The Montgomery advertiser., 1908-08-15
CONVICTLABCR PROBLEM

By Fredric J. Haskin.

cent: the lowest Is the lease system. A per cent,
 There are over 2,00o jails in this country, besides penitentiaries, lock- ups, stockades, work houses and chain gangs. In these there are s0,000 pris- oners maintained at cost of ts00.ooo q year. more than would be needed to run trades and grammar schools for the education of youth and the con- sequent prevention of crime. Of these prisoners over half have been sent up for drunkenness. vazrancy, or disor- derly conduct. The great majority are ignorant and poverty stricken, and hence easy victims to temptations that result in petty crimes. From this half the States with the lease system make their money. The fines are usually heavy. the prisoner unable to pay, and when the costs are added in. he finds he must serve a sentence of astonish~ ing length.
 For instance. in the month of March. 1904. when a special investigation was being made in Georgia, 149 persons were convicted of misdemeanors. disor- derly conduct. walking on park grass. atc.. and were given sentences aggre- gating nineteen years on the RIbb County chain gang. It is alleged that crime hunters" are ever on the alert for such offenders. that they have them brought into the courts and see that immediate sentence is given. then lease them for worm on the farms.
 Florida's unenviable record was fur ther enhanced a few years ago when two young men, making q walking tour through the South. hunting and fish ing as they went, were arrested for vagrancy and kept as prisoners in loathsome camp for several months un- til they finally made their escape, scared. starved and ragged, and en- deavored to awaken public interest in their behalf.
 The camps where these convicts are demoralizinE to the convict, demoral- izing to society In general. It Ia al- legged that the guards are ignorant and brutal, that the treatment of the wo- men--both white and black-is terrible and unprintable. that immortality Is the rule and the effect is especially de- humanizing. Georgia's system has been responsible for a large percentage of lllegitimate, children. in five con vict lease camps there having been found twenty-five.
 Another great evil is the mixing of the juvenile criminals with the older ones. Before South Carolina abolished its lease system, fifty-two little negroes between the ages of and 16 were IouHo Tn one camp one llttie relloW or being sent up for fifteen months for stealing ride on a bicycle. Before Louisiana abolished its lease system. a system that took toll of one out of every ten prisoners in camp each year --27S youths between 13 and 2I were found mixed in with hardened crimin- asl learning the worst of life in that advanced school for crime.
 A little Alabama lad, condemned to death on the gallows, few years ago, caught the hand of the chaplain as he went up. and when that man offered encouragement, the boy said: T don't seem never 10 have had no chance mo- how" A graduate of A convict camp, an example of what misguided legislation and uneducated public opinion will per- nit. he voiced not only his own, but the grievance of all the ignorant, the un- trained, the ineompetents of the Nation. In answer to such cries reform schools and industrial institutions for crimin- als are appearing, but too slowly to meet the needs of It's vagrant people. Copyright, 1908. by Frederick !
 Haskin.1
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