THE TREATMENT OF THE MISDEMEANANT

[This excellent summary of the present correctional treatment of the misdemeanant was read by Amos W Butler, chairman of the Committee on Corrections, at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Memphis, in May, 1914.]

Who knows how many persons are confined in local jails in the United States? Who comprehends the magnitude of the problem involved? How many appreciate its relation to the individual, to his family, to society?

The Bureau of the Census tells us that 452,055 persons were committed to county and municipal prisons in 1910, under sentence or for non-payment of fine. We call them misdemeanants. It is the name ordinarily given one whose offense the law does not deem sufficiently serious to warrant a State prison sentence. If the ratio of commitments to the whole number received is the same throughout the United States as in Indiana, it is probable that one and one-half million people annually come under the influence of these local prisons.

We know that jails are the spoil of partisan politics. They are maintained largely on the fee basis. Most of them were built without any proper idea of the purpose they were intended to serve. As a rule they are insanitary, they lack proper provision for separating the sexes and there is no means of employment. Often they are crowded beyond their capacity. There is little attempt to classify the prisoners. They congregate in the corridors and the older and more experienced in criminal ways instruct the others in vice, immorality and crime. In how many such institutions are women not only waited upon but searched by men?

The late Samuel J. Barrows once remarked: “Back in 1876 a committee of the New York Legislature said: ‘There is no one source of crime more operative in the multiplication of thieves and burglars than the common jail’ and that statement still remains true of a large number of jails throughout the country.”

Many of you have heard Dr. F. H. Wines’ scathing denunciation of these institutions. Delegates to the International Prison Congress who visited this country in 1910 declared our local jail system as bad as it was centuries ago in Europe. “Every jail I saw ought to be wiped off the face of the earth,” said Thomas Holmes, secretary of the Howard Association of London, and this was the general verdict of these distinguished prison officials and penologists. It was the idleness of the prisoners, the lack of fresh air, the indiscriminate mingling, the long-delayed trials that impressed them so unfavorably. “I asked two colored men how long they would be in and they said they did not know; that they had waited eleven days for a trial,” said Dr. Eugene Borel, professor of law in the University of Geneva, Switzerland. “That is a shocking travesty of justice. In Europe a prisoner gets a hearing within twenty-four hours.”

Yet under such conditions as these we detain hundreds of thousands of persons:—The vagrant, the drunkard, the witness, the runaway boy, the first offender, the hardened criminal, the man awaiting trial, the convicted law-breaker. What can we expect but that they will degenerate in body, mind and morals? Even where work is provided, as is done in some larger jails and workhouses, it is under the old contract system, which we should like to see abolished. In some States misdemeanants are employed on the public highways. However successful this may be in some parts of the country, it would probably not be in conformity with the public sense in the more thickly settled communities, or practicable to any great extent in the more northern latitudes.

The whole question of the apprehension, treatment and release of the misdemeanant is of tremendous importance. While prison reforms are coming with surprising rapidity, they have been confined largely to the felon. The misdemeanant has been neglected.

In the first place, what are the qualifications of the average policeman? Ordinarily he is without training or experience. His politics have usually had more to do with his appointment than any other consideration. What part can such a policeman play in an enlightened system of penology?

In a number of States the constitution proclaims that the penal code shall be founded on principles of reformation and not of vindictive justice. How far has that been interpreted in the statute laws? The provision of most of our State constitutions that justice shall be administered “speedily and without delay” is wholly forgotten. We generally think that the day of imprisonment for debt is past. Yet many jail prisoners are held for debt—the fine assessed against them. The man of means pays his fine and goes free; the man without money suffers imprisonment under conditions which menace health and morals. It frequently becomes necessary for his family to ask for help; sometimes he loses his job. If he becomes embittered, or vindictive, need we wonder at it?

The picture is not all dark. Here and there light is breaking through. We are coming to understand that the policeman can be a social agent, a next friend, an instructor in obedience to the law. We are beginning to regard as the best officer the one who makes the fewest, not the most arrests. In some cities women are being added to the police force, and there are police matrons, and jail matrons, and even women judges.

“Humanizing the courts” is an expression coming more and more into use. Instead of sending to jail men who are unable to pay their fines, judges are releasing them conditionally and giving them a chance to earn the money. The plan works admirably. Judges are finding that their confidence is seldom misplaced. This principle has been enacted into law in Massachusetts and other States. Elsewhere it has been practiced without special authority of law. In New York State the probation law provides for the collection of fines on probation and also restitution on probation.

We are further coming to believe that too many persons are sent to prison. Some States have adopted a system of probation, under which many lawbreakers are reclaimed to society without the stigma of a prison sentence. Probation has been successfully tried in Massachusetts, New York and other States.

We have learned, too, the value of the farm colony for the open-air employment of almost all classes of public wards. This has been applied to the insane in Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Indiana; to epileptics in New York, New Jersey and Indiana; to feeble-minded in Massachusetts, New Jersey and Indiana; to both dependent and delinquent children in many States, and more recently to certain classes of prisoners, including all kinds of misdemeanants of both sexes. What is being done at Cleveland, at Occoquan and at Guelph is well known. The most recent development of this movement is the New York State Farm for Women Misdemeanants. The simple, inexpensive, yet substantial form of buildings, the freer life and the opportunity to contribute in part at least to their own support, make it far better for the inmates and cheaper to the taxpayer.

In Indiana the first step in this direction came about through the establishment in 1907 of a State workhouse for women misdemeanants as a branch of the Women’s Prison at Indianapolis. The institution is entirely in control of women. Then the Board of State Charities began a vigorous campaign for a state farm for male misdemeanants. Conditions in the county jails were shown forth in the following paragraph:

HOW PRISONERS LIVE AND LEARN IN INDIANA COUNTY JAILS.

