The committee made an exhaustive investigation of conditions before
reaching a conclusion. It found that the 29,461 persons arrested in New
York last year and arraigned in the magistrates’ courts on the charge
of public intoxication constituted more than one-sixth of all the
arrests made for all causes. The records disclose that, of the 20,291
held for trial, about 15,600 were committed to workhouses, either
directly or in default of payment of fine. Commenting on these and
other statistics the report says:
Inebriety, therefore, furnishes a very large percentage of those who
keep the police officers busy, clog the magistrates’ courts, and
fill the workhouses and jails. It furnishes also a very large number
of cases for treatment in our public hospitals. Seven thousand male
drunkards are treated annually in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue and
allied hospitals. Carefully compiled records show that in the one year
ended May 1, 1909, 498 men were treated for intoxication more than
once in that ward, and over 100 from four to twelve times, and that
in the course of a few years some individuals have been treated in
the alcoholic ward over twenty times and have been committed to the
workhouse over sixty times.
The committee does not overlook the moral effects of the treatment of
inebriates under the plan which it has approved, but it especially
points out the economic features. It finds that New York is spending
annually on Blackwell’s Island the amount of $80,000 for cases
committed for intoxication, and in addition there is the cost of two
overflow wards at Bellevue, amounting to not less than $65,000 per
annum. The proportion of expenses in maintaining magistrates’ courts
chargeable to intoxication is at least $125,000 a year, and a large
additional expense is incurred in maintaining police officers for
the city prison and for the alcoholic wards in hospitals. To use the
language of the report: “As a result of all these expenses under the
present system there is a complete lack of accomplishment. There is no
pretense even that the individual is helped; quite the contrary, he is
rather confirmed in his habits of inebriety and is permanently fastened
on the community as an expense and as a bad example.”
* * * * *
_A Prison Farm Proposed for Iowa._--According to the Dubuque, Iowa,
Telegraph-Herald, Warden Marquis Barr of the Iowa State Reformatory, is
of the opinion that it would be a wise move for the state to purchase
a large farm and work the prisoners upon it, turning the money which
they make over to their respective families. He declares that this age
must solve the great problem of justly punishing a man for his wrongs
without at the same time taking from his family its only means of
support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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