New Britain herald., 1915-03-26
LEGISLATIVE MATTERS.

LEGISLATIVE MATTERS. ].
 IT Judiciary committee will re-
 S favorably on a bill which gives
 e sherifs of the state the power to 9the prisoners of the different county sJails on the highways of Connecticut. 1t Is stated that at the hearing on this measure there were a number who appeared in favor of it on the ground that it would be for the bene- fit of the prisoners to have an op- rortunity to work in the open air and in order to remove some of the ob- jections to this scheme the work will be done in the country places, where the prisoners will no attract much if any attention. The has been some opposition to the plan on that ground, but 1t is very apparent that the state farm idea is to be given trial in a somewhat modified form. There is one feature of the bill, however. which has not been made quite plain and that is the matter of compensa ton. Who will play the prisoners TOT their services OF will the money go to the state Or the county, or will any porttofi. go to the men themselves? It used to be said that men employed in such work, even though 1t ls'a part of the punishment for violating the law, should be com pensated, the money to be paid to tneir families. If nos provision is made for this then it would seem as if it should be done. Either the county or the state will undoubtedly receive some revenue from the towns where the prisoners do the work, otherwise the system would scarcely, good plan for instance for Hartford and New Britain to send men to jail and support them there while they l made repairs on the highway at New ineton with no expense to that town The system will also entail an addi- 1 tional expense because in the first !! place it will apparently be necessary to employ an overseer to take charge of the prisoners while they worked on 1 the roads in order that the service 1 may at least have some value. It would not do to have the regular men 1 at the jails act as superintendents l for while they may know all about 1 jail management they might not know 1 anything about making or repairing highways and if the state is to go into this business at all it should be done right
 baseball season the legislature is 1 going to put itself on record as being opposed to the baseball pools which 1 fourished so strongly for time last year. At the hearings on this meas
 ure it was claimed that those engaged l in the pools made a great deal o1
 money, while the. winners were due
 more to locality than to anything else
 the idea being to spread them around
 so as to keep up the interest, but
 whatever may be the underlying mo
 tive it is to be stopped and stiff
 punishment is to be provided for of
 lenders.
 Another matter that the Legislature proposes to have done is to have the
 general statutes revised so that the,
 may be gotten together in one volume
 The last time this was done was i,
 1902, and considerable legislation ha
 been enacted since, the acts being em
 bodied in a separate volume or blu
 book as it is called, for each session
 It is regarded as desirable that tn
 laws be carefully gone over and com piled in one volume and the legisla ture proposes to have committe | 1 appointed to do the work.