Vol. LXVIII. No. 3082. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 20, 1909. 
WEEKLY, $1.00 PER YEAR 
THE CONNECTICUT PROBATION LAW. 
How It, with Indeterminate Sentence Came About 
—What They Mean and How They Work. 
When Nell Beverly disciplined her brother Bob 
and forgave him for the forgery of her name, as 
well as when she showed such a consistent hatred of 
hard cider, she disclosed her native common sense, 
and at the same time placed herself in accord with 
the modern Connecticut penal ideal, which finds its 
best expression in the proposed State Reformatory 
or farm for minor offenders and drunkards, the 
indeterminate sentence, and the probation law. The 
Legislature is to consider the first at the present 
ses-ion. The other two have been in active opera¬ 
tion for several years and are working out well. My 
credentials for a right to discuss these questions, 
the opinion of Judge Warner, “The county jail is 
the sore spot and the weakest spot in all our 
system of criminal law. The jails are managed 
practically in the same way as in the early years of 
the century. Juvenile offenders, more weak than 
wicked, are permitted to associate with hardened 
criminals and come out worse than they went in. 
Instead of being houses of correction they are to be 
called houses of corruption. Now what does society 
in the shape of a police court say to a man, provided 
he is drunk enough to stumble on a policeman? 
Simply this—pay $20 or less—generally less—or go 
to jail and be washed and well boarded, without 
much work, for 30 days. Does society think this 
will reform the man?” 
This accords with my own observation. The jail 
system does not effect a cure or a reformation. It 
Such men as Judge Warner, Mr. Taylor and others 
have led the fight, and the result is the indeterminate 
sentence in modified form, and the probation law. 
These are systematic, humane and scientific move¬ 
ments to prevent offenders from becoming crim¬ 
inals; to make the punishment fit the individual; they 
seek his reformation rather than his mere punish¬ 
ment; they are intelligent efforts to protect society 
by restoring to self-respecting manhood offenders 
who under the old time-dishonored system would 
remain life-long burdens to themselves, their fami¬ 
lies and their communities. 
But it is with the probation law that I am chiefly 
concerned. Here is where the State extends a help¬ 
ing hand and seeks to lift to a firmer footing those 
who have fallen in the mire beside the highway of 
life. At the same time it serves stern notice on the 
THE FRONT YARD OF AN OKLAHOMA FARM. Fig. 61. 
which are very live ones and very vital ones, are 35 
years’ close association with police courts and a fair 
experience as a probation officer. 
During my 35 years of police court work I have 
seen a long, pitiful and largely hopeless procession 
of offenders pass through the court-room to the jail, 
and often back again, forming a human endless 
chain. In all that long, sorrowful procession I can¬ 
not now recall one single instance wherein an indi¬ 
vidual was reformed or even made better by the jail 
sentence. In the course of time I, and others, 
began to ask the question “What is the use?” Men 
of experience, ability and conscience like John C. 
Baylor, secretary of the Connecticut Prison Reform 
Association, Judge Edgar M. Warner of Putnam, 
an( l Thomas Dudley Wells of the Hartford Times, 
?n d others, realized more fully than some of us the 
utter futility and uselessness of such a system. In 
does not restore to usefulness. It does usually take 
from the offender the last spark of self-respect and 
leaves him with a grievance against society. In a 
word, it makes him a social secessionist. 
Condemning the fixed or determinate sentence 
practice the late Francis Wayland, Dean of the Law 
School at Yale College, said: “That the criminal, 
unrepentant and unreformed, is to be set at liberty 
for no other reason in the world than because a 
certain day of a certain month and year has arrived, 
is a proposition so monstrous and indefensible that 
it would seem that the bald statement of it would be 
-sufficient to expose its utter absurdity. When the 
doctrine is once practically, as well as theoretically 
accepted, that the object of imprisonment is to pro¬ 
tect society by confining and reforming the prisoner, 
we may hope that this flagrant abuse of the power 
of the State will be forever abated.” 
erring ones that their conduct, if persisted in, will 
result in punishment and disgrace. The one guilty 
of misdemeanors fully understands when he gets into 
the hand of the probation officer that he is brought 
up with an abrupt turn that means certain trouble 
or a chance to mend his ways. It throws the burden 
and the responsibility on him so plainly that if there 
is anything worth while left in him he will usually 
take that chance to brace up and become a useful 
member of society. 
Such advance as has been made has had to be 
sternly battled for. Unthinking people have cried 
“sentimentalism.” But no greater error could be 
made. The men who are on the firing line in this 
fight are anything but mollycoddles or sentimental¬ 
ists. They are not even theorists. They are the most 
practical of men, the hard-headed kind that cannot 
be fooled. Their work is based on long and severe 
