T56 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



the same period was ^78,225.80. This is a remarkable showing for a 

 prison containing on an average about 900 prisoners of all grades and 

 classes. 



A close inspection of the prison management will convince one 

 that a strictly military discipline prevails within the prison.* It 

 is a busy place at the penitentiary. All able-bodied men not 

 undergoing special punishment are employed. It is not a place for 

 idlers, for the law permits and requires service. The management of 

 the different industries, the hospital, the library, the insane depart- 

 ment, the kitchen and dining room all show care and system. So, 

 also, for cell-ventilation and other forms of sanitation there is 

 great care exercised by those in authority. While it is well 

 to acknowledge the excellent management of the prison during 

 the past, it is also pertinent to consider what progress may be 

 made in the future. As there has been such great advancement 

 in prison science in the past twenty years, it may be well to meas- 

 ure the Kansas penological system by ideal systems, as well as by 

 the foremost practice in the best regulated prisons in Europe and 

 America, to ascertain in what especial lines Kansas needs to develop 

 her penological system. 



No doubt it is highly gratifying to the tax-payers of Kansas that the 

 institution is on a self-supporting basis. Especially is this to be 

 approved in a new state where so much must be done in a short time; 

 where schools, churches, hospitals, asylums, and penal institutions 

 must be built and maintained by the people almost before they have 

 made themselves comfortable in a new country. These must be pro- 

 vided for, while railroads, roads, bridges and court houses must be 

 built and the native resources be made productive for the support 

 of all. 



But admitting all this, the management of prisons must consider 

 reform as the ultimate service to be performed in all penal institu- 

 tions. The new prison law of New York has admitted that reform is 

 the ultimate end of all confinement. But it views reformation as the 

 only radical means of protection to society. Reformation consists in 

 "the reasonable probability that the prisoner will live and remain at 

 liberty without violating the law."f In this the law rests on the polit- 

 ical basis of protecting society rather than upon the moral basis of 

 converting and improving the qualities of the individual for his own 

 sake. Much progress has been made in the past fifty years in the 

 treatment of prisoners respecting discipline and reform. Indeed, an 



* The writei- is much indebted to the present Warden, Hon. (Jeo. H. Case, and to his 

 able assistants for their courtesy in showing him the working details of the prison. 

 t Quoted from Prison Science, by Eugene Smith, p. 7, 



