



Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Craig Kirