The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1911-09-26


, three years and seven months. The
close confinement aud labor without a
little recreation causes most prison.
ers to do much brooding, especially
during the long hours when they are
working or locked in their cells and
not allowed to talk.
Warden Codding hit on the idea o;
cultvating the big farm and produc-
ing food for the prisoners and also
helping the men at the same time. Thu
State owns $500 acres of as good land
as there is in Kansas. Thirteen hun
dred acres of the island in the Mis-
souri, river was cleared and is now be-
ing farmed and 700 acres are being
! farmed on the mainland. Scientific
farming with prison labor on 100 acres
produced thirty-three bushels of wheat
to the acre on the prison farm this
year, and this is the poorest wheat
year Kansas has had in fifteen years.
"The farm does two things of great
importance, said Warden Codding.
THE first is that it gives the men a
new aspect of life as they are about
to lease the prison. 1t furnishes plenty
of outdoor work and provides green
food for the prisoners at a greatly re-
duced cost and of better quality than
could be purchased. Every prison in
the country should have a farm. We
have adopted the plan of giving every
man that is worthy of being trusted
some work on the farm every year,
and six months before a man is to be
released we put him on the farm en-
tirely.
There is much fun poked at the
get-back-to-nature iGea, out there is a
world of truth in the plan. The pris-
oners are kept in cell houses, with lit
tie or no chance for social intercourse.
They see trees only once in while.
They work all day long in the shops
or the coal mines, and two or three
years of this sort of confinement will
make nearly every man moody and
cross, at outs with his fellow man and
the world and everything in it.
Prisoners Enjoy Farm Life.
But before he is due to leave us we
send the man to the farm. He gets out
among the trees and grass and the
growing corn and potatoes and works
in the hot sun. He makes hay and
helps milk the COWS and takes care of
the butter and milk. He gets away
from the stone walls and the iron
bars of the prison. They can talk and
laugh and work together.
There are rules for their guidance,
of course. But the men don't break
rules when working on the farm. They
enjoy the work too much and they
know that an infraction of the rules
means return to work in the mine or
the shops.
Nearly all the prisoners are city
men who lived their lives on paved
streets and in hot houses. On the farm
the men get tanned; they have fire
in their eyes; they have a light,
springy step. The farm work gives
them a new life, and when they leave
the prison they go determined to lead
new lives, to hunt good job and
stick to it.
"The farm work and the half-hour
recreation period have reduced the or
binary prison vices 70 per cent. The
plan of working the men nthe farm
has not been going long enough to
make any figures, but | believe that
there will be a less percentage of men
returned to prison for second terms
now than under the old plan of keep
ing them confined all the time. The
men leave with a full determination of
complete reform. None has come back
yet A few will get into their old
habits again, but l believe that there
will be less number of second-term
men in Kansas than anywhere else"
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