THE OMAHA MEETING OF THE AMERICAN PRISON ASSOCIATION. Report of the Delegate.

Omaha, Neb., October 20, 1911.

If the delegates to the American Prison Association are to form a judgment of the people of Omaha from the cordial reception they have met in this large western city, the conclusion may easily be reached that these people are most generous, hospitable and appreciative.

The first meeting of the Association was held in the Auditorium connected with the Hotel Rome. The number of delegates which had registered on the first day of the meeting was about 300. The Auditorium will seat several hundred and was almost filled by the delegates and citizens of Omaha, who appeared to be deeply interested in the proceedings.

Before us on a platform banked up with roses and carnations and draped above with the American Flag, sat the President, T. B. Patton, of Pennsylvania, and other officers of the Association; Governor Aldrich of the State of Nebraska, Mayor Dahlman of Omaha, and other eminent citizens.

Judge Lee Estelle, Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements, presided over this meeting. I understand that he came from a hospital, really a very sick man, to discharge a duty which he had previously agreed to perform. After a few brief words in which he referred to the badge adopted for the members on this occasion, which consists of a small gilt key with the usual ribbon attachment, he assured us that this key indicated an entrance into all the homes of Omaha and informed us that all the doors were not only open but really off their hinges for us. He introduced Governor Aldrich who then made the main welcoming speech.

He dwelt upon the material advantages of the State of Nebraska, presenting many statistics to indicate the vastness of the resources of this large state. Many of his contrasts were quite humorous. In figures he mentioned the value of the manufactured products of the State for 1910 and compared the amount with the value of the oil produced in the same year in the entire United States, showing a difference in favor of the State of Nebraska on these two accounts of more than $37,000,000. He also showed that the value of beef produced in the State exceeded by $2,000,000 the value of tobacco products in the United States for 1910. He told us that four thousand students were in attendance at their University, ninety per cent. of whom came from the State of Nebraska.

Mayor Dahlman followed with a kindly speech.

President Patton then delivered his annual address. If I may select any key note of his remarks, it would be to the effect that all of our prison officials should be selected, not only for the ability to govern and restrain, but more especially for the ability to influence and to build up the characters of those who are under them.

“The enactment of such wise legislation as is best calculated to properly protect society and to provide, under humane discipline and restraint, an adequate punishment for the offender; the securing of the proper and regular employment of the prisoner in prison under wise state law; the obtaining of a rightful portion of the prisoner’s earnings for the use of his dependent family; the systematic investigation of their real needs and the furnishing of prompt relief to the worthy and possible effort for their rehabilitation or removal to more favorable surroundings; the invoking of the probation law where such will be conducive to the best results; the comprehensive study of the prison population as far as possible to secure proper statistics on which to base accurate results; the well organized effort now at work in a number of our larger centers of population, in the study and betterment of the slum districts and the more general effort in many localities in the interest of the betterment of the environment of the children and youth, are all encouraging signs of the far-reaching interest at work for the uplift and saving of humanity, and to this end we say, Godspeed to the organizations which in carrying forward their work, have gone back to the childhood days, and which, striving to break the bondage, not only of heredity and environment, are, through sympathy, love and interest thus securing a foothold in districts, communities and individual homes as well, and in which their organized effort is bearing a fruitage most encouraging, indeed and bids fair in due course of time to prove a strong bulwark in the reduction of crime, as well as of the criminal class.”

He referred with feeling to the deaths of Gen. Brinkerhoff and John J. Lytle, referring to the latter as an Apostle of Peace and Good Cheer. He then introduced Dr. Charles Richmond Henderson, of Chicago, who spoke with his usual energy and earnestness. He would do away with municipal and county jails, except as they may be necessary as places of temporary detention. They are run on such a small scale, he said, that the men in charge cannot have the training nor facilities that should be present in the reformation of criminals. He would have the criminals turned over to the state for punishment and reformation as soon as they are convicted by the county or municipal courts. Dr. Henderson emphasized the desirability of classifying wrongdoers and declared that the stamp of criminality should not be placed upon men who are not in spirit criminals. He pleaded especially for more humane treatment of habitual drunkards. “Can you cure a drunkard by giving him ten days in jail, in an atmosphere of degradation and crime, when the habit is to him a thing of generations?”

He commended the system recently adopted in the District of Columbia under which inebriates are sent to an institution in the country, where they are allowed to work in the open air under wholesome environment and are not branded as of the criminal class. “Sooner or later the student of criminology must come to a realization of the importance of the study of the child.” Heredity was mentioned as a factor in the problem, and the subject of early environment should receive careful study.

