Los Angeles herald., 1909-01-03
INTERNATIONAL
PRISONS WILL
BE DISCUSSED
CONGRESS WILL BE HELD IN
WASHINGTON NEXT FALL
UNITED STATES ORIGINATED
MOVEMENT YEARS AGO
Prominent Feature of Forthcoming
Meeting Will Be Attention Devoted
to Preventive and Child
Saving Devices
Special Correspondence of The Herald.

Special Correspondence Of The Herald.
WASHINGTON Dec. 26.-The Inter
national Prison congress, an organiza-
| ton as wide in it's scope as the Inter
| national tuberculosis congress which
| met in Washington in the fall, is COM
ing to this country in 1910, and Secre-
tary Root has asked congress for $780,
600 to show the European delegates
| some Of the best things achieved in the
| United States in improved methods of
| dealing with crime. It's an interesting
| history, that of the International
| Prison congress.
Nearly forty years ago the United
| States became a missionary body. 1t
started out to do little international
worldwide good 1t passed a resolution
| authorizing the president to send
abroad a commissioner to secure the
cooperation of European governments
| in holding a great international con-
gress for the discussion of all matters
relating to the prevention and treat
ment of crime. President Grant ap-
pointed to this important task the late
| E. G. Wines, the distinguished Ameri-
can penologist.
Filtered at the Source
DR.. Wines was warmly received in
! Great Britain and the continent, not
only by government officials and
crowned heads but by leaders in phil
anthropy and penology and by learned
juristS. Here was the opportunity for
a new international alliance, which did
not concern questions Of boundary, ter
ritOry or marketS-an international al
lance for war against crime. The
distinguished leaders of thought and
action representing their countries in
this alliance knew well enough that
this war could not be carried on merely
with the old instruments of repression,
merely by drastic instruments of tor
ture, such as fill the museum Of Nu-
remberg. They knew that it meant
something more than simply better
prisons; they knew that it meant better
laws, a reconstruction of criminal codes,
better police and a strengthening of
every form of social defense. Yet this
movement meant something even more
1t is useless to stay the flood of crime
by bikes at the mouth of the stream;
it must be filtered at it's source. Intel
ligent penology, like intelligent fores-
try, does not consist merely in cutting
down crooked trees; it means work in
the nursery, the protection of the grow
ing plants.
OF course the new association con-
cerned itself about the improvement of
prison conditions and prison disci-
pline. 1t turned houses of punishment
into houses of correction. All over Eu-
IOpo the pathway OF THIS congress can
be seen, from Sweden to Italy, from
France to Russia, in a newer and bet
ter type of prison. But its work is
just as distinctly recorded in more
practical and more philosophic attitude
of society toward the treatment of
crime. 1t has encouraged the study of
the criminal himself, as we'll as of the
law and the act which together make
him a lawbreaker; it has studied hered-
ity, environment, alcoholism and crime;
the structure of codes, the administra-
ton of courts, the treatment of the
ditions which produce crime; it has
revealed and emphasized the social con-
ditions which porduce crime: it has
extended a protecting hand over child
hood and motherhood. Economic ques-
lions such as prison labor, the assign
ment to the prisoner of a portion Of his