The time certainty seems at hand for a systematic campaign against
the vagrancy evil. Drifting methods of alleviation and of passing-on
constitute only an aggravation of the situation. Vagrancy and crime
are closely akin. The Committee on Lawbreakers raises the question
whether the movement partially organized several years ago for a
national vagrancy committee should not at this session of the national
conference be organized with the aim of furthering systematic methods
for the reduction of vagrancy. A problem in European countries
sufficiently serious to be called one of the most fundamental social
problems deserves systematic and adequate attention in the United
States where the problem is still in its earlier stages.
Closely allied is the great problem of inebriety and its treatment. The
special United States census of 1904 showed that 54% of all commitments
to correctional institutions were due to intoxication, vagrancy and
disorderly conduct. A special committee of this national conference
of 1911 treats of this national question in a general session and in
section meetings. The committee on lawbreakers emphasizes the pressing
immediate need of state and national campaigns for the reduction of
drunkenness and the rational treatment of the drunkard.
_Prisoners’ Aid Societies._ Organized charitable work of private
societies in the correctional field is woefully slight in comparison
with the charity organization movement for the spread of the gospel
of social service. There are hardly a score of active prisoners’ aid
societies of fairly wide range in the United States. Yet the great
movement for probation and parole, for better prisons and for better
prisoners, for the help of released prisoners and for dependent
families of prisoners, for the reduction of vagrancy and inebriety, for
the better care of the mentally or physically defective delinquents,
for better laws and greater public information--these great movements
need the directing power of strong charitable organizations of the
prisoners’ aid kind. The field of delinquency needs the same thorough
development that in the last generation has been accorded to the field
of charity. A national prisoners’ aid society was organized at the
last meeting of the American Prison Association, to develop greater
co-operation between the now existing prisoners’ aid societies and to
extend the prisoners’ aid work. The national association publishes a
monthly journal of sixteen pages called the Review.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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