Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1914-01-31
TELLS OF WORK
At REFORMATORY
Superintendent Frank Moore,
of Railway, Lectures Be-
fore Judges.
PRAISES EFFICIENCY
OF THE ESSEX COURTS
Declares That Society Should
Give the Fallen" a
Square Deal"

State Reformatory at Railway were
explained by its superintendent. Rev.
DR.. Frank Moore, in an illustrated
lecture in Judge William P. Martins
courtroom at the Court House yester-
day. Incidental to his talk on the
reformatory the lecturer took occa-
sion to criticize Essex county both
favorably and adversely.
Judges Martin and Harry V. Os-
borne, of the Court of Common Pleas,
and the work they were doing in
their courts, came in for praise while
the action Of the sheriff in sending
the prisoners to the reformatory in
chains was condemned.
The Essex county courts were the
foremost in the State and in the
country for the methods used in deal
ing with Offenders, he said. The
plan now under way, as proposed by
Judges Martin and Osborne, of haV-
ing a psychologist in connection with
tho courts, was a great step in adj
vance. and one that would make the
new Jersey Justice and Jersey
methods famous throughout the land,
the speaker declared.
1T was to be deplored, he continued,
that the prisoners were still sent to
the institution chained in pairs and
fastened in groups with a long chain
No other county in the State does
1t, the speaker asserted.
DR.. Moore's talk on Railway wildly
brought before his hearers the good
that Is being done there. Pictures
showing the boys coming in, ragged,
emaciated and wasted, loafers, nearly
every one, and then a few months
later the same boys laying bricks on
new buildings, Timing the roofs,
, farming, making shirts, shoes and
clothing and in a hundred other ways
leading a life of industry that they
had never known in the outside
world.
After the lecture William s. Ketch-
am, seconded by Judge Osborne,
moved a rising vote of thanks to DR..
Moore. In seconding the motion,
Judge Osborne said the talk had
opened up a greater vista, and he
wished that there were more men
like DIR. Moore at the head of the
penal institutions.
I'm the five years under his guild
ance this institution has become ia
nous throughout the country as a
model institution and in fact is better
known outside of this State than
within it's boundaries"
At the conclusion of his address
DR.. Moore made number OF sugges-
lions, such as the adoption of pure
indeterminate sentence law. pay for
the inmates and fair chance and
restoration of citizenship, stimuli
taneous with the restoration to up
rightness."
In his address entitled What New
Jersey is Doing for Young Men Who
Break Its Laws" DR.. Moore said in
part:
'.The reformatory was established
for first male offenders between the
ages of sixteen and thirty, who are
found guilty of an offense for which
thew might be sent to State prison.
we now have 524 young men, and
the total number who have entered
TO this date is $500.
THE average age of all received
is twenty-one. 1t is a singular thing
that the majority of all those who
are arrested for crime are less than
twenty-one years of age.
Emphasis is laid on the fact that
to know how to deal with the
offender it is necessary to know what
his real character is.
"One- third of the inmates of our
institution are feeble minded. This
has been ascertained, not by guess,
but by actual scientific test, the ac-
curacy of which has been fully
proven.
There is also a class of offenders
who might perhaps be described as
moral degenerates. Then there is a
group, many of whom, who are of
average mind, who have deliberately
chosen a life of crime as a career.
About half of the offenders with
whom we are called upon to labor
are of these classes.
I'VE do not wish altogether to
blame the courts, though it is posi-
BILE il greater care were taken by
them, that these conditions might be
considerably improved.
Essex County is among the very
best and the plan now under way of
psychologist in connection with
your court is a real step in advance.
The county jails are full. These
lawbreakers must be sent somewhere
and the good hearted judge, hoping
to do the best he can for the Of
fender, sends him to the reformatory;
thus our institution is made a junk
heap, into which some good material
is put but to which about an equal
amount which has no intrinsic value
Is also thrown.
Can't Make Over scrap
The reformatory can take out of
this scrap heap that which has worth,
even though 1t may be bent, twisted
and corroded with sin, and making it
plastic it may form it ever again;
reform it, but that which is useless,
which is only dross it can do little
with. The reformatory can reform,
but ii cannot re-create. The idea
has been created in the public mind
that every reformatory is a miracle
working machine. The word "hope"
in big letters has been written over
the doorway of all our reformatory
institutions, and so it ought to be.
There is no charitable or correc-
tional institution of which society ex-
poets so much, and there is no kind
of institution that has a greater de-
sire to meet that expectation, but