They live in idleness at the expense of the taxpayer.

They learn vice, immorality and crime.

They become educated in criminal ways.

They degenerate both physically and morally.

In 1913 an appropriation was secured, the land has now been purchased, and work on the buildings will soon begin. The law contemplates that the construction work shall be done largely by State Prison and Reformatory men. The new institution is for men who have a jail sentence of sixty days or more, and prisoners may be transferred from the State institutions whenever room for them exists at the farm. Eventually there will probably be several such farms in the State, and this movement, with proper amendments to existing laws, should in time do away with the use of the county jails for the confinement of convicted offenders, and leave them only as places of detention.

We now look forward to the time when we shall have a form of indeterminate sentence for misdemeanants. The success of this form of sentence for felons in Indiana as in many other States justifies our belief that it will prove valuable in the treatment of misdemeanants. Certainly some improvement can be made over the present illogical short sentence, which benefits neither the individual nor the public, in whose name he is held.

New York has already taken an important step in this direction. Misdemeanants between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one are to be committed under an indeterminate sentence to the reformatory for this class of offenders, authorized by the legislature of 1912. The site for this new institution has not yet been located. It is the purpose of those interested to place it on a farm and to make it one of the most complete and modern of reformatories.

Another needed reform, State control of county jails, is receiving some attention. J. S. Gibbons, Chairman of the Prison Board of Ireland, said: “I tell you what I think you lose sight of in this country: That all these splendid reformatories deal with merely a drop in the ocean compared with the county and city jails to which your thousands of prisoners go, and where many are manufactured. We were in exactly the same condition up to 1877 when we brought county and city jails out from under local authorities in the United Kingdom. We found the antecedent to all reform was State centralization. In 1877 every prison and jail was put under central administrative authority, and the expenses paid out of the imperial funds. Three acts were passed simultaneously for the three kingdoms. We then began at the bottom, closing all the superfluous ones, and in that way we were able to close about half.”

I have the following statement from Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, of England: “The Prison Act, 1877, transferred the Local Prisons of this Country (i.e. prisons for the confinement of all classes of prisoners other than those sentenced to penal servitude) from the control of local ‘Visiting Magistrates’ to that of the State. The Act came into effect on the 1st of April, 1878, 113 Local Prisons being so transferred. Since that date, their number has been reduced to 56. At the time of their transfer, the Local Prison population stood at 21,030—the highest known. From that date a continuous fall was recorded until 1885, when the numbers reached slightly over 15,000. After a series of fluctuations below and above this number, the population stands at 15,000 at the present time. Relatively to the total population of the country, the figure for 1878 represented 686 committals per 100,000, while that for the year ended 31st March 1912 was the lowest on record, viz., 439 per 100,000.”

Massachusetts, perhaps, has led the agitation in this country for State control of county jails. In other States there has been some publicity in favor of such action. An offender against the federal law becomes a prisoner of the United States and is under the direction of the federal judge. Why should one who violates a State law not be a prisoner of the State? That is the theory that underlies the new law for jail supervision in Indiana. Offenders against the State law have been placed under the oversight and authority of the judge of the circuit or criminal court, who is a State official. This judge may say where and how the prisoner shall be detained, and if the jail is unsatisfactory he may condemn it. He is authorized to prescribe rules formulated by the Board of State Charities, which has supervision of all jails and other public charitable and correctional institutions. A violation of these rules, once entered in his order book, is in effect a contempt of court.

While these advance steps have been taken, the reform is by no means general. Most of the States continue to use, unchanged, the system long since discarded in Europe, whence it came. The results are not reformatory. On the contrary, they are destructive alike to the individual and those with whom he later comes in contact. Local jails are recruiting stations for our larger State correctional institutions. We should make greater progress in reformation if we did not first pollute the stream we are going to treat.

The outlook is not bright, but it is by no means hopeless. The evils which exist are the natural result of the system we adopted. Let us change the system. Let us begin at the bottom and study all the steps in the treatment of the offender—his apprehension, detention, trial, conviction, probation, confinement, treatment, employment, conditional release, final discharge. Let us set as our goal:

1. A system of police recognizing character, merit, and efficiency in the personnel and a proper social view for its operations.

2. A prompt hearing for every person arrested.

3. The establishment of juvenile courts for all children’s cases.

4. Provision for the care and detention of delinquent children outside the jail.

5. A probation system for adults similar to that of juvenile courts.

6. Separate trials for women offenders.

7. A modification of the present system of fines in order not to discriminate against the poor.

8. Classification of prisoners, confinement of individuals apart from each other and absolute sex separation in county jails.

9. The prohibition of the use of the jail for any other purpose than that of temporary detention.

10. The abolition of the fee system.

11. State control of all minor prisons.

12. The establishment of industrial farms for the convicted misdemeanants.

13. A form of indeterminate sentence for misdemeanants.

14. Their release on parole under supervision.

15. The abolition of contract labor.

The following members of the Committee on Corrections approve and sign the report:

Major R. W. McClaughry

Julian W. Mack

Arthur W. Towne

Frank E. Wade

Joseph P. Byers

John J. Sonsteby

Quincy A. Myers

W. H. Moyer

A. J. G. Wells

J. A. McCullough

John H. Dewitt

Archdeacon B. M. Spurr

Mr. E. Stagg Whitin disagrees with what is said about the employment of convict labor on public highways in the more thickly-settled northern States.