The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-04-23
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
Editorial Opinions of the Leading Journals
upon Current opios-compiled Every
Dayfor the Evening Telegraph.
PRISON STATISTICS IN THE UNITED
STATES

From the NJ y. EUenu,g Post
The study of the latest reports of the State
prisons in the United States brings to light
many statistical items which are suggestive
as we'll as interesting.
OF our thirty-seven States, three-Dela-
ware, Nebraska, and West Virginia-are
without State prisons; one-New York-has
five, including the Criminal Lunatic Asylum;
Indiana-has three; and one-Pennsyl-
vania-bas two; the remainder have one
each. There are, therefore, forty in the
country. The estimated value of the real
and personal property of these institutions is
about S12, 100000 The number of cells Is
10, 33S, and their average dimensions eight
feet long, four and half wide, and seven
high. giving 252 feet as the cubic contents of
each, or Just about one half the size required
for the proper sanitary accommodation of q
convict
The average daily number of prisoners is
1851; the whole number of vfficers and at
tendants, 1912, and the aggregate salaries
paid them, $95S,472 The average number
of prisoners to each attendant is twelve; the
extremes being in the State of Nevada, where
here is an attendant for every two and half
convicts; and Virginia, where there is but one
q o every twenty. 1t is remarkable that the
prisons in these two States also represent the
extreme differences in discipline; that of
ginia the least SO, of all the prisons of the
Union.
The total ordinary expenditure of the pri-
sons was $3,340, 535; the total earnings,
So, ,376, 900; the aggregate excess of expendi-
lures over earnings in thirty prisons was
$S77, ,2S1; the aggregate excess of earnings
over expenditures in the other ten, Sill, ,955;
leaving an aggregate of deficits amounting to
$765, 1926.
The average per capita cost of convicts in
the State prisons, including salaries, was
$780, and the average per capita earnings,
including all the prisoners, whether produc-
tive laborers or not, were $780, The most
economically administered prison was the
Albany Penitentiary (the prison of the Dis
trict of Columbia), where the inmates we're
subsisted and governed for $113 each; the
most expensive was that of Nevada, where
each man cost $1254. Had all the State pri-
sons of the country been managed with the
same economy as the Albany Penitentiary,
their earnings would have paid expenses and
left surplus of $448, 232.
The whole number of inmates engaged in
remunerative labor was 1000, being a frac-
tion less than one-fourth.
The contract system of labor prevails in
eighteen State prisons; that of working the
men on State account in twelve. The ave-
rage annual earnings per man, in the former,
were $137; in the latter, exclusive of the two
prisons of Pennsylvania, $262; including
them, $208. The average per diem paid by
contractors was fifty-one and a half cents; the
extremes being found in the Massachusetts,
prison, where it was ninety-four cents, and in
that of New Jersey, whore it was thirty five.
The average number of hours of labor is nine
and three-quarters.
The average length of sentences (ex-
cluding of course those sentenced for life) is,
for the whole country, years and IA days,
the prisons of Virginia and South Carolina
furnishing the extremes; the average terms
being ia the first s years, and in the second 2
years. 1t is noticeable that the length of
sentences is shorter by more than fourth in
the Northern than in the Southern States;
being in the former years and months, in
the latter years, 10 months, and 16 days,
although persons are sentenced to State
: prison for far more trivial offenses at the
South than at the North; in Tennessee, for
example, for stealing fence rail valued at s
cents. The proportion of sentences for life
in all the prisons together is about per
cent, and the period of detention for this
class of prisoners is, on an average, between
and years. A man sentenced for life has
better chance for an early release than one
sentenced for 20 or even Is years.
OF the inmates of our State prisons, % per
cent. are returned as wholly illiterate; 20 per
cent as intemperate; and II per cent as
never having learned trade. These figures
show to what a fearful extent ignorance,
drink, the want of industrial training, and
idleness and evil associations as the combined
results of all, are stimulants or occasions OF
crime.
There is one class of percentages deduct
BILE from these reports which has sad signi
ficance. Nearly one-fourth of all the inmates
of these grim abodes of guilt and crime ano
wretchedness are minors-mere boys, rang
ing from twenty years down to the child that
has not reached his teens
Will not all good citizens be moved by such
an exhibition, first, to devise preventive agen.
cies to keep these youths from falling into
crime; and, secondly, to found reformatory
homes, houses of discipline, in which cura-
tive healing processes shall be applied to
them after they have fallen?
About one-tenth of the inmates of our State
prisons in a given year receive executive
clemency. These sixteen hundred annually
pardoned criminals represent many times
that number of applicants in fact those whC
do not apply are small minority. The de
sire and expectation of pardon, on the part O
convicts, has become sore evil. They are
always hoping, planning, working to get out
and this makes them restless, irritable, anC
unfit for reformatory influences The tru,
plan is to place our prisons on proper basis
make their administration permanent, pu
them into the hands of competent officers
and then perhaps to extend still further tn
admirable New York plan, by which the pri
soners pardon is put in his own hands; tn
terms of imprisonment being regularly short
ened by complete evidence of reformation.
THE LIMITATIONS OF DEFENSE