Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-12-27
probably, a valuable part of the prison

probably, valuable part of the prison
system of the State.
Yet it is questionable if the proposition
would meet with popular favor. Peno-
logical science has not yet been sufficiently
debated by the people of California to
create public sentiment in favor of graded
prisons, as aids of reformatory schemes.
But the time will come when the people
will be very nearly unit in favor of the
abolition of county jails as places of pun
ishment, and in favor of prisons inter-
mediary between the State Penitentiary
and Acknowledgement, and the Jail as a
mere place of confinement prior to trial.
The Industrial School has uniformly
maintained its reputation as a failure
during all the years of its existence. The
treatment for it is abolition. In its
place we need a system based upon meth
DDS similar to those adopted by the Boys
and Girls Aid Society of San Fran
cisco. Juvenile offenders are simply
ticketed criminals for life when the
regalia of even a semi-penal institu-
ton is put upon them, and they are
paraded in it before the public eye. What
ever doubt any men may entertain con-
corning the reformation of adults who
commit crime, the men are yet to be dis
covered who oppose the efforts made for
the reformation of youths whom natural
inclination or misfortune and neglect have
started along criminal paths
1t has, we think, been demonstrated that
to uniform boy as an embryotic criminal
is to erect an insurmountable barrier be-
tween him and good citizenship. The
State should have greater concern in the
making of good men out OF waits and neg
lected and viciously inclined youths, than
in the application to them of punative
rigors. Society can better afford to forgive
and reform the lad going astray, than to
punish, and confirm him a criminal.
Massachusetts takes such as San Francisco
sends to the Industrial School, and after
only sufficient detention in small groups
under paternal and maternal guard, to
ascertain something of their characters
tics, places them in distant homes to be
raised up to industry and made useful
members of society. By trusted humane
agents she keeps constant watch and ward
over them, however, and encourages and
commends, or warns and paternally
threatens them. She shows such an inter-
est in them, indeed, that unless wholly
and utterly abandoned in the insanity of
crime, they are reused up to an honest am
bition to deserve praise. As a result,
wholly disassociated from criminal or
semi-penal institutions, unknown as "jail
birds or as State wards, ninety-fve per
cent. of these youths grow up into useful
and peaceful manhood, and become worthy
of the citizenship of the republic.
On such a principle should this State
proceed with her tyros in crime, and the
first step in that direction should be the
abolition of the Industrial School at San
Francisco; the second, the establishment
of system similar to that briefly out
lined third, provision for an Intermediary
or graded prison system, and the removal
from the vicious influences of the San
Quentin and Folsom Prisons of all mere
youths for whom the slightest hope of re-
formation can be entertained. The Board
of Freeholders will do we'll to be advised
by the Pathological Commission in this
matter, and if they are, we are confident
they will drop from consideration the two
institutions that they now confess are sig
nal failures as reformatories.