The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1897-03-12
ADVERSE TO REFORMAT0RY
0PPoSED TO THE SITE AND SOME
FEATURES or THE Plan.

eVer-lnherent Difficulties of Their Task
Farm Work the Best for Reformation
Reformatory should Not he Givon Up.
Senator Lounsbury, chairman of the
legislative committee on humane inst-
tutions, yesterday morning presented
IN the senate the committees report on
the state reformatory. 1t was tabled
for the calendar and printing.
The report, which is long one, is
given in the main below:
The joint standing committee on hu-
name institutions, authorized and in
structed by senate joint resolution No,
Is, ito inquire into the work done by
the commissioners appointed to estab-
Ash state reformatory; to ascertain
the contracts entered into by said COM
lnlssioners and the condition of those
contracts; to consider the ACCESSIBILITY
and eXpediency of a temporary, per-
manent or indefinite suspension of the
whole project; to make such recon-
Notwithstanding the reasons there
for-as to said committee may seem
wise and proper and to report to this
general assembly at as early day as
possible" beg leave to submit the fol-
lowing report:
The general assembly of 1895 passed
an act establishing a state reformatory
and for this purpose appropriated the
sum of 900. 1t was broad and COM
prehensive act. 1t was a small appro-
prlat1on. The advocates of a Connec-
ticut reformatory had framed their bill
upon the lines of that legislative act of
the state of New York, which more
than twenty years ago had established
the Elmira reformatory, an institution
which, as a plant, had cost $1,500,000
which cares for more than 1900 inmates
and the fame of whose success has
reached every quarter of the civilized
world. But the Connecticut act was
even more comprehensive than that of
the state of New York, in that it pro-
vded for the reception of a large class
of prisoners which the New York stat
ute did not bring within the scope of the
reformatory at Elmira.
AS originally drawn, the Connecticut
bill provided for an appropriation of
S150,0OO, but the more intelligent of it's
advocates. that is those who knew best
at Elmira, knew that a Connecticut in
stitution founded upon that plan
would require in the cost of it's plant
an immediate outlay of more than
$500, 900. In that spirit of worldly WIS.,
dom, which has been commended by
high authority, they asked only for that
which they thought they would be able
to get. Even this scanty appropriation,
in running the gauntlet of the two
houses of the last legislature, was cut
down to one-third of it's original size,
but the rest of the bill remained intact
In all its generous proportions.
These commissioners were appointed
because they were men of high repute,
of large ability, of distinguished sue
cess in the lines in which they had
lived and worked and for the reason
that they We're philanthropists, who,
without pay, were willing to give their
time and their energies to the state.
The commissioners began their work
by purchasing a tract of land contain
ing fifty-seven acres and situated in
the city of Hartford some two and one
half or three miles south of its center.
For this land they gave the sum of
seventeen thousand dollars For the
services of architects, fer grading, for
excavations, for foundations, for the
small amount of wall which rises
above the surface Of the ground and
for similar work, they have paid, or
incurred obligations which the state
is probably in law and honor bound to
discharge, to an amount of about
twenty-six thousand dollars more. At
ter all the obligations are met there
will remain in the treasury of the orig
inal appropriation, the sum of six or
seven thousand dollars.
Upon the site thus purchased, the
commissioners have planned, after the
Elmira model, and begun to build, a
reformatory, which will accommodate
three hundred inmates and which re-
uuires for its completion and for the
beginning of It's operations an addi-
tional appropriation of three hundred
thousand dollars.
Your committee are of the opinion
that the Connecticut reformatory
should never be built upon the present
site for the serious reason that it is
too far away from a railroad station,
and, because of the decisive and fatal
objection that it does not contain a
quantity Oh ldllu SulllC1SllL W ilcSt Lilc
requirements of what ought to be, in
this state, the labor of the inmates of
such an institution.
Your committee believe that this
profit to the institution and this bene-
fit to the inmates are the natural and
inevitable results of agricultural labor,
and that, when this labor is made as
largely as possible, the basis of the in
dustry of the institution, it must re-
suit in the largest possible benefit to
the prisoners and the largest possible
profit to the state. Whatever the the
cries may be, all the facts point in this
direction.
Outdoor labor is best for the Grim
inal because it is the healthiest. How
ever theorists may differ in other opin-
ions, they agree in this, that physical
disease and physical weakness are the
melting causes of a large percentage of
crime. 1t is in the filth and malaria
of the tenement districts of cities-away
from Gods fresh air-that the ranks of
criminals are chiefly recruited The lit
tie crime in the country springs mainly
from heredity. The startling aggrega-
ton of crime in the cities is largely
the result of environment.