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

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 to help them to lead good lives.
The next, Group B, and also Group C, will be treated in much the same sort of way as Group A, except that these groups will be disciplined more severely than the first one.
Little time will be wasted over Group D. The men in it will be treated in the ordinary way, and the only especial attention they will get will be to see that they are never mixed with the other groups.
It is hoped that, through these means, many men who are not really criminals at heart may be brought back to decency and good citizenship.
New York State is not alone in this desire to reform its criminals.
Last year, two Houses of Reform were established in Kentucky, one for boys and one