $3,335.34; for fines in the case of suspended sentences,
$49,304.09. The increase of such business throughout the State has been
so large in the five years, from half a hundred thousand to nearly a
quarter of a million dollars, that the chances are good it will reach
the million list in the next five years.
“The probation officials claim they have saved a great many, almost the
entire list falling into their hands, from the kind of shiftless if
not criminal lives they had been leading, and there is no doubt they
have reported correctly. But there is that tremendous increase in the
work and cash results of the Probation Commission and its officers,
and at the same time the jails and prisons remain full and get still
fuller. Then crime must be on the increase in Massachusetts, not only
in occasional lapses of the people, but as a regular condition which
grows with the years. The probation service of the State costs over
$20,000 a year, but the receipts the last year were, for the benefit of
the State, $80,000 more than that. The following from the commission’s
report is worth reading by all the people:
“While the large sum of money collected by the probation officers
of the state is not covered permanently into a public treasury, it
is not less an actual financial benefit. Consisting very largely
of enforced payments from other wise non-supporting husbands and
fathers, it goes to the same extent and without diminution to the
natural dependents. It relieves the state and the municipalities of
the cost of caring for these neglected persons, and observation shows
that this saving is substantially equal to the amount collected.
Meanwhile the probationer who is made to contribute it is usefully
employed, as he must be to provide for the payments, and the public
is relieved of the expense of maintaining him in jail.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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