The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-10-18
SOME FACTS ABOUT OUR JAlLs.
Those at New Haven, Hartford, Rutland,
 Boston and Provldenc" Severely Criti-

Boston and Provldenc" Severely Criti- cised.
 At the third New England confer
 ence of charities, correction and philan-
 thropy, held at Newport, R. l., recent ly, Joseph c. Thorpe, Jr., of Cambridge,
 president of the Massachusetts Prison
 association, submitted the report on
 prisons. The report gives a condensed
 statement of the condition of the state,
 county and city prisons of the six New
 England states. It finds that state in- stitutions are. as a rule, we'll managed,
 with good discipline prevailing, and ef- forts made in most cases to provide for the prisoners, and to do something for
 their physical and mental improve
 ment In the Rhode Island and Con-
 necticut state prisons, and more nota-
 bly, in the two Massachusetts reforma- tories, advanced reformatory methods are applied with excellent results.
 In the county and city prisons prison CTS are decently clothed and fed, but beyond this little is done. In nearly all is found serious and sometimes unsan- itary, over-crowding, requiring doub- ling up in the use of cells; great num- bers of men and women held for non- payment of,fpes habitual misdemean- ants committed over and over again on short terms; the indiscriminate mixing up of all sorts of offenders-the young thrust into association with the old, de- graded and Vile-and the prisons made inviting to the vagabond, tramp and
 drunkard as comfortable resorts, where
 they can recruit for further offending The report criticises in this respect the jails at New Haven and Hartford in Connecticut, the house of correction
 at Rutland, Vt, the Boston house of in-
 dustry and the Suffolk county house of correction in Boston and the house of correction at Providence. It considers that lthe ,cry.inS abuse of our penal sys- tenn, and one of the greatest causes Of
 crime is the treatment of the misde-
 meant class in the minor prisons, and
 1t advocates for misdemeants less inn
 prisonment and more probation under
 properly organized system; the in-
 determinate sentence; classification ac-
 cording to offense and conduct; grading
 as far as possible; release on parole;
 the perpetual confinement of the in-
 corrigible at hard regular work, and for
 all misdemeanents strict discipline of
 body and 'mind. applied under such pos itive helpful influences as are regarded of reformatory value in the outside world. To make this possible, the re- port recognizes that all penal institu- tions must be under the central super vision of the state, md that the county
 and city control of minor prisons should cease. By this change uniform ity of administration and more intelli-
 gent supervision would follow; better
 officers would be secured under proper civil-service ! rules; fewer buildings l would be needed; prisons and prison CTS could be classified and graded, and reformatory methods employed on a scale, and with results impossible in l the many county and city prisons-in | word, the report recommends that ] each New England state do just what England did in 1878 with very remark
 able results in the diminution of crime.