PRISON REFORM. 



703 



and organized the Irish penitentiary system. 

 This system, sometimes called the Crofton Sys- 

 tem and sometimes the Irish System, has three 

 stages : 1. A penal stage of cellular separation 

 continuing eight months, which may be pro- 

 longed to nine months by misconduct. 2. A 

 reformatory stage, where the progressive prin- 

 ciple comes into play, of unequal duration ac- 

 cording to length of sentence. 3. A proba- 

 tionary stage to verify the reformatory action 

 of the preceding discipline. 4. A stage of con- 

 ditional liberation, on the ticket-of-leave plan ; 

 the convict, though at large, still remaining a 

 ward of the state and subject to the friendly 

 surveillance of the police. Dr. Wines, in de- 

 scribing the Crofton system, says : u It may 

 be shortly defined as an adult reformatory, in 

 which, through moral agencies, the will of the 

 prisoner is brought into accord with the will 

 of the keeper, and held there so long that vir- 

 tue becomes a habit." After visiting one de- 

 partment of the Irish system, the same author 

 says: "The progress toward liberation is the 

 great force, but there are other manifold mo- 

 tives besides to exertion, self- control, and self- 

 conquest. "With every advance there is an 

 increase of privilege, of gratuity, of liberty. 

 The great point is, to induce the prisoner to 

 become an agent in his own reformation." 

 The result of the Irish system was so satisfac- 

 tory that its principles have come to be the 

 dominant force in all the British prisons. In 

 a report on the English prisons, made by a 

 committee of the Prison Association of New 

 York, we learn that the principal character- 

 istics of the system in vogue are : 1 . The grad- 

 ual progress made in the disuse of short terms 

 of imprisonment. 2. The thorough classifica- 

 tion of convicts under penal sentence. 3. The 

 public - account system of labor on public 

 work. 4. The rules of civil-service selection 

 and protection, rigidly applied to prison offi- 

 cers. 5. The supervision of the prisons by the 

 Government and by local authorities. By three 

 similar acts of Parliament, passed in 1877, all 

 the prisons of the kingdom came under the 

 supervision of the Home Office ; but special 

 supervisory powers are vested in the local 

 authorities, in so far as local prisons are con- 

 cerned. This is the last remnant of the bor- 

 ough prison system. The convict prisons have 

 not to any great degree been affected by the 

 law of 1877, having previously been under the 

 charge of the Home Office. The result of this 

 centralization and the creation of a system 

 looking first to the protection of society by the 

 reformation of the criminal, has been most in- 

 structive. In a recent work by Sir Edmund 

 F. Du Cane, Chairman of Directors of Convict 

 Prisons, we find that, notwithstanding the 

 steady increase in the population <of England 

 and Wales, there was an actual decrease in the 

 number of criminals sentenced. And from 

 statistics obtained elsewhere it is shown that 

 the ratio of prisoners to the population of the 

 entire kingdom is steadily decreasing. 



The advantages derived from making the re- 

 lease conditional upon behavior are so patent 

 that in some modification the plan has been 

 adopted in all civilized countries. In the 

 United States the principle finds recognition in 

 what is known as the commutation plan. 

 Commutation laws are on the statute-books of 

 nearly all the States. By these the prisoner 

 earns a diminution of his sentence by good be- 

 havior. The managers of prisons are unani- 

 mous in their testimony of the good effect of 

 these laws. The lesson learned from this par- 

 tial application of the indeterminate-sentence 

 principle has prompted another step in practi- 

 cal penology, in the establishment of the State 

 Reformatory at Elmira, N. Y., a prison for fel- 

 ons from sixteen to thirty years of age, under 

 their first sentence. Here the indeterminate 

 sentence is still further applied, and no limit is 

 fixed to the sentence other than that fixed by 

 the maximum term of the statute-book. The 

 burglar may earn his way to respectability in 

 one year or he may remain twenty years un- 

 der the discipline of the prison. The Elmira 

 Reformatory was established in 1877, and was 

 for five years regarded as an experiment. It 

 is now regarded as a success. In addition to 

 an indeterminate period of incarceration, there 

 is a pei'iod of conditional liberation called the 

 parole period. The prisoner, on the decision 

 of the warden and managers, is allowed to go 

 out into the world to test his ability to make 

 his own way in an honest life. He is still a 

 ward of the State, and may remain so during 

 the maximum term that the statute imposes 

 for his crime if there is any doubt as to his ref- 

 ormation. If, on the other hand, he gives 

 satisfactory evidence of a complete change of 

 life, he may at any time receive his absolute 

 release at the hands of the managers. The 

 claim is made by the managers of the reform- 

 atory that more than 80 per cent, of those 

 who enter the institution give satisfactory evi- 

 dences of reformation. This is a larger claim 

 than has ever been made under the old system 

 of penal discipline. The results of the Elmira 

 system have been so startling that other States 

 have regarded them with doubt, and have sent 

 commissions to verify them. Massachusetts, 

 Ohio, and Pennsylvania have already estab- 

 lished similar reformatory prisons, and other 

 States are preparing to follow. The Elmira 

 Reformatory has been from its establishment 

 under the charge of Z. R. Brockway, who had 

 earned a prominent place as a practical penolo- 

 gist before he was called to this special work. 



The tendency during the last quarter of a 

 century in all matters of prison discipline in 

 civilized countries is to a more complete or- 

 ganization and centralization of authority. The 

 jail system in the United States, and all local- 

 prison systems elsewhere, have been universally 

 condemned in all councils of penology. In 

 England the borough prisons have been abol- 

 ished, and in France the departmental prisons 

 of all classes are now little more than prisons 



