and then progress toward liberation to be so conditioned that it shall involve of necessity on the part of the prisoner an actual progress of reformation.

Another much-needed practical reform is the compulsory education of prisoners. It is high time the farce were ended of placing criminals in durance, to be worked simply for the profits of their labor, preached to and soon released, unchanged, upon the community. There is no protection without reformation, and there is no reformation without education. The criminal must outgrow his criminality, and the growth can be, and therefore should be, forced if necessary. Education, using the term in its broad and comprehensive sense, is at once the means, and the process, and no other word so well expresses the product we call reformation. It involves training to proper self-regulation and to efficient industrial application, and at least an increase of mental and moral illumination. The present practice of releasing criminals without improved impulses, unfitted for and without access to decent associations, without visible means of support, whether of money, occupation or capacity; but, on the other hand, as is too often the case, with an added impulse and power for evil, is both absurd and dangerous. Said a convict: "We reached New York at evening with what remained of the five dollars given at the door of the prison when released that day. I had a merry night of it, and was immediately on the road again."

Mr. George W. Cable estimates at a quarter of a million the ex-convicts abroad in the United States, of which there must be in New York full twenty thousand. The Secretary of State reports, for 1881, the names of eleven hundred and twenty-nine convicts dismissed during that year from the three long-term prisons alone, while of felons and misdemeanants both it is safe to say that there are ten thousand of them annually emptied from the prisons into society in the same State. The country is overrun with released criminals, carrying to the youth of the classes they mingle with the contamination of their own criminal character. Let the prisons be renovated. Put away retribution, restrain sentimentalism; sentence criminals to be restrained or reformed as they may elect or be able; then wield this mighty motive, their love of liberty, for their education until they properly discern between right and wrong as principles of action, until the better impulses instinctively preponderate, and sufficient strength of mind and will is developed to consummate the

good choice when tempted to evil. And, for those that will not or, unfortunately, cannot receive such culture, let them remain restrained to such extent and in such manner as best protects society from their further crimes.

The prisoner put through this training should, on his return to society, have a fair chance to build himself up, and it is the duty as well as the wise policy of the State, through proper officers, to see that he has it. It will be a most salutary reform when the prisoner, previous to his final release from legal restraint, is completely rehabilitated. He must be actually introduced into suitable permanent employment, surrounded with reasonably good influences, and should be officially supervised until the habit is formed of saving from his earnings, serving faithfully, and properly behaving himself in ordinary society. Passing, while in confinement, through a graduated course of training, so conditioned that actual progress of improvement must be made, he is, on reaching a point of probable safe release, at once restored to the rights, the privileges, and the obligations, too, of good citizenship, to be under observation until established in well-doing and re-adjusted to current affairs. He is thus protected from the temptations of idleness, friendlessness, and unrestrained liberty; at the same time, through the fact of his legal liabilities persisting for a time, his new found purposes and powers are stimulated, and society retains some guarantee against further criminal conduct. This is not the English ticket-of-leave system, though somewhat similar. There is an important difference, for the English system involves police supervision, keeping the prisoner within the category of suspects and in contact with the governmental machinery for the detection and conviction of criminals; while this is parole under State guardianship, and he is responsible to officers who seek his security in a right use of liberty, instead of detectives, district attorneys, and the directors of penitentiaries who seek his conviction and confinement.

In the disciplinary government of prisoners, for individual treatment the en masse plan needs to be substituted. Officers must be better informed of the differentia of criminals as a class and from each other. The Spanish writer, Señor Arenal, says:

man.

"In the prisoner who steals, two things are observable,-the thief and the The thief constitutes the diseased part, the man the sound part. No two are alike; so that two men breaking the law under the same external circumstances may enter upon imprisonment with impressions totally dif

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ferent. The malady may be the same, but the internal resources to vanquish it will greatly vary."

Failing to perceive this, outraged society sometimes crushes the man with the criminal, or fosters the criminal with sentimentalism lavished upon the man. Prison officers, seeing only the criminal, constantly antagonizing him, conserve not the man until manliness from disuse dies out, while the criminal by the activity of opposition thrives and becomes strong. These diverse qualities, differently combined, discoverable in every criminal, are of necessity to be treated in conjunction: to repress the one and develop the other is the process of reformation; evil cannot be cured with evil; not until evil is overcome of good is any man reformed. To discern the one from the other in the same individual requires a competent, thoughtful, interested mind constantly in contact with criminals; and when this personal work is properly done by the chief officer of a prison, he will be as accessible to all as is the principal of a school or manager of a manufactory. Then will better results be wrought, and vain will be the search for neglect and cruelty often publicly charged and investigated.

