The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 19, March 18, 1897 | Page 5

his names.
The court therefore ordered the Duke of Anjou to pay all the costs of
the trial, and dismissed the case.
Does it not seem absurd for two grown men to quarrel about a title
which neither of them has the slightest use for?
* * * * *
On the 1st of January, 1897, a new law went into force, forbidding the
convicts in State's prisons to do any other work than hard labor for the
benefit of the State.
Up to the time of passing this law, when a prisoner went to jail, the
warden found out the work for which he was best suited, and gave him
employment of that nature.
A convict who was a good accountant would be put to keeping the
books. A shoemaker would be set to mending and working in the
shoe-shop. A bricklayer would be put to building and repairing, and so
on.
The new law stops this system entirely.
Hard labor means lifting stones, digging, building walls, and work of
that kind.

If there are no prison buildings to be made, and no heavy work to be
undertaken for the State, the prisoners must remain idle.
To the convicts, idleness is the most cruel punishment that they can be
given. They have nothing to interest or amuse them, nothing to think of
but their own sad lives; they cannot speak to each other, as talking is
absolutely forbidden, so taking their work from them is a very great
cruelty.
Since the law first went into effect, some of the convicts have become
so unhappy that they have lost their reason.
The wardens, seeing how their prisoners were suffering, have been
much troubled, and have all been trying to think of some means of
exercising or drilling, which will interest the convicts, and make up to
them for the work they have lost.
There have been so many complaints about convicts being allowed to
do work that honest men can earn money by, that little by little all
employment has been taken from them.
A very good change has been made in the management of the prisons in
New York State, by General Austin Lathrop, the Superintendent of
Prisons.
It has long been felt by people who have given serious thought to the
matter, that it was wrong to mix all the criminals together. It was
thought that men who had been dishonest should not be put with men
who had tried to kill, or were guilty of other awful crimes. Many
people have thought that some difference in the class of the prisoners
should be made.
The law does make a difference: some criminals are only given short
sentences, while others have very long ones.
But the jail makes no difference whatever. Once within the prison walls,
all convicts are treated in the same way.

[Illustration: STATE PRISON, SING SING.]
General Lathrop's plan alters all this. He takes into account that some
people commit crimes through ignorance, some through weakness, and
some through wickedness. He thinks that the first two classes of
convicts should be carefully separated from the really bad criminals.
His plan is to divide all the convicts in the prisons into separate groups.
Group A is to consist of those who are serving their first term of
imprisonment, and who may therefore be supposed to have been led
into crime by others, and not to be so wicked but that a chance remains
of turning them back into the paths of goodness and honesty.
Group B will be made up of men who have been in prison once before,
and for whom there is still hope that they may reform.
Group C will take in the men who have served more than one term of
imprisonment, and whose reform is very doubtful, but even they will be
separated from.
Group D, into which will be put the hardened criminals, who are to be
kept apart, that they may not harm the more innocent prisoners.
The different groups will be kept entirely separated, and those who are
young in crime will never come across the old offenders.
The first group will have the greatest care from the prison officials.
Every effort will be made to guide its members into better ways of life.
They will be looked after by a physician, who will give them plenty of
exercise and training to make their bodies strong. There will be a
regular system for educating them, and training their minds into the
knowledge that to be happy they must be good, and that sensible men
will obey the law.
When they are sent back into the world after their term of
imprisonment is over, they will have learned how to be useful and
honest men, and every effort will be made