The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58)Pennsylvania Prison Society
History
The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy 1919 (New Series, No. 58)
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
Along with this development of a properly differentiated system
of treating the delinquent population, has gone the growth of
specialized institutions for dealing with the closely related class
of defectives, which was once treated indiscriminately along with the
delinquent classes when its members were guilty of criminal action.
The State institution for feeble-minded at Polk, opened in 1893, and
at Spring City, provided by an act of 1903, and the State Village
for Feeble-minded Women at Laurelton, not yet available for use, are
designed to furnish scientific treatment for large numbers of those
who would today be confined in the state prisons or county jails, if
the ideas and institutions of 1840 prevailed. Even an institution for
inebriates was contemplated in an act of 1913.
But this vital and all important process of the differentiation,
classification and specialized treatment of the delinquent and
defective classes has now proceeded far beyond that most elementary
stage of furnishing separate institutions for dealing with the most
general classes of delinquents and defectives. It has been found
that the terms defective, insane and criminal have only a legal
significance and are practically useless when involving the problem
of exact scientific analysis and treatment. Each general class of
delinquent boys, of defective girls or of criminal adults, for
instance, is made up of distinguishable and distinct types which demand
specialized treatment in the same way that it is required for one
general class as distinguished from another. Though it is as yet very
imperfectly developed, the present tendency is for each institution to
differentiate into a number of specialized departments, each designed
to provide the proper treatment for one of these types.
Finally, within the last decade beginnings have been made in
what is likely to be an important future development, namely the
non-institutional care of the less pronounced and confirmed types of
delinquents, particularly of delinquent minors. The developments along
this line have, up to the present, consisted chiefly in the adoption
of parole systems in all the State penal, reformatory and correctional
institutions and in a more liberal use of the suspended sentence
and probation. The recently established Municipal Probation Court
of Philadelphia is a pioneer in Pennsylvania in this promising new
development in the preventive treatment of the less confirmed type of
delinquents.
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