PENAL AND REFORMATORY INSTITUTIONS.
Your attention is particularly invited to the report of the House of Refuge for juvenile offenders. The average number ot inmates during the year ; was 350. The expense of providing the equipments and instructors requisite for teaching the boys in this institution the most useful manual occupations has been found too great, in the opinion of past Legislatures, to warrant in making the necessary appropriation. A boy, as the case now is, though instructed in the simpler braches of education, leaves the Institution, in most cases, little better fitted to earn a livelihood, so far as manual skill is concerned, than when he entered it. He is to apt, on that account, to fall back into a life of crime. A system of industrial education has recently found much favor, which, not professing to teach manual trades, gives boys a dexterity in handicraft which maybe equally useful in many different trades. It instructs them in the use of what, it has been said, are the "half dozen universal tools," viz : the hammer, saw, plane, chisel, file and square. It is said that "in all the constructions a certain number of typical forms are found, which, being more or less modified, adapt themselves to special cases. These forms will also shape themselves into groups, each to be worked out in a certain way and with special tools; and the student taught to work out these forms each in the best way and with the tools best suited for the work will be far advanced in the skill which will make him available and useful in construction." A boy instructed in this way in a knowledge of forms and acquiring aptness and dexterity in the use of tools, would leave the Institution with a feeling of capability and self-confidence; could more readily obtain employment, and could speedily qualify himself for almost any of the various lucrative trades. One teacher it has been found can instruct thirty-two students at a time in this system, and boys going through the exercises in separate classes at different times, the education can be imparted with very little cost either in implements or materials. I invite your attention to the schools that at Boston, St. Louis and elsewhere, have recently entered upon this new system of industrial education for indigent boys, and to the propriety of such legislation as will give it a fair trial in our House of Refuge.
Under the guise of committing children to this i institution as incorrigible, or as juvenile offenders, children are often sent to it by the Courts who are simply poor, or whose parents, desiring to get rid of the cost of care of rearing them, are willing to make them a charge upon the State. Children merely poor should not be allowed to be thrown into association with juvenile offenders, and the sternest; vigilance should be practice to prevent negligent parents from shifting upon the State the responsibility of maintaining and rearing their offspring. Besides, it is not possible to ascertain to what extent the class of boys intended to be received into this Institution are reformed, if children not criminal or incorrigible are admitted. Sufficient provisions should promptly be made by law against the abuse of admiting boys not belonging to the classes of criminal and incorrigible.
The recommendation of the Superintendent that boys released from the Institution upon tickets of leave shall be placed by law under the surveillance of the Township Trustees in the Counties to which they are sent, seems to be a most judicious one. A knowledge by boys thus released that their conduct was watched by persona of character, for an honest purpose of preserving their morals, would help to restrain them from returning to crime. The additional advantage would also be gained that if they should fall again into a profligate life they could promptly be returned to the Institution for further discipline.
The management of the Reformatory for Women and Girls deserves unqualified commendation. A desire to keep expenditures within the limits of appropriations and to administer the Institution with proper economy, has been constantly evident. The proportion of inmates who, after their return to their homes, lead correct lives is greater than the most sanguine might reasonably have expected.
There is reason for regret that in selecting a site for the Reformatory more regard was not had to convenient facilities for sewerage. The only means for conveying the sewerage from the building is by the current of a rivulet that, after passing through the grounds, runs through a populous part of Indianapolis. With all the care that can be exercised, and an exhaustion of all means of purification, complaints are made of offensive odors. The stream, after passing through the grounds of the Reformatory, runs in part through and in part near the edge of the United States Arsenal grounds, and persons there employed have induced the authorities at Washington to cause a suit to be instituted in the United States Circuit Court at Indianapolis to enjoin the Trustees from allowing the sewage to be conveyed through said stream.
Nothing but a belief that the present Legislature will, by a proper law, provide for building a sewer by which the waste from the Reformatory will be carried off by other means than said stream has, it is believed, prevented an allowance of an injunction. Provision by law for the construction of a proper sewer is imperatively necessary.
An act was passed by the last General Assembly providing for the construction of such a sewer at the joint expense of the State and city of Indianapolis; but, as the consent of the city to bear its proportion of the outlay was requisite before the work could be undertaken, the work fell through, the city not having given the needed consent. As the sewer will be of material benefit to the city, it is just that it should bear a due proportion of the expense.
The necessity for a walled enclosure for the purpose of allowing a space for needful exercise for women sentenced for crimes whom it would be unsafe to permit to be at large upon open grounds is evident, and an appropriation of the comparatively small amount asked for by the managers would seem to be most proper.
The State's Prisons at Jeffersonville and Michigan City are more nearly self-supporting than they have been for several years.
The average number of prisoners at the former Prison during the past year was 564. The average number of prisoners at the Prison of Michigan City was 621.
The specific appropriation bill which failed at the last session of the General Assembly, on account of its consideration having been deferred to too late a period of the session, contained an appropriation of $5,000 for building special wards at the Prison of Michigan City, for the use of insane prisoners, and for a transfer to that Prison of all insane prisoners in the Prison at Jeffersonville. I earnestly urge the appropriation of a proper sum of money for the building of cells at the former Prison for insane prisoners, which shall be remote from the cells of other convicts. The insane convicts are at present, for want oi any other provision, kept in cells so near those of page: 21[View Page 21] other prisoners that their cries at night disturb and frequently destroy the rest of these hardworked men, whose condition at the end of each day's labor requires that they should have undisturbed repose. It is cruel and discreditable to require prisoners deprived night after night successively of needful sleep, to perform the laborious, daily tasks demanded of them by the practice of the Prisons. Insane persons require also a very different attention from that given to the sane, and from that which necessarily they are now accustomed to receive.
The abbreviation of the terms of sentences allowed by statute to prisoners for good conduct is believed not to be sufficiently liberal. No incentive to good behavior is found to be so strong with them as a knowledge that such behavior will shorten the term of imprisonment. I earnestly recommend legislation giving to prisoners whose conduct has been continually exemplary, a larger credit for good conduct on their sentences. The effect of such legislation would be followed, I have no doubt, by a great improvement in discipline, and a lessening of expense in the conduct of the Prisons.
Complaint is made by the city authorities of Michigan City that the sewage of the Prison at that city, which is conveyed into a small stream called Fish Lake Creek, occasions a nuisance injurious to the health of the inhabitants. The growth of the city has recently been rapid, and its limits now extend beyond the point at which this refuse is conveyed into the stream. The necessity for the construction of a sewer by the State seems to be urgent.