He congratulated the Association for their good work in advocating the adoption of laws providing for the Indeterminate Sentence. This does not mean that a man must always be discharged before the time of his maximum sentence, it may also mean the creation of tribunals to decide whether a man is ready to be let loose upon society regardless of the time of his sentence. In other words, our prisons and reformatories should be conducted as hospitals and as institutions for those whose minds are diseased, from which patients are discharged upon recovery of their malady.

THE BIG MEETING.

The interest of the citizens of Omaha was displayed in their attendance at the mass meeting held on Sabbath afternoon in the Auditorium of the city. This building has accommodations for several thousand, and was nearly filled. This meeting was addressed by Professor Henderson, Warden Gilmour of Toronto, Canada, Bishop Tihen of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Lincoln, Neb., and Maud Ballington Booth. It is not my intention in this communication to present to you even a synopsis of what was said on this great occasion, but such meetings arouse interest in our cause to many whom our published reports never reach.

Professor Henderson condemned the changes of officials in our prisons on account of political conditions. He condemned the construction of iron cells for prisoners, saying that it was absurd that in the construction of prisons some dealer in structural iron should impose upon the officials a building more suitable for the caging of animals in a zoölogical garden.

Warden Gilmour of Toronto, Canada, emphasized the importance of fresh air and sunshine as a reformatory agency. “If we can take our prisoners from the jails and the workhouses and build them up physically, which we must do first if we would build them up morally, we have made the first great step toward reform.” He has a farm of 840 acres, to which he has sent from 800 to 900 prisoners. Of them, he has failed in the reform of 3 out of each 100, and has succeeded in 97 out of every 100. The great majority of our jail population does not consist of criminals, he said, but of men who have been the victims of their environment. With the proper environment, such as fresh air and sunshine, wholesome work, kind treatment, trust reposed in them, and the sympathy and help of men and women interested in their welfare, they become useful members of society.

“The first man created, so divine history tells us, proved a delinquent, and God’s sentence upon him was to go forth and till the soil; can man to-day impose a better sentence upon our delinquents?”

Bishop Tihen dwelt upon the importance of investigating the causes of crime. “If you go down into the slums, and find that the chief cause of crime is the unfit habitations, do not condemn the habitations and stop there; find out the owner of them who profits from the dollars received for their rent, and denounce him. If you find the poor orphan girl working in the big department store at wages at which you know she cannot live upon, do not wait until you find her a few months later when she has become a fallen woman through the necessity to which hunger has driven her, and then try to reform her; go at once to the proprietor and demand that she receive living wages.”

Maud Ballington Booth electrified the great audience with accounts of what had been accomplished by the Gospel of Love and Hope. She told briefly of her work of taking men from prisons and giving them a chance on the farms and in the homes of our people. She finds positions for them when they can be recommended, and during the last fifteen years she recalled that many thousands have been saved by such treatment from going back to lives of crime. “It’s hope that they need, and there’s hope for all of them; if there’s hope for the millionaire, there’s hope for the burglar; if there’s hope for the politician, there’s hope for the man behind prison walls.”

ANNUAL SERMON.

The annual sermon was preached by Frank L. Loveland, of Topeka, Kansas. His address was eminently practical. He thought that prevention was better than rescue. The work of the “Good Samaritan” was good, but it were far better to extirpate the robbers. In these days the robbers are not the wild Bedouins of the desert, but society which tolerates conditions which bring forth a crop of criminals.

PRISON DISCIPLINE.

The report of the standing committee on Prison Discipline was presented by Warden Scott of the New Hampshire Prison, and was heard with great interest.

“Rules and regulations degrading in their character have long since been found to be more a menace to our system of prison discipline than otherwise. We have seen the downcast eye, the striped suit, short hair cut, lockstep, the dark cell and various forms of methods of corporal punishment replaced by more humane, more sensible regulations, and venture the assertion that in no prison in the country where this has been done will one fail to find the standard of discipline improved.

“When a man has been sentenced by the court to prison at hard labor, and during his confinement is of good behavior, he has the right to expect that no further punishment will be inflicted upon him than that prescribed by the court.

“The knowledge that special privileges are not granted to any prisoner that cannot be earned by every other is an effective aid to discipline. So, also, is cleanliness of person, clothing, bedding and cell essential to good conduct. Plenty of well-cooked and well-balanced food should be provided, a well-stocked library, a school for the illiterate, a new voice in chaplain occasionally at divine service, lectures on interesting subjects by prominent men, entertainments on holidays, all these are good for the prisoner and good for the prison.”

