THE PHILADELPHIA SOCIETY FOR ALLEVIATING

THE

MISERIES OF PUBLIC PRISONS.

ANNUAL REPORT.

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL VIEW OF LABORS.

N preparing a statement of the proceedings of the

IN

Society through its Executive, or “Acting Committee," there is, almost every year, an increasing dif ficulty in the effort to give interest to the statement. The facts, the proceedings, and the results, are no less important now than they were a few years ago; but they vary so little from year to year, that they lack in repetition the power to reward attention which they possessed and exercised in the early times of the reports. But it is important to the members of the Society to know, and, perhaps, it is not without interest to the public to be informed, that the efforts put forth at the formation of the Society, ninety years ago, are

not only not pretermitted-but are redoubled in their intensity and their extent, and that their influences are felt in almost every State of the Union, and acknowledged by many.

With the intent, then, of making a full notice of the proceedings of representatives of the Society, we continue our Journal, and seek to disseminate the true principles of Penology among the people, by showing how those principles affect society when brought into regulated operation.

This Society is steadfast in its belief of the superiority of the "separate system" of imprisonment, and advocates its adoption and thorough practice. But it does all this from a spirit of humanity, and in the belief that that spirit is best and most efficaciously responded to by the true Pennsylvania prison system. But the spirit of humanity would be grieved if a strong attachment to the separate system should lead us to withhold just applause and hearty sympathy from those who, desiring to do good to the unfortunate and wicked, should seek that good end by other means than those which we the most approve. Their intentions and their labors are eminently meritorious, and often successful, and we love those too well to censure the actors for using means less perfectly adapted to desired results than are those which we employ. Hence the Journal, year by year, contends earnestly and persistently for the separate system of imprisonment, but it declares also that even that system is greatly dependent upon administration, and as administration is the

important ingredient in success, it follows that though we are unchangeably attached to one system, we are no less sensible of the vast importance of administration, whatever may be the system.

The congregate system, well administered, may be productive of more good than the separate system, badly or carelessly administered.

But the separate system, properly administered, is incomparably beyond any other single system or combination of systems. This leading idea will enter into all the statements, and discussions, and essays in this Journal.

We pray, first, for the general adoption of the separate system, but until that prayer is answered, we pray, secondly, for the improvement of the other systems. A favorable answer to this second petition will be by natural progress a granting of the first, a consummation most devoutly to be wished.

We thus renew our oft repeated idea that we, as a Society, are deeply concerned about the administration of systems in prisons.

The Society has, through the agency of the "Acting Committee," received considerable accessions of number; some of these new members have joined for the sake of sharing in the work of visiting the prisons, and, after being admitted members of the Acting Committee, they have been assigned to one or the other of the fields of labor-either the County Prison or the Penitentiary. A much larger number seek for appointments at the Penitentiary, as offering a clearer and a

more promising field of labors. It is true that more than two hundred of the cells of that institution exhibit instances of official violation of the law by containing two prisoners in each cell. But, then, there are only

two at most, and there are

more than four hundred

that contain only one prisoner in each.

Where the doublets are found, labor is difficult, and promises are almost illusory. Where one prisoner alone occupies a cell, he is accessible by the Visitor, and seems ready to take fast hold of instruction, and to understand that through that he may regain a good position in society.

In the County Prison the case is different-unfortunately, very different. On the female side, indeed, there are usually about half as many prisoners as there are cells, where formerly there were more than three times as many prisoners as there were cells.

It will be admitted that the change in the relation of the number of cells and of prisoners came from multiplying the cells, but only so far as to admit separate dealing with convicts, and the addition to the number of cells left this department with a little more than two prisoners to one cell, but by judiciously disposing of a portion of the female convicts, separate access was had to the ear of the prisoner, and there being no disturbing element in a cell companion, the instruction proved fruitful, so that in two or three years the results began to manifest themselves in a reduction of the number of prisoners, till at length there were found only one prisoner for each cell. Every advance toward