Giving Convicts a Real Chance 



How the Prison Farms of Florida have 

 superseded the inhuman leasing-out system 



By Ewing Galloway 



A gang of convicts at Bradford Farms grading a lot for an electric powerhouse, ice plant and steam 

 laundry. One of the two locomotives belonging to the prison is seen in the background 



A FEW years ago Florida's penal sys- 

 tem was one of the crudest, the most 

 brutal that ever existed in the 

 United States. All able-bodied male con- 

 victs were leased to private concerns to 

 work in lumber and turpentine camps, and 

 thousands of them were overworked, under- 

 fed, and housed in cages unfit for wild 

 beasts. Often those who failed in the 

 slightest degree to please guards or over- 

 seers were beaten unmercifully. 



Magazines and newspapers revealed the 

 truth about the lumber and turpentine 

 camps, and as a result of their exposures 

 the State Government established a prison 

 that might serve as a model for agricultural 

 states or principalities throughout the 

 civilized world. 

 In 1913, aft- 

 er thirty-three 

 years of leasing 

 out all convicts 

 capable of 

 earning money 

 for private con- 

 cerns, the 

 State authori- 

 ties bought 

 17,000 acres of 

 pine forest and 

 swamps in 

 Bradford 

 County and 

 started the de- 

 velopment of 

 what is now 

 known as 



The wards are as light, clean 

 make them. The men rise 



Bradford Farms. In November of that 

 year crews of convicts began clearing and 

 draining this tract of wilderness and laying 

 the foundations of some of the buildings. 

 To-day they have three thousand acres in a 

 high state of cultivation, a prison town of 

 thirty- five buildings, all- the implements, 

 livestock and poultry they can use to ad- 

 vantage, and a steam railroad of their own 

 construction running to all important 

 sections of the plantation. 



Offenders serving time at Bradford 

 Farms are not made to feel that they are 

 despised outcasts upon whom the State is 

 wreaking vengeance. They are treated as 

 misguided persons to be corrected morally 

 and trained for lives of usefulness. They 

 are given 

 wholesome 

 food, housed in 

 clean, airy 

 buildings, en- 

 couraged to 

 improve their 

 personal hab- 

 its, and em- 

 ployed at 

 healthful and 

 instr uc ti ve 

 labor. 



The field la- 

 borers work 

 only nine hours 

 a day, which 

 is about two 

 hours less than 

 the time spent 



and airy as the State could 

 at 4:30 and retire at 7:30 



