The journal of prison discipline and philanthropy (New series, No. 57), March, 1918Pennsylvania Prison Society
History
The journal of prison discipline and philanthropy (New series, No. 57), March, 1918
Pennsylvania Prison Society
Charities -- Periodicals; Prisons -- Periodicals
One of the bad features of Indiana’s temporary arrangement is the lack
of opportunity to segregate prisoners into classes or groups. The
dormitories are too large and the facilities for recreation are very
limited.
“The men should be divided into smaller groups,” said the
superintendent, “and I believe the recreation room should be a part of
the dormitory. I would not place more than 25 to 50 men in each group.
That would give a chance to segregate the youths from the older men and
permit keeping apart the more dangerous type from the man who is here
on some comparatively trifling charge.
“Another of our greatest needs is the establishment of industries to
supplement the work on the farm. We are going to get these. There
should be a furniture factory, a canning factory, brick yard or other
suitable industries where the men can be worked when weather conditions
are bad or outside work slack.”
The greatest factor in the maintaining of discipline is the use of the
honor system. There are good jobs on the farm and bad ones. And the
good jobs go to the men who have the best records and have shown their
ability to take positions of responsibility.
“You can’t tell me that you can run any prison with any such sort of
discipline,” a prison superintendent recently told me. “There are some
men who must be strung up and there are some who must be spanked. If we
didn’t resort to extreme methods at times we would have a riot on our
hands all the time.”
The best answer to this is found in the record of the Indiana farm.
There hasn’t been a strike or a serious riot since the institution
was founded. There are no guards standing or sitting around idle. The
guards are working foremen who perform as much actual labor as any
prisoner. The employed guards have guns in their pocket, but the guns
are never used and some of them aren’t even loaded.
There is a provision in the State law of Indiana which permits the
drafting from the penitentiaries of trusties to take jobs as foremen,
sentinels and lookouts. Of course, this probably could not be done in
Detroit, because the house of correction is a city institution. But in
Indiana it assists materially in keeping down the payroll. It makes
this difference--the farm colony at Occoquan, Va., has a payroll of
about $5000 a month; the Indiana institution gets along with $1700.
And the two institutions are very much alike.--From _The Delinquent_,
March, 1917.
[A]THE CRIMINAL CODE OF PENNSYLVANIA.
WILLIAM E. MIKELL, MEMBER OF STATE COMMISSION TO REVISE THE CRIMINAL
CODE.
Perhaps, in the true sense of the term, there is no criminal “code” in
Pennsylvania. The whole body of the criminal law has never been reduced
to a written code in this state in the sense in which this has been
done in some of the States of the Union in which jurisdictions there
are no crimes except those specifically prescribed. * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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