Third, the parole officer, like the probation officer, should work in a comparatively small area. This condition is met by the parole system of few institutions--chiefly by those which parole their inmates only in the immediate vicinity of the institution. The parole officers doing parole work for state institutions are usually attached to a single institution, and are expected to look after persons paroled from that institution to widely scattered parts of the state--sometimes throughout the entire state. For instance, in New York State (which has an area of 47,620 square miles) Sing Sing Prison has one parole officer supposed to cover the entire state for that prison, and Auburn and Clinton Prisons each have a parole officer supposed to do likewise for his respective institution. During 1910, from the eleven state correctional institutions for adults and training schools for children, there were released on parole 3,435 persons. To look after these 3,435 persons as well as those continued on parole from the preceding year, the state employed only 16 parole officers. Each officer served for only one institution. The only state institutions in New York which do not use traveling parole officers are Elmira and Napanoch Reformatories for young men. Persons paroled from these two reformatories to live in New York City are placed under the oversight of agents of the Prison Association or other organizations; those paroled from these two institutions to live in Buffalo are put under an agent of the Charity Organization Society, and those paroled to other localities are placed under the surveillance of police officials. It has been intended, however, to employ traveling parole officers for these two institutions, and for this purpose a civil service examination has been held. Persons paroled from the other nine state institutions, as a rule, are placed under a traveling parole agent attached to the respective institution. The areas covered by these different traveling parole officers range from a few counties to the entire state.[2] A parole officer required to travel over wide areas cannot know local conditions; he cannot see those on parole often enough; he cannot keep track of their actions; he cannot aid or restrain them when desirable. What sort of supervision or reformatory influence can be exercised by a parole officer who, on account of the wide territory he has to cover, may be able to see a certain John Smith, who is on parole, only once in every two, three or four months? Some parole officers do not see those under their care even as often as this. The officers are forced to rely on written reports, which in many cases are utterly undependable. Parole work at long range and by mail order is necessarily defective and unsatisfactory. Furthermore, the use of traveling officers means large traveling expenses. Each parole officer should preferably confine his work to a single city or single county.