PROGRESS TOWARDS A BETTER SYSTEM OF JAILS, HOUSES OF CORRECTION AND REFORMATORY PRISONS. A Department of Public Justice, if it existed as a part of the State Polity, certainly would bring forward in a strictly co-ordinated manner all the questions relating to reorganization which contemplate essential changes in formal proceedings against crime and in the correctional treatment of offenders. Such a Department of the State Government will eventually be required in the interests of justice and public economy. For the present the counties are miniature republics, comprising the towns and cities, within their defined boundaries, and providing for a local administration of public justice, etc. The county and borough gaols of England, much as the philanthropist Howard saw them, now have their almost exact fac similes in the common, jails of the State of New York. The Prison Association has in the past five or six years presented full reports of these jails as they are, and of the evils they breed and foster in all sections of the State. The county sheriff, whose revenues depend largely upon the number and official handling and long detentions of his prisoners, though they be but witnesses and children, or poor ignorant day laborers, drunken at night and sobered in jail by morning, will not be apt to inaugurate the reform of the jails in our day. JOHN HOWARD, the philanthropist sheriff of Bedfordshire, was the first to incur such cause for an accusation of insanity against himself. The county judges and all the circuit judges fully concur with the Prison Association and its local committees in the opinion and wish that the common jail should be superseded by or exclusively used as a Detention House; that the labor sentence shall be faithfully carried into effect as a correctional measure in suitably classified or distributed Houses of Correction; that offenders shall be so correctionally treated that they shall neither become nor produce paupers themselves; that vagrants and all kinds of vagabonds shall be so controlled and trained to duties and to their own self-sustenance that they shall be kept from crime and offenses; and that children at any age under full puberty and accountability shall be treated as children, and by strictly educational and reformatory discipline when guilty of offenses against law, and not be treated in any institution in common with old offenders or habitual criminals. The Act of April 21, 1875, providing for the separate detention of witnesses, children and women (chapter 464, Laws of 1875), and the Act conferring increased legislative and administrative powers on boards of supervisors (chapter 482, Laws of 1875), enable county authorities to provide abundantly for the separate detention of unconvicted persons. In the last mentioned law provision is made for establishing the necessary kinds of correctional labor for vagrants and disorderly persons, and even for all classes of convicts not punishable in State Prison. These two Acts are simply permissive and not mandatory. Their utility and practicability have already been thoroughly tested. The Board of Supervisors of Oneida county was the first to test the Act providing for separate and decent detentions, and the counties of Albany, Erie, Monroe and Onondaga have for several years been carrying out the letter and spirit of the law for correctional labor. In those four counties there are no convicts, even for ten days, sentenced to the common jail. "Sentenced to jail" means sentenced to labor, and the sentence to hard labor signifies that in all cases.* * The problems of criminality and the natural history of the criminal classes will have to be studied with the same exactness as diseases of the body or the mind, or the disordered states in any natural objects may be investigated. There is a process of remedial treatment required for all habitual offenders and for most of the merely casual criminals, in order to render them safe to themselves and to the community. This is the true significance of reformatory or correctional discipline; for, as Mr. Superintendent Brockway thus expressively defines these inherent traits which are to be corrected: Criminals, both misdemeanants and felons, are generally devoid of just estimation of morals. Their emotions are not governed by No doubt such conditions of the mind originate in the inherited tendencies, and also from accidental influences. * * The most approved plan of treatment is by renovating the physical and educating the intellectual, to facilitate or render possible the reformation of the moral nature.' reason. * * * * The correctional influence of the hard-labor sentence and of a reasonably prolonged reformatory treatment, by the inculcation of the habits of steady industry, punctuality and obedience, while the mind and body alike are substantially nourished and invigorated, if worth anything, is worth an effectual application to as many as the courts of justice are required to sentence to labor as a penalty. The Crofton penal system, and the principles of that system as applied by Mr. Brockway and Mr. Cordier in America, have sent thousands of discharged prisoners into the fields of free labor, with the spirit that moved Hood's workingman to say: Whenever nature needs, Wherever nature calls, . No job I'll shirk of the hardest work, To shun the workhouse walls. * "My only chance is this: With labor stiff and stark, By lawful turn, my living to earn, * The Oneida County Committee issued a circular to neighboring county committees, with a copy of the new law relating to detentions (see Oneida county report), and some other committees corresponded upon the subject of correctional labor and the necessity of more effective measures for the correctional discipline of jail convicts. The following project of law is at present the basis of a general inquiry concerning the practicability of superseding idle imprisonment in jail and the itinerant vagabondage that ought to be arrested by the adoption of self-sustaining correctional industries. COPY OF A BILL INTRODUCED IN ASSEMBLY, JANUARY 9, 1877, READ TWICE AND REFERRED TO THE COMMITTEE ON JUDICIARY REPORTED FAVORABLY FROM SAID COMMITTEE AND COMMITTED TO THE COMMITTEE OF THE WHOLE. (ASSEMBLY BILL, No. 79.) SECTION 1. Within thirty days after the passage of this act, the governor, by and with the consent of the senate, shall appoint in each judicial district of the state, except the first, seven persons, who shall constitute the board of managers of the district work-house of the judicial district for which they are appointed; one of the managers so appointed shall hold office for one year, one for two years, one for three years, one for four years, one for five years, one for six