THE IDEAL OF A TRUE PRISON SYSTEM FOR A STATE
By Z[EBULON]. R[EED]. BROCKWAY
Superintendent of the Detroit House of Correction
The administration of a prison system is the important thing when the system itself is well planned, for its success as a
preventive and reformative agency must depend much upon this, and great care will be needed lest the management becomes diverted from these aims. When the popularity of the system or of any of its agents becomes the leading thought, when results are esteemed more for their value to the pet theory than for their practical good to society, disintegration will sooner or later ensue. In times rife with political partisanship, the purest and best measures to promote the prosperity of the people are apt to be poisoned or put aside, and every thing relating to prisons and prisoners is specially open to this influence, for the criminal class in society is the arena for partisan strifes and gleanings. No true prison system can be administered for partisan ends in any degree. Personal considerations influencing the bestowment of places of responsibility, such as the necessities of those who are unfortunate and unsuccessful in ordinary affairs, also perverts and spoils the best laid plans of management. Men and women must be selected for their real fitness, their practical value, as any business concern selects its employés.
The general administration will necessitate a secretary in smaller states, and two or more secretaries in larger ones, who will constitute the executive officer or officers of the board; also the subdivision of the board into committees, each having special charge of some department of the work. There should be a sanitary and structural, a financial and industrial, an intellectual and educational committee. Another committee should take charge of the examination and generalization of the facts to be found in society that contribute to criminality, and of the cultivation of right public sentiment on the whole question, on which so much depends. Still another committee, and the fifth, should be devoted to discharged persons, their favorable restoration, measurable protection and watchful supervision in society, through the system of agents before mentioned. Thus there will be two members of the board to each department, provided the number of ten suggested constitute the whole, which accords with the plan of one wiser than we are, who sent out seventy, two and two, with whose mission ours has this likeness at least, that we seek to prevent wrong and bring back to—or up to—a condition of virtue, poor fallen humanity. Then the board, being volunteers, in the sense of serving without pay, may avail themselves of benevolent individuals and private organizations throughout the state, as helps. They may present properly prepared plans for church work, and press the importance of these practical social questions, if, by any possibility, these ecclesiastical societies may be induced to wield such weapons for the welfare of the world, without special regard to their own formulas or finances.