The board makes the recommendation that prisoners of education be
given instruction and a chance to study and that others be taught such
things as will tend to increase their usefulness and earning capacity
in the world. A plan is also recommended whereby superintendents of
prisons shall keep in communication with employers to the end that when
prisoners are discharged they may be given work as soon as possible.
_An Excellent Editorial._--Score one for the Boston (Mass.) Transcript,
which says:
“There may have been valid reasons for pardoning a man who has served
four years in our state prison for forging checks and since then has
been in the Springfield jail for another offense, but it is hardly
treating our neighbors well that one of the conditions of his pardon
is that he shall leave the state. If he is entitled to pardon at all
he is entitled to a chance to prove that he is worthy of it in the
jurisdiction where his offenses were committed. It looks too much
like passing our burdens on to others. We have criticised the Italian
government on the alleged charge that, instead of being at the expense
and trouble of punishing its own criminals it has frequently connived
at their emigration to this country. There is ethically not much
difference between that and our own practices. Every state should be
responsible for its own offenders. We do not want the ‘undesirable
citizens’ from other countries or commonwealths passed upon us and
doubtless other states feel the same way about it.”
“_Easy Money._”--Attention has been called by a Boston newspaper to
the vitality which the so-called “Spanish prisoner” swindle exhibits,
despite the repeated exposures to which the game has been subjected,
by the press of the country. Communities in New England, equally with
other sections of the country, continue to report the receipt of fake
appeals, along with the extravagant promises of rewards if money is
sent on, by which the languishing prisoner may be released from prison,
and thus enabled to enter upon possession of his gigantic fortune. The
appeals, it is easy to perceive, would not be sent to individuals where
the swindle has been laid bare, time and again, if out of the batch of
people thus addressed, gullibles were not found in number sufficient to
render the game a profitable one to the swindlers.
_How Many Prisoners Are Innocent?_--In a report read at the Omaha
annual meeting of the American prison association, Frank L. Randall,
chairman of the committee on reformatory work and parole, reported
that the committee devoted an entire year to its search for a case of
capital punishment wherein there was a reasonable doubt as to the guilt
of the victim, and so far has discovered not a single definite case
of the kind. This search was carried on in every prison in the United
States and in Canada, a personal letter having been written to the
warden of every state prison in both countries, and each official was
asked the following questions:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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