years, one for seven years, as indicated by the governor on making the appointment, and thereafter all appointments, except to fill vacancies, shall be for seven years. Such managers may be removed at any time by the senate, upon the recommendation of the governor. § 2. Before entering upon their duties the said managers shall respectively take and subscribe to the constitutional oath required of other state officers, which oath may be taken and subscribed before any officer authorized by law to administer an oath and shall be filed in the office of the secretary of state. § 3. The said managers shall receive no compensation for their time or services, but the actual necessary expenses of each one of them while engaged in the performance of the duties of his office, on being pre sented in writing, and verified by his affidavit, shall be paid quarterly by the treasurer of the board of managers of which said manager is a member. §4. It shall be the duty of each of the said boards of managers, immediately after their appointment, to meet and organize, by the election of a president and treasurer from among their number, and within six months of the time of their appointment, to hire two or more buildings and land, suitable for the confinement and employment of vagrants, as hereafter referred to in this act. If two buildings only shall be so hired they shall be in different localities, and one shall be for the confinement and employment of men, and one for the confinement and employment of women, and, on no account, shall persons of different sexes be confined in one building, or in buildings that communicate in any way; and no female officer or subordinate shall be employed in the building designed for men, and no male officer or subordinate shall be employed in the building designed for women. Each board of managers, within their own district, shall appoint a superintendent for each building, who shall hold office during the pleasure of the board making the appointment, and who shall have power to appoint his own subordinates, subject to the approval of the board, and each of said boards shall fix the salary of the superintendents appointed by themselves, and of all other persons employed in the district work-house of the judicial district for which said board was appointed. 5. It shall be the duty of the board of managers appointed in accordance with section one of this act in each judicial district to decide upon the means and kind of employment for persons committed to the district work-house of said district, and to provide for their necessary custody and superintendence; and the provisions for the safekeeping and employment of such persons shall be made with regard to the formation of habits of self-supporting industry in such persons, and to their mental and moral improvement. And for the purposes of this act, to insure the safe-keeping, obedience and good order of the persons committed under this act, the superintendents of the district workhouses are hereby given, and are required to exercise, the same power as jail-keepers and constables in regard to persons committed or held, under any law of this State, in custody of said officers respectively. § 6. As soon as the work-house in any judicial district is prepared to receive inmates it shall be the duty of the board of managers of such district to notify all the justices of the peace, police justices, and other magistrates of the counties composing such district, of that fact, and to furnish said justices of the peace, police justices, and other magistrates, with blanks, to be used for the commitment of vagrants to such district work-house. After such notification is received it shall be unlawful for any justice of the peace, police justice or other magistrate, to com mit any vagrant to any poor-house or jail, or to any place of confinement except the district work-house, unless by the special request, in writing, of the district attorney for the county in which said person was arrested, which written request shall be filed and remain on record with the court making such commitment. § 7. The boards of managers of the several district work-houses may open an account with all persons committed to the said work-houses, charging them with all the expenses incurred by the boards of managers for their board and maintenance, and crediting them with a fair and reasonable compensation for the labor performed by them, and at the expiration of their terms of sentence, if any balance shall be found due to them, may pay the same to them at the time of their discharge. § 8. It shall be unlawful for the board of managers of any work-house to hire out the inmates to work for any other institution or person, and it shall be unlawful to let out the labor of the inmates by contract to any person or to admit to the work-house for the purpose of overseeing the labor of the inmates, any person not paid by the board of managers. § 9. The board of managers of each district work-house, having, in accordance with section four of this act, hired two or more buildings and land suitable for the confinement and employment of vagrants, shall make an estimate of the necessary expenses to be incurred in establishing said work-house, including rent, repairs, furniture, cost of raw material, tools and other necessary articles required for the care and employment of the inmates, which estimate shall be repeated annually thereafter. Each board of managers shall then apportion the expense, so estimated, among the several counties composing the judicial district for which said board was appointed, pro rata to the property tax of each county as the same shall be determined by the State board of equalization, and shall make a requisition on the board of supervisors of each of said counties, for the amount apportioned to said county accompanying said requisition with a copy of the estimate of necessary expenses made by said board. It shall be the duty of the board of supervisors of each of said counties, to raise and pay over to the treasurer of said board of managers the sums demanded in the requisition, and in case of delay on the part of any board of supervisors to so raise and pay over the sums thus demanded, the board of managers shall have authority to incur the necessary indebtedness and shall render an account of said indebtedness to said board of supervisors, and said board of supervisors shall provide for the payment of the indebtedness so incurred. § 10. The treasurer of each board of managers shall be responsible for the financial management of the district work-house of the judicial district for which said board was appointed. He shall receive all moneys due to said work-house, and shall pay all expenses incurred in |