The plan of grading prisoners, in operation in many prisons, has undoubtedly brought about a more perfect system of discipline and should be adopted in all prisons and reformatories, large and small. It stimulates pride in most prisoners.

Productive labor in prisons not only greatly aids discipline and reformation, conserves the health of the prisoner and fits him to be self-supporting when discharged, but secures to the state relief from the cost of maintenance of the prisoners.

The warden or superintendent should be clothed with authority to appoint or remove the subordinate officers without hindrance or dictation.

Warden James of Oregon told of the results obtained through generous treatment of prisoners. “I find that the more privileges we can extend consistent with good discipline, the easier it is to obtain good discipline. Since we inaugurated amusements such as moving-pictures, Saturday baseball and other forms of exercise, reports of infractions of rules have been reduced fifty per cent.” Warden Lewis of Michigan said that he allowed outside teams to play against the prison team. He thought the morale of the institution was improved by such innovation. Warden Sanders, of Iowa, thought that men would universally improve if we show that we have confidence in them. Some time ago his friends were very solicitous for his safety when he took a gang of eight convicts out to cut corn. Each convict was supplied with a keen bladed corn-knife and the cornfield was some miles from the prison. He went with them without arms and though his friends feared they would never see him alive, he accompanied them with no thought of danger. Some of them were serving life sentences, but they all returned in the evening, not having shown the slightest indication of escaping or offering violence.

FAMILIES OF PRISONERS.

Judge DeLacy of the District of Columbia sent a communication with regard to the dependent families of prisoners. He informed the Association that such families are cared for in two ways: one by direct appropriation from the public funds and the other by a collection of the earnings of the prisoners. In 1907 there was paid for this purpose from the funds, $200.00; and from prisoners’ earnings, $6,050.00. In 1911 the public appropriation had reached $3,000.00; and the amount dispensed from prisoners’ earnings, $38,684.00.

The eloquent earnestness of Maud Ballington Booth met with sympathetic attention.

“Every man who works in prison should, after his own board and clothing have been paid for, work for the support of his family or for those depending upon him. Some officials seem not to know that a convict may have a family, yet there is always this heart-saddened, home-broken circle of gloom, the mothers, wives and children of convicts, about every penal institution. Wherewith are they to be fed and clothed? What recognition does the state give to them from whom it has taken their only source of support? I know of one case where the state gets $500,000 a year from its convict labor. The larger the number of convicts, the greater the revenue. But what of the army of helpless and hopeless wives and children who are being deprived of the support of these laborers who are their husbands and fathers? The helping hand extended to the family has a reflex action on the man in prison. He realizes that his efforts are helping those who have been, and are still, dependent on his services.”

A SELF-SUPPORTING PRISON.

Parole Officer Venn of Michigan presented some facts of very great interest as determined from their experience in the Detroit House of Correction. The plant, costing originally $190,000, had paid for itself and $1,000,000 had been turned over to the city, to the prisoners themselves and to their families in the past thirty-two years. “In Michigan the contract system is doomed, its expiring gasp having been determined by legislative enactment. This system is held in disrepute, especially among the ranks of free-toilers whether organized or not. When the prisoner or his family, or the state, receives the profit from prison labor, and not some contracting firm, which pays to the state the paltry sum of from thirty-five cents to seventy-five cents per diem for the toil of its wards, the mouth of the objector is silenced.”

Mr. Venn said that very often the paroled man needed some financial assistance, sometimes to purchase tools, or for some very proper object, and that he had loaned to such men within the last two years the sum of $860, of which sum $630 had been refunded. He regarded most of the balance as an absolutely safe investment. The money which comes back can be used for others in need, and the prisoner is not treated as a pauper.

FEDERAL PAROLE.

The Attorney-General, Geo. W. Wickersham, delivered an able address on the “Federal Parole,” now in operation at the various federal prisons of the country.

“Punishment in some form is still necessary to prevent crime. This is especially the case,” he added, “in a community and at a time when divers economic forces are struggling with each other for the mastery in the state, and where laws are enacted through the influence of one class or classes to control the action of another class who are unwilling to accept them as rules of action, because unconvinced of the wisdom or justice of the legislative policy which they embody. Yet a consideration of the nature of social organization will demonstrate the absolute necessity of all classes of society conforming to requirements prescribed by the duly constituted authorities—however wise or unwise those regulations may appear to those whose conduct is sought to be controlled by them. But within its constitutional scope the acts of the legislature stand until repealed as the mandate of organized society, and the continued effectiveness of organized society requires that obedience to such laws be compelled.”

