CHAPTER XI 



CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE AND RURAL 



POLICE 



A. CORRECTIONAL AGRICULTURE 

 THE OUTDOOR TREATMENT OF CRIME * 



HARRIS R. COOLEY 



THERE is no distinct outcast class of offenders. The establish- 

 ment of the outdoor or farm prison is one expression of this new 

 attitude. It is a long step from the gloom and depression of the 

 felon's cell to the sunlight and fresh air of the open field. The 

 normal environment of the country tends quickly to reestablish 

 a normal life. The open-air treatment is as helpful to the victim 

 of vice and crime as to the victim of tuberculosis. 



In a number of the institutions of our country the outdoor 

 methods have been tried with marked success. Dr. Leonard, 

 Superintendent of the Ohio State Reformatory at Mansfield, has 

 the spirit and attitude toward his young men which arouse in 

 them a surprising sense of honor and fidelity. There are nearly 

 a thousand prisoners, many of them committed for most serious 

 offenses. A school of conduct or of ethics helps to maintain the 

 moral atmosphere of the institutions. The trusted men enter 

 into a formal bond with the superintendent. Out of eighteen 

 hundred young, vigorous fellows who have been trusted to work 

 out on the six-hundred-acre farm, only nine have violated their 

 trust and run away. As one sees these men in the open, sunny 

 fields, many of them without guards, doing faithfully their daily 

 tasks under normal conditions, it is difficult to realize that a 

 few years ago they would have toiled inside crowded, gloomy 

 prisons with heavily barred windows. They themselves have 

 constructed their shop buildings within the wall for the employ- 



1 Adapted from the Outlook, Vol. 07: 403-8, Feb. 25, 1911. 



283 



