The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1909-08-17

cial committee which was appointed
 in Richmond last year to inquire int
 the question of extending the benefiti
 of parole to worthy life prisoners wal
 submitted by Thomas Dudley Wells O. Hartford, secretary of the Connection Board of State Prison directors. Int | other members of the committee are Henry Wolfer, warden of the Minne sota State prison; the Rev. A. J. Steel man, chaplain of the Illinois State penitentiary; Frank w. Blackmar, pro- the University of Kansas, and Dr. Theodore Cook, Jr-, physician at the Maryland State penitentiary.
 The report is understood to be the the parole of life convicts ever under taken The main part of the report is as follows:
 THE REPORT.
 If a life prisoner has worn the badge or bondage long enough to satisfy the reasonable demands of Justice and to exhaust the deterrent effects of pun. ishment, and if he is safe to be al large, he can be put to better use in the world than to be kept within grim walls until the undertaken is called to rattle his bones over the stones. Ths wisdom of extending the parole system to life convicts who have been convict ed of no previous crime involving mor- al turpitude and whose record behind locks and bars has been clean and not man who is responsive to decent inn pulses is worth more to the State and to himself out of prison than in pris- on. Life Imprisonment Implies civil death, and discriminating resurrection from that death is both a social gain and an individual gain.
 Judiciously exercised and carefully s1fting the wheat of the fit from the chaff of the unfit. the policy of parol- ing life prisoners would be the father would be the mother of harm. No branch of penal administration is ca pable of greater benefit on the one hand or of greater abuse on the other hand than the parole scheme.
 DIVERSITY OF POLICY.
 A consideration which may not be ignored in q discussion of the problem and which makes for caution in con- clusions is the diversity in the com munity attitude toward life penalties. cies under which the 5000 life con- vtcts, mostly homicides, who may now be counted. in the United States were condemned to. tread the wine-press of life imprisonment. Reflecting a diff fering public opinion as translated into criminal codes and judicial procedure, some States are nimble, and others tor pid, in affixing to fe1ons the ife-sen- tence tag. The result is a curious con- trast in the relative census of life con- various commonwealths.
 t For example, the ratio of life prison CTS to the general population is eight cen times as great in Connecticut as as great in Florida as in Massachu- setts; six times as great in West vir- ginia as in the neighboring State of Virginia; four times as great in Cali f<x- f,, ox I1o times as great in New York sas in Pennsylvania: and over three times as great in Indiana as in Iowa. Nat urally in the black belt of the South, the larger problem of color jostle each other, the statistics of life conyfcts are the p1umpest.
 RELEASE OF LIFE CONNECTS.
 Diversity of policy doesn't stop with getting life convicts into prison; it also operates in getting them out of prison. Habit and tradition, which vary with latitude and longitude and which cannot be pulled up by the roots like a weed, but may be slowly trained like vine, make or mar the methods of dealing with the life prisoner. In some States the iron gate is not likely to swing outward for the life man until he is summoned by the Grim Reaper, while in other States a life sentence is interpreted in practice, to be eQuiva-
 
 a convict who, having served the. spe- cified, period, has laundered prison record and who manifests a disposi- ton to put his hand to the plough of back is considered eligible for condi- tional release. To cite a single con- trast-a contrast divided by a. conti- nent-the ratio of pardons of life pris- oners to the general census during the past five years has been ten times as great in Oregon as in Connecticut.
 In a few States the parole principle is already extended to the fellow serv- ing a life sentence. For instance, in California a well behaved life prisoner may be paroled after eight years; in Montana, after thirteen years and nine months; in New York, after twenty years in cases of murder in the second degree; in Minnesota, after twenty-six years; and in Virginia, after ten years in some cases and fifteen years in other cases. In several States in which the parole policy does not. in terms. apply to the life prisoner a conditional par don, which resembles parole as mist resembles rain and which is rat least a steriiized edition of parole, may be granted him.
 Tn some States no definite and con- tains. Provision for parole is lacking; no plan for a re-examination of life cases after a given period is in opera ton; and pardons appear, on occasion, 
 side pressure than on the basis of in- side inquiry. Under these circum- stances, one life prisoner may be taken while another of equal worth is left, and the distribution of justice is hap hazard and uneven
 CONDUCT OF LIFE PRISONERS.
 The conduct of life prisoners is an- other matter that must be taken into account in making up a schedule of the assets and liabilities of the parole proposal. Impressive and convincing are the reports which, in answer to in- Quiries, have been made to the conn mittee by prison wardens and which show that the behavior of the bulk of felons immured within penal walls un- der life sentences is excellent. In sew eral instances life convicts are declared to be the best class of prisoners, and their department shines like a good deed in a naughty world. The excep- tions-the life prisoners who put devil try above decency, rebelliousness above reason, and trickery above truth-are numerous enough to prove the rule.