The attorney-general lengthily discussed the broad question of punishment for crime and the administration of the federal parole law.

Modern penal legislation, he said, is based on a recognition of the expediency of endeavoring to reform the criminal, and so great a stress has been laid on that feature in dealing with criminals, that “we sometimes forget that in order that punishment may act as a deterrent upon others it must appear as a badge of disgrace, and not simply the bestowal of benevolence.”

Mr. Wickersham favored the extension of the parole law to include life prisoners. He regarded as an incongruity that prisoners sentenced to long terms for vicious crimes should be eligible for parole, when the man convicted of second degree murder must remain in prison for life.

“If the lawmaking power,” continued Mr. Wickersham, “considers reformation, conditional liberation and reinstatement to a normal position in society possible in these cases, ‘it is difficult to say on what principle the same possibility and hope of reformation, liberation and forgiveness should not be extended to one guilty of murder under circumstances not punishable by death. While there is life there should be hope. It may be far off, delayed, a dim, distant possibility, but it would seem that that hope should be held out as a possible attainment to the meanest wretch who is allowed to live. The justice of man should aim at the perfection of divine justice, and though finite wisdom not knowing the hearts of men, may not always deal justly with offenders, yet it should not “shut the gates of mercy” against the meanest of God’s creatures.’”

Since the parole law was placed in operation last autumn, the attorney-general said, but one prisoner had violated his parole. The 200 prisoners who were paroled from the time the law was put into effect in the autumn of 1910 to June 30, earned nearly $22,000, whereas, if they had remained in prison, the attorney-general pointed out, they would have been a charge on the government.

Mr. Wickersham expressed the belief that the parole boards should be enlarged by adding two unofficial persons selected from among prominent citizens of the locality in which the prison is situated.

The Federal Parole Law, approved 1910, provides that any prisoner confined in any United States prison or penitentiary, for a definite term of over one year, whose record of conduct shows that he has observed the rules of such institution, and who has served one third of the time for which he was sentenced, may be released on parole as hereinafter provided.... Nothing in the law is to be so construed as to impair the power of the President to grant a pardon or to commutation in any case, or in any way impair or revoke such good-time allowance as is or may hereafter be provided by Congress.

PREVENTION.

Governor Vessey of South Dakota took “Prevention” for his theme, dealing with the topics of child labor, contact with hardened criminals, lack of practical education in the schools, and bad environment at home, principally brought about by the curse of alcoholic drink.

“Child labor,” he said, “is a traffic in human souls, backed, supported and sustained by an unjust greed for gold, and though financially it may be profitable to the employer, it is nevertheless a shameful sale of humanity for money, and that such a cruel condition, with all its concomitant evils, should be tolerated in this progressive age and in this fair land, exceeds my understanding.

“But we are awaking from our dream of false commercialism and the institution of child labor must pass.”

PRISON REFORM LEAGUE OF CALIFORNIA.

Griffith J. Griffith, Secretary of the Prison Reform League of Los Angeles, California, read an interesting paper on “What the Prison Reform League Wants to Do and See Done.”

“Perhaps the question as to what we of the Prison Reform League have in view will be answered best by stating at the outset what we are not seeking. We are not attempting to boost any party ‘ism,’ creed or private interest. We are not endeavoring to inoculate the public with any new philosophy. On the contrary, we conceive ourselves to be severely practical people, who have noted a series of appalling facts and wish to know how they agree with certain principles by which society professes to be guided. We mark the startling difference between theory and fact; we try to bring that difference to the notice of those whom we can reach. All thinking men and women acknowledge, as it appears to us, that punishment can be justified only by the necessity of protecting society and diminishing as far as possible the tendency toward barbarism.

“We submit that every judge who passes what is called an ‘exemplary’ sentence in the hope of checking crime; every warden or jailer who excuses brutality toward prisoners with the plea that they have been sent to jail for punishment; every police officer who conceives it to be his role to terrify malefactors by the display or exercise of force, is making the same false argument as that by which the upholders of things as they are seek to justify capital punishment. All these classes, paid by society to protect it against crime, are in our view victims of an utterly erroneous philosophy and intensify the very evil they are hired to cure.

“We say that it never pays society to wrong the individual. We say the state wrongs him inexpressibly when it professes to seek his reform and debases him; that murder cannot be abolished or diminished in volume by the state turning murderer; that when the state compels a man to toil for it without remuneration it is itself a thief, and that such is not the way to discourage theft; that if the poor, isolated, and therefore helpless, individual has duties toward the all-powerful state, infinitely greater are the duties of that almost omnipotent organization toward the individual. We say that side of the question has been overlooked, and we call attention to it in the very sharpest terms at our command.”