Since imprisonment is for protection, the disciplinary management should be not punitive but remedial; prison punishments for correction only, never for retribution, give perfection of discipline in proportion to the wisdom and skill of the governors. Legislative restrictions and public accusations, revealing as they do a lack of confidence, often necessitate severities that would not otherwise be required. The limits of vested authority in this matter must be broad: good discipline means the voluntary cheerful obedience of prisoners with the least of punishments. The favorable conditions for it are: First.-Power vested in the managers.

Second.-Power wisely used for remedial ends alone.
Third.-Power, in action, closely scrutinized.

The demagogic demand for reform in the industrial employment of prisoners does not, judging from the reasons publicly given, entitle it to space here for discussion. That prisoners

confined under sentence must be employed, nobody will deny; their employment mainly at mechanical pursuits is a necessity if they are to be reclaimed, and also almost a custodial disciplinary and pecuniary necessity if irreclaimable. If, then, prisoners are to be employed, and at mechanical work, it matters little,

NEEDED REFORMS IN PRISON MANAGEMENT.

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as prisons now are, whether it be by the contract system or on the public account plan. The latter may be made more favorable to reformation in prisons where that object is rationally sought. There is no positive difference as relates to labor and mercantile competition. The amount of income to be derived by the State will be greater or less from either system, according to circumstances; the proportion of income does not inhere in either. Under classification, as previously described, the industries of the incorrigible division would be mainly for production of income, and naturally on the contract system, though not necessarily so. The real incorrigibles constitute less than one-half of the prisoners of the State, so that there would be at once a diminution of convict contract labor equal to full fifty per cent. of the whole, which, with wise selection of industries for them, ought, when they are earning their own subsistence, as they could easily do, to satisfy all who now sincerely oppose the convict contract system.

The susceptible class should and would be employed at a greater variety of trades, including some of the higher mechanic arts; employed on public account or under a modified form of contract, as by the piece or process, or on the principle of partitioning the profits of each separate industry between the State and expert managers, whose office would mainly be to prepare the prisoners for success in business when released. This last is the really needed reform in prison industries, namely: that the purpose shall be to place the prisoner on release in such a position in society as he would or should have filled had he refrained from crime and been a good citizen. That it were better for all if the criminal had found active, honorable place in legitimate industry, all must admit; it follows, then, that it is best for all that he be fitted while imprisoned for such place. No fair-minded man, manufacturer, mechanic, or laborer, will object to such employment for such an end. To classify and employ prisoners in this way will go far toward settling the difficulties that now environ the prison labor question.

Yet another reform is needed. It is in the ministrations of religion to prisoners. Reform its partisanship; it is too often factitious or feeble, and is fragmentary. The religious influencing of prisoners must be made a part of a unified system of their general treatment; it properly belongs to the educational function. Because the mass of criminals in prison are below the

point of development where ordinary religious influences can lodge, a preliminary preparation of cultivation is absolutely necessary: obstacles to the apprehension as well as reception of religious ideas and benign spiritual energies must be cleared away. The religious development of any people is dependent on varied social influences; the wise religious guide brings us to the recognition of religion in our practical life: so the teacher of religion to prisoners needs to harmonize his work with other departments of the prison administration, and adapt his instructions to the particular state and condition of the criminal. There is room for improvement in the time and manner of such ministrations. A systematic course of teaching should supplement simple exhortation, and a steady pressure of truth and moral means with (rather than against) the industrial and purely educational efforts, should replace desultory and sentimental methods. The great mass of first offenders may be reformed, and but a small proportion of prisoners are irreclaimable when with right means and methods reclamation is really sought. Every reformatory prison should reproduce the conditions of free life as near as may be; the requirements of good citizenship should be enforced upon prisoners until they show their purpose and ability to comply with them when released.

There are, then, three classes of reforms to be brought about by these several familiar agencies: 1st, separate confinement in jails for all prisoners therein, the creating of a better public sense of the true purpose of imprisonment, and the removal of prisons from all partisan interference,-these to be brought about by agitation and suitable legislation; 2d, the classification of prisoners, their education while in prison, and their complete rehabilitation when released, to be accomplished by the general governing administration of prisons with suitable legislation; 3d, the industrial and remedial treatment, with thorough preparatory industrial and moral training. Some who read this paper will live to see such a prison system generally adopted. Its feasibility is fully confirmed by the success of present experiments. With the reforms here named, crime will feel the force of repression, its recorded aggregate will diminish, or at least its present rank growth will be stayed.

Z. R. BROCKWAY.