The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (New Series, No. 50) November 1911Pennsylvania Prison Society
History
The Journal of Prison Discipline and Philanthropy (New Series, No. 50) November 1911
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
A year ago now we started our farm. It is fifty miles out of the city;
it contains 530 acres. I commenced by taking up a little detachment of
14 men, and I rapidly increased that until I had 180 men, housed in
temporary quarters on this farm. The average term of the man on the
farm was about five or six months, though I had several men there who
had to do from one to two years. So far we have taken out to this farm
500 men, and out of that 500, 4 have escaped successfully and 3 or 4
have attempted to escape--unsuccessfully. The other day a minister in
our city was calling and I gave him these statistics, and he looked
very sad; he said it was a pity. I said it was; “but,” I said, “can you
take 500 of your church membership and have 495 of them make good?” And
he changed the subject.
I had a grand jury visit me the other day; it is a custom over in our
country for the grand juries to come over a few times a year and tell
us how to run the place (they sometimes stay an hour), and the foreman,
before he went away, said to me, “Warden, I suppose you select the men
whom you take out to the farm.” I said, “No, sir, I don’t.” He said,
“How do you manage?” I said, “I select a very few whom I _don’t_ take;”
for I can take 90 per cent. About three weeks ago I was going into
the farm one day, it was a cold, snowy, blowing, blustering day; the
thermometer was about zero. When I came near to our building it was
quarter to twelve o’clock, and I saw men coming from this direction
and that direction, and from every direction pass alone; no officers
with them at all, and it impressed me, perhaps, much more than it would
another one not engaged in this work, for I asked myself the question,
“How is it? These are the very men that I have had in Toronto behind
bolts and bars, watched over by guns and guards, and here they are out
here as free as this air that blows, and they are all coming in to sit
down with each other at dinner.” I have asked our men on the farm--many
of them different types, at different places, at different times--and I
have asked them all the same question. “What do you find the greatest
difference as between the prison in the city and the prison out here
on the farm?” And without a single exception, in one form or another,
those men have invariably given me the same reply. We give good
board at the prison, but it was not that; it was not this liberty,
comparative liberty. They have said to me: “Warden, to get away from
that cell! To get away from that cell!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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