THE IDEAL OF A TRUE PRISON SYSTEM FOR A STATE
By Z[EBULON]. R[EED]. BROCKWAY
Superintendent of the Detroit House of Correction
4. DISTRICT REFORMATORIES for the treatment of those who are now confined in jails for misdemeanors; reformatories in which persons living vicious lives, when arrested and convicted, may be cured, and thus saved from a life of crime. The whole vile system of common jails for the imprisonment of convicted persons must be uprooted and blotted from existence, and the structures for detaining alleged offenders be made suitable in all respects for the custody of witnesses, with large, well-lighted, cheerful apartments, strong and secure against escapes, entirely isolating their occupants from each other. Solitary abode for all in common jails should be invariably enforced. The treatment of early offenders, who almost always commit misdemeanors before felonies, is entitled to much greater prominence than it now has in any prison system in the world, as is indicated by the comparative number of prisoners confined in prisons designed, respectively, for misdemeanants and felons. The average annual commitments to fourteen state prisons, including those of New York and Pennsylvania, reach only 375 each; while the average of prisoners annually committed to municipal prisons, of the class under consideration, in cities of 50,000 to 100,000 inhabitants, is 1,249. As a rule, the inmates of these latter are only in the edge of the maelstrom, while the inmates of the state prisons have reached the engulphing whirl. Prisoners released from state prisons unreformed, as too many of them are, usually plunge at once into dissipation and become "disorderly persons," whose prompt arrest and treatment would save them and society from the effect of fresh felonies. These intermediate or district reformatories may, therefore, form part of . . .