CAUSES OF CRIME.

Under this general heading, Dr. William Healy, Director of the Juvenile Psychopathic Institute of Chicago, read a paper on “The Problem of the Causation of Criminality,” and Dr. William Martin Richards, of New York, gave an address on “Physical Defects as a Factor in the Making of Criminals.” No synopsis of these papers can do them justice. They represent the latest investigations along these lines, and when published should be read by all who are interested in the betterment of humanity. Dr. Healy recited numerous specific instances of abnormal children whose lives were directly aimed at defiance of law, because of physical or mental defects or because of trivial circumstances, most of whom could be more or less readily reformed when handled in a rational manner.

Dr. Richards dwelt on such defects as bad eyesight, nasal imperfections, “flat foot,” and various spinal troubles, all of which were responsible for criminal tendencies. He told of some cases where the restoration of correct vision had resulted in changing lives, criminally inclined, into right habits.

Frederick Howard Wines, the only charter member of the Association present, said that in all the sessions he had ever attended he had not heard two such illuminating addresses.

COMMITTEE ON PRISON LABOR.

Kate Barnard, of Oklahoma, introduced a resolution providing for the appointment of a committee to study conditions of convict labor. It is gratifying to report that it was finally decided that the committee on organization at the next Annual Meeting in 1912 shall include among the Standing Committees a Committee on Prison Labor, whose duty shall be to study the aspects of prison labor and to report definite recommendations as to the most practical measures to be adopted by the various states.

The new committee to investigate the subject of prison labor will be composed of F. H. Mills, New York, Chairman; Albert Garvin, Chesshire, Conn.; Samuel Gompers, Washington, D. C.; Kate Barnard, Oklahoma City, Okla.; Dr. J. T. Gilmour, Toronto, Can.; Joseph P. Byers, Secretary.

DISCHARGED PRISONERS.

Miss Eva Booth, Chairman of the Committee on Discharged Prisoners, was unable to attend the convention, but the report of the committee was read.

This was a paper by Miss Booth, reviewing the problem of the discharged prisoner, urging that he must be understood as an individual in order that he might be helped to get a new footing in the world, and emphasizing the necessity of prison visitation to enable the workers to know the prisoner when he is liberated.

The parole system was commended and reference was made to the plan recently advocated by General Booth in England to have paroled prisoners make their reports to the Salvation Army and other charitable institutions instead of to the police departments.

Governor Folk’s plan of having the family of the prisoner taken care of from the earnings of the convict’s labor was commended.

FIRST OFFENDERS.

Eugene Smith, President of the Prison Association of New York State, read a report on “Statistics of Crime.” His report was embellished with illustrations showing that no statistics of crime could be complete in giving an accurate account of the amount of crime actually committed for obvious reasons. The first crime of a trusted employé willing to make restitution may be covered up, the disgrace to members of the family, insanity, business reasons and other considerations tend to cover up the criminal acts of many first offenders.

He favored the idea of treating the first offender so that his criminal tendencies may be corrected if this is possible under the supervision of a properly constituted Board of Supervisors. He called attention to the cost of a man who was convicted and sent to prison for killing his employer in a fit of rage. His case was studied by prison physicians who believed the man was living between the borders of sanity and insanity. An operation was eventually decided on and a needle was removed from the brain. The man recovered his normal condition of mind and was discharged from prison.

ATTENDANCE—CONCLUSION.

The number of members and delegates in attendance was 385, forty-three states being represented, also Canada, Cuba and the Philippine Islands. No one could attend these meetings without being impressed that this Association has already accomplished great service in improving penal conditions in the United States, and that its influence is rapidly extending. It is to be hoped that all barbaric methods of discipline will soon be abolished, and that reformation of the criminal habit will be the chief object of detention. We still believe in confinement as a deterrent factor, but the renovation of character is the goal for which our penal institutions should strive.

It should not be accepted as a criticism on the proceedings of former meetings of the Association to say that the papers and the discussions this year reached high water mark.

It was concluded to hold the next annual meeting in Baltimore in the latter part of November, 1912.

The following officers were elected: President, Frederick C. Pettigrove, Chairman Massachusetts Prison Commission; Secretary, Joseph P. Byers, Newark, N. J.; Financial Secretary, H. H. Shirer, Columbus, Ohio; Treasurer, Frederick H. Mills, New York City.

Albert H. Votaw, Delegate.