The Daily clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1866-1888, 1884-02-17
REPORT OF
COMMITTEE ON PENITENTIARY.

punSnlng ana lmprlSonlEg the conVctS In the state
of Mississippi, the prison houses leasing system and
treatment of the same and while they have been able
in some instances trace the results of the manage
ment in some of the camps want of time and dispo-
sition upon the part of the guards at different points
to evade process and even. examination and of sub
lessees to retaTd thorough investigation, has done
much to delay and prevent Your committee from
making as full and perfect an investigation we had
hoped could be done and the necessities of the
demands, they beg leave to report as follows:
The number of convicts for the years 1882 and 1888
hand 1863 not including county convicts in the
walls and of this number have report the start
ling fact that 217 have been and reported dead
A list of the of whom and at what camps they
died. hereto attached and marked Exhibit for your
information, which means death rate of 1854 per
cent per annum; as, see Exhbit'A This includes the
death rate of all convics from one year to life, but
when you eliminate the shorter terms and take the
per cent of the ten years previous alone there about
in each hundred who die and never live out their
time. A thorough examination has been made of the
Penitentiary and all of its buildings workings ETC., in
the State Capital and report the neat in all of It's
departments and well kept; the buildings and grounds
in good condition. some repairs Of machinery,
and commodious Hospital needed If the leasing
system is to be kept up nasmuch as the convcts are
when sick, frequently returned in great numbers to
the walls by the sub essees for attention The pris
Oners confined in the walls well fed and cared for
comfortably clad and doing as well in confine
ment could well do-he of acute diseases being
very few and the death rate remarkably small q per
very much beloved by the prisoners
The committee has taken quite an amount of testi
mony on the leasing system, subletting etc, as
adopted by the laws of this State, and we have delb
eraey concluded that that system is even than
the old English plan of letting out out prisons
franchise and that crimes have been committed under
the guse of our laws, cruel and offensive than
in Fleet Marshalsea by Higgins Bainbridge, Corbit
& Acton, under the English SYSTEM. lille they ad;
NIT that the State prison has been run without
pense to the State, and in fact at profit of S.,
yet can but say that this has been done at the
pense of human lives-the lives of helpless manacled
human beings, and this money only be regarded,
it is due the State lies in her treasury, blood
money, and can but recommend its expenditure in a
manner to relieve the present convict system of this
State and removing this cursed bloted page from our
State history and to relieve convict system of the
just reproach; that the punishment of common larceny
the smaller felones is equal to capital punishment
and this penalty imposed by the hand of the low ire
sponsibe and dasardly cowardy guards of the worst
character and meanest instincts without the least SEM
bance of law. Investigation shows the lessees to be
humane and generous men, who upon occasions
when the crueltes of their underlings have to
their ears, have promptly punished or discharged;
but this committee is compelled to say, that in some
instances they have not made their subleses as care
full they might have done; and that a close exami-
nation into the treatment of the prisoners the law
and their lease required, would have caused them to
annul and cancel many of their sub-lessees Those
having control and charge of convict labor both
on farms and public works, far has to our
knowledge, have used the most inhuman and uncom-
mon modes of punishment, and totally without au-
thorty of law-often "puJng" the prisoner until he
would faint and in instances where the prisoner has
been reported escaping he has been shot down and
killed, and in no instance OF sudden death have we
been able to find that coroner jury of inquest has
been called in; by the lash used the naked back
while the sufferer by four strong holding each
hand foot, stretched out the frozen ground
stumps and logs and beaten often with three
hundred stripes at tme which than once it is
thought resulted in the death of the convict; men
unable to work have been driven to the death, and
have died when fettered in the chain gang With
one exception, a plantation in this State.
where the prisoners poorly fed, that they wou
pick up and eat the OF nat had been dropped
in the field and gather the wild berries along the rows
and eat the question of food for these men is not
one of the numbered crimes generally, as the rule
seems to be to feed oe and then run them as long as
they could stand up but, when working in the swamp
or fields they refused pure water and were COM
PEELED to drink out of the swamps plow burrows in
the fields in which they abored although pure water
was at hand. One instance of this was on the
N. and E. r. r., where the were unable to get
contractors to work at given point known as Cany
Swamp uncommonly hard work and unhealthy: they
hired from the sublessees the labor of convcts at 81
per hand per day. to do this work. they were placed
in this swamp in water ranging above their knees in
almost nude state spading in cany and rooy ground
in bare feet chained together by chains to ether that
retted into the esh compelled to attend to the calls
of nature in this ne they stood chained day in and