REFUGE BOYS AND 'REFORMATORIES.

BY R. L. DUGDALE,

Member of the Executive Committee.

In the examination of State prison convicts, ordered by resolution of the Association in 1875, certain facts were discovered concerning refuge boys which were not elaborated in the report made to the executive committee. In the present report, these facts are related. The total number of prisoners examined in that inquest, whose schedules were verified, was 233, and of this number fifty-three, or 22.74 per cent of the total were "refuge boys," most of them being city lads. All boys who have been sent to an industrial school, reformatory, school-ship or house of refuge are included in this number. There was some surprise felt that so large a per centage came through this particular channel, and yet there is reason to believe it is even higher, for there are eleven schedules which are marked as "probably refuge boys," but which have not been counted as such, because it was not known that they were of that class. In the Twelfth Annual Report of the State Board of Charities of Massachusetts, for 1875, the per centage of refuge boys for 1873 was found to be 21.84. How identical these ratios. A less per centage was reported in 1874 and 1875, but whether the reduction in the latter years is owing to a literal construction of what constitutes a "refuge boy," or what other reason there may be for this decrease in the experience of Massachusetts, is not stated.

In Table I, is given a summary of the results of the inquiry for the 233 cases examined by the writer, in the Auburn and Sing Sing prisons, designed to cover a definite number of points.

This table, and the remarks concerning it, refer simply to the 233 convicts of all classes who were consecutively examined without regard to age.

Dividing the total number of criminals into two categories- those who are not refuge boys and those who are we find that 68.88 per cent of the former are habitual criminals, while the latter show 98.15 per cent. It therefore appears that, while refuge boys constitute a little less than one-fourth of the prison population for all crimes, they furnish 29.41 per cent of the habitual criminals, or nearly one-third. Comparing crimes against property to the total number of crimes of refuge boys and those not refuge boys, we find that 79.45 per cent of the latter class of prisoners, and that 90.56 per cent of the refuge boys in prison are under sentence for crimes against property. The figures in a like comparison for crimes against the person are 20.55 per cent of the latter to 9.44 per cent of the refuge boys, or less than one-half.

Dismissing this division, we find that the refuge boys committed 25.13 per cent of the total crimes against property, or over one-fourth, but only 11.90 per cent of the total crimes against the person, or about oneninth. This shows how much these boys lean towards crimes against property, for although they constitute less than one-fourth of the prison population, they perpetrate more than one-fourth of the crimes against property.

Confining the examination to special crimes against property, we find that they commit 26.37 per cent of the robbery, 31.24 per cent of the burglary and 65 per cent of the pocket-picking, but not one case of forgery or false pretenses. Is there any significance in these figures? Why do these boys commit crimes against property and, of these, burglary and picking pockets, by preference? Primarily, it is owing

to the nature of the stock from which they spring, which overbears their fate like a Nemesis; secondly, because the provisions made for their reformation are entirely at variance with rational modes of train. ing children who have such varied disabilities to overcome.

To get a proper appreciation of the stock from which house of refuge boys spring, Table I has been compiled to give the per centages of these. There are 45.28 per cent of their number who became orphans before their fifteenth year, and under cover of orphanage is often concealed their illegitimacy; 88.67 per cent are neglected children, many of them abandoned; 24.52 per cent are of criminal families; 24.52 per cent of pauper stock; 50.96 per cent of intemperate family, and the same per centage are themselves habitual drunkards. As respects the proportion who belong of nervously disordered stock, which in the table is 15.09 per cent, it must be borne in mind that so many of these boys know nothing of their families, and can give no information on that point, that it explains why only 8 out of 53 cases were fully ascertained as to the ancestral characteristic respecting this feature.

Turning from the review of the aggregate numbers to that of particulars, we find the career and ancestral characteristics of these 53 boys recorded in Table II. The average at which their childhood was neglected is 8 years, they began crime at 9 years and 8 months, two of them at 5 years, 4 at 7, and 5 at 8; they went to the refuge at 12 years and 9 months, while their present average age is only 23, the average age of the 233 persons examined being 27. Sexual prostitution in them began at the average age of 14 years and 9 months (one at 6 and one at 10), being one year and six months earlier than the average of other criminals; this in the face of the fact that many of them were serving terms in the reformatory during the time of average age here stated. They had contracted venereal disease at 19 years and 6 months (four at 16 years and under), being nearly two years younger than the average of other convicts. The case of the lad who began prostitution at six years is one of the most lamentable. It will be found on line seven. We find him a neglected child at 5 years, the victim of the licentiousness of a woman at six, in the house of Refuge at nine, in the poor-house at ten with his mother and sisters and beginning the career of a drunkard at the same age, his parents being both habitual drunkards as well as himself. Both his parents are habitual criminals, his father having served two terms in State prison and two in the penitentiary. With such a record it is not wonderful that he is an habitual criminal and demented.

On turning to the facts concerning inebriety we find 26 are habitual drunkards, two of them before their ninth year, and of these twenty-six we know that fourteen had parents who were habitual drunkards, five of these fourteen are of pauper stock, six are of criminal family, and

three either insane or of a nervously disordered stock. This statement does not exhaust the history of the heredity of these twenty-six habituals. Four had fathers occasional drunkards, while this habit in the ancestors of six others is unknown; but it is to be remarked that not one is recorded as having temperate parents. Of the nineteen who are occasional drunkards only two have parents ascertained to be habituals, eight occasionals, while two have parents who are temperate, leaving seven unknown. Besides this, it will be found that, of sixteen criminals addicted to intemperance in any degree, who descend from habitual drunkards, seven, or nearly half, belong to criminal families, while the thirty-seven other refuge boys show only six who are of criminal stock, or only one-sixth of their number.

Of the eight who are of nervously disordered stock (neurotic heritage) three are themselves deranged, two being insane; five are habitual drunkards, one at 8, one at 9, and one at 18, being below the average at which that habit becomes fixed among the State prison convicts examined; while three are known to be the children of habitual drunkards, the ancestral habit of the other two being unknown, one of them, however, having a mother who died of paralysis. Three of these five habitual drunkards are of pauper stock, while two of them had prostitute mothers, and two others are of criminal stock, the parentage of the others being unknown. It thus appears that the neurotic house of refuge stock shows a cumulation of misfortune both as to heredity and environment, which seems to account to the fullest for their being incurable criminals.

This, then, constitutes the average nature and quality of the stock with which the reformatory has to deal. Part of it suffers from disabilities which are congenital, a larger part from disadvantages which are educational, and a still larger part in which both are combined. In view of these facts it would seem that some un usual methods would have been devised for the training of such youth, and indeed some such have been organized. Leaving out of the question the arrest, trial and commitment of boys sent to the houses of refuge, the first thing noticeable is the fact that these boys are treated, in most respects, in a manner which seems to have been suggested by our system of adult imprisonment. It consists of cell life, "team work" under contracts, and an administration of discipline under the "congregate system."

We have seen above that 88.67 per cent of refuge boys are neglected children; this means that the sentiment of domesticity is wanting in their education. It would seem that any rational person who set himself to the task of reforming these "arabs," would aim at stimulating this sentiment by all the means that could be devised to that end. What is the actual case, as regards our reformatories? The combined wisdom