The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1910-11-25
Maryland Conference Of Char.
tiles and Correction.
Extracts From Address OF DIR.
Frederick II. Wines.

EAGuCAASM H. WHWGSs
The attitude of the public toward the county
Jail system in the United States was charac-
terized as one of Ignorance, Indifference, in
humanity, custom, law, greed and graft" by
Dr. Frederick H. Wines, statistician Of the
Illinois Board of Administration of State In
stitutions before the Maryland Conference of
Charities and Correction at Frederick. Md.
on Saturday.
No fault can be found with any one jail, y
said DR.. Wines, shat may not be found with
scores of hundreds of Others There are jails
that are too large, and jails that are too small.
insecure jails, unsanitary jails, jails without
light, jails without heat, jails without yenti-
lation, filthy jails, jails that are not properly
governed, palatial jails, and jails that are not
fit for occupation. stables or pigsties. There
lis nota charge that can be brought against
the county jail System (which. has not been
brought, nor one that cannot be sustained
Questions of public policy are ultimately
decided by public opinion and sentiment. The
public at large takes but little interestin the
prison question; it recognizes no reversionary
rights upon the partTof the prisoner. It re-
CARDS his fate, be it what it may, as the work
of his own hands, and it does not very much
care what it may chance tobe. -
1T is not difficult where the conditions in
a particular county jail are shown to be
shameful and intolerable to arouse local senti-
ment in favor of some measure of improve
ment, but this does not really amount to
much. In all the essentials Of good prison
organization and management, the new Jail is
no betterLthan the old one, and the money
spent upon it is simply an addition to the inn
mense investment in wretched and indefen-
sible system. A fine building does not make
q good prison. Most architects are by nature
and by instinct copyists From generation to
generation they repeat the blunders of their
predecessors. We have3 used a stereotyped
form of construction in American prisons
That is one cause of the prevalence here to
such an alarming extent of tuberculosis. The
atmosphere of our average Jail is foul beyond
the power of language to describe. Prisons of
this sort are propagating houses of criminol-
ogy. cesspools of moral contagion. more to be
dreaded than any distributing center Of tuber-
culosis; they are breeders for the penitantiarv
they are factories of crime; a free education
of crime is furnished the inmates at the ex-
pense of the taxpayers. Each Of them is a
public nuisance, regularly endorsed and com
mended once or twice in each year by the
grand jury of..the county
Our county jail system is tradition. Our
English forbears brought it with them across
the sea some three centuries ago. together
with the shire and the assize. There were ex-
cellent reasons for its retention and extension
so Dong as the country was young and sparsely
settled. AT this late date it is an anachronism.
Neither necessity nor precedent justifies its
continued existence. The public welfare de-
mands its abolition. True, the sheriff and his
Jailers constitute very important cog in the
political party machine
The abuses of which have limited could
not long survive If convicted offenders, major
and minor misdeamants, as we'll as felons
were in the custody of the state instead of
county officials. The official result would be
the dimunition in the number of the prisons.
There are many times too many local prisons.
This needless multiplication of jails entails
heavy pecuniary burdenupon the people, The
massing of sentenced prisoners would admit
Of their classification and of the introduction
of reformatory methods of dealing with them.
The officers in immediate charge would natur-
ally be of higher grader their tenure of office
would be more secure; and they would have
no other duties to distract their attention
from their proper work; they would have little
time or opportunity for pernacious political
activity; they could be better paid. The cor
rupt fee system under which it is to the per-
sonal interest of some official that arrests
should be made would go by the board. We
might hope to see the last of iron cages. and
foreigners could no longer satirize our prisons
under the generic term of menageries.
This proposal implies, of course, complete
and final iisseyerance of the prison for rnen
convicted of crime and the house of detention
for those awaiting trial. whose guilt is yet un-
proved, and who may be innocent. From
the date of Plato to the present moment. that
has been maxim of prison reform The jail
system has prevented the realization of this
IDEAL. WA
Il shrink from the the responsibility of
formulating remedy, the problem is SO diff
cult of solution. Yet there must be an
answer. 1t involves the recognition of the
legal distinction between a man who is &C.
eused of crime and a man judged to be guilty
OF the offense with which he is charged, and
the complete separation Of these two while in
custody. 1t is not the house OF correction but
the house of detention which constitutes the
most refractory element in this complex
problem. There is no practical obstacle to the
establishment of one or more large houses of
correction in any state, except the indiffer-
ence of the legislature, and that can be over
come by a campaign Of education. confess
that do not see how at present it is possible
to dispose of the county Jail as a house of de-
very properly be so used If it were made clean
and habitable.
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