HOUSE OF REFUGE.
The second section of the ninth article of the Constitution reads as follows :
"The General Assembly shall provide Houses of Refuge for the reformation and correction of juvenile offenders."
This Constitutional provision adopted in 1851, and which is plainly mandatory in its character up to this time remains wholly unexecuted. The necessity for such institutions is admitted by all who are at all familiar with the administration of the law, and I believe that a strong public sentiment demands that the legislative consideration of the subject shall not be longer postponed. We have no punishment now for the juvenile offender but the common jail and the penitentiary, neither of which exert a reformatory influence upon the youthful mind; and during my six years experience as the Executive of the State, I have often been constrained to pardon the youthful criminal because I felt that to incarcerate him in the penitentiary, would be to consign him to a life of degradation and crime. Humanity, justice, and the plainest principles of public policy, demand that the juvenile offender shall not be treated like the mature and hardened criminal, and placed in the society of felons ; but that an effort shall be made while he is yet in tender years, to reclaim him from vice and train him to a life of usefulness and respectability.
The "House of Refuge" as it has Long existed in many of the older States, is a vast improvement upon the jail and the penitentiary, but within the last few years, great progress has been made in elevating the system, and results have been obtained in the reform and education of juvenile offenders that are truly wonderful.
The introduction of the "Reform School" is, in many respects, a great improvement upon the old House of Refuge, and has been attended with a success which it would be hard to believe, were it not attested by indubitable evidence.
Barnabas C. Hobbs, and Charles F. Coffin, distinguished members of the Society of Friends, have bestowed much attention and labor upon the subject, and have addressed to me valuable communications which I herewith lay before you, together with reports and documents setting forth the character and operations of the Reform Schools of New York, Ohio and Illinois.
As the subject is one of no ordinary magnitude, and requires for its full understanding much thought and investigation, and as the system you may adopt will be intended not for a year only, but for all time, and should be wisely considered, I recommend that Committees be appointed at an early day, with full powers to investigate the subject and report a plan, if pos page: 23[View Page 23] sible, for your consideration and action at the present session.
