New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1860-10-19
WHO FILL THE WORK.HOUsR AND
PRISONS.

aIt YET tLefr SID IL much lVOd'0r serious thOuSut
ard 10 little light upOn tie origin and character
ofpetty criue aud yssrapcy il this community.
, Very recently, the Commissioners began to send
petty cnerdcrs TO TIE Work House instead ofkeep-
ing them in the CITY Prisons, and tho report be-
| fore Us records the names, national birthplace,
| age, and term Of commitment, Of 1852 persons
convicted of druL kehueess and dieordelg conduct
from tie 23d of july to the 3lst Of August OF the
present year--tte record being limited to those
! incarcerated from two TO ten days each. The
| more important criminals are therefore, quite
excluded, the report deaog only with the larger
and more turbulent class Of iawbreakers.
In this document. We fed the first official attempt
to dispe the very general misapp chen:on that the
number Of arrests made by the police Indicates the
number of breakers in the City. la the record
| before us, we have 1856 commitments; but this
| does lot by any means show taat any such num-
| Der OF persons were arrested. On the contrary,
the record shows that, out Of this number, there
were - persons who bad been arrested and com
mitted - times each; II, a. times 90, 10 times;
81, 80 times; 50 % TINES; 81, 10 times; l0i, 4
tlmes; 293 tines; 753, twice, aud only 81 once
-showipe that the average of the whole was SIX
| arrests t. each Individual.
Now. this is true in the main Of all arrests made
by the Police aud as,ureoly true of actual commit
ments; so that the irghtful total Of 1900 com
mitmenis to tbe va'i,us City Prisons III l519 by no
III. ans proves that 81 many different Per-ons we're
| mmitted Dividing tbe whole number by Il, "e
| have 700 persoos imprisoned within the year,
n tbat IN
twenty Of the population Of this CITY was lpdged IN
priron in 1859, ia as Incredible it is untrue. The
neclt ct heretofore to trace the previous history of
offer ders. and the ambition Of policemen, who
| ned to gain credit and promotion, not BY the
.uppre.son Ct crime but by the number q arrests,
have led to an entirely false exhibit of our social
condition, and fallacOu, statements, magnifed by
the jealousy Of rival cities, hsye given New-lcrk
a reputation utterly at yariatce with truth aud
the observation and experience Of her o1r people.
New-York labors under dis idyautsGcs which be-
long TO no other city in the country. lt IL the
great cntrepot for immigrants, thousands OF whom
nrriys in state Of moral AID phi, seal dc'tltuIpn
utterly inconsistent with lives Of sobrioty and
thrift. LoTg yeas of oppres'ipn, the sore pinch
in. of famine the mental darkness resulting from
the lack Of education, have degraded AMI al
most brutazed large proportion of these people
so that when freed from he restraints If dcspotlc
government, they become tasg victims to tempta-
tor, and swell the ranks Of the vicious and the
desttute Their highest ambition appears to be to
own rum shop-1nd next to that TO pa!ronlze
one. We have from eight to ten thousand los
gregg cries in this City, If which from 20 to 10 per
cent. are started and kept by immigrants, most of
them unua uralized, aud purpo,cy remaining so.
These wretcLed pests encourage their fellow nlni-
grants to spend their scanty earnings in drink, and
lead them into habits the natural end Of which i'
! psupeIisn and crime. There nreto enemies to So
cety 50 dangerous az these low grog- sellers, aud
We have the proof of il in the report before ~.
Ofthe 1852 persons named a. having been COM
mitte6 within five weeks, VIC find that 80, or
rehrly ~ per cent were born in Ireland alone; 1870
in EUgland and Scotland, only % in Germany, and
50 in other reign countries. OF the Gi2, there
are 23l born in this country bit the names clearly
show tha. very large proportion OF these are the
native horn children Of foreign parents. A still
more remarkable feature il shown by the return of
orsons frequently committed to prison. Counting
orlv those 5;ho have been locked up from 10 to -
tines. we find 167 in all, Of whom 2o9 were born
in Ireland, 80 in other foreign couutries and q Ia
the United Statcs whosc names again show their
foreign paTeLtege. Tie most painful fac! in these
statements il, that of these 300 Irish committed,
l9i were women. Mary Barry, - yesrs old;
Mary Ann Dillon, aged ~. and Sarah Wright, of
the venerable age Of 60, lead this terrible array of
drunken women, each being recorded as Is times
commit ted to prison.
1t is useless to moraliie upon such paia.ul
| facts as these. The truth s--as every well
| informed man knows-New-YoTk is cursed with
| four or five thousand drunken vagabonds, WHO arc
| perpetually in the Courts as criminals; who are
rent to prison for few days, where they are bet.
! ter fed and lodged than they ever are while at
| liberty; who have come to regard station. houses
| and PRISONS comfortable aud desirable quarters
expressly provided for their use; aud who are no
sooner discharged than they get again "sent up"
as it is called to live at the public expense in what
TO them is absolute luxury. So lorg as the I'M
regulated sale Of rum is permitted these Migrants
will nOurish so long as punishment is a positive
relief from want drunkenness among such people
will b. a recoguized means Of subsistence. But
shut up the illegal groggeres and make the pun.
iglmeut positive ard exemplary in the shape of
long terms at hard labor, and we may hope for
reformation. In the mean time, it is some consola-
ton TO know that scarcely one tenth of the petty
crime cf the city s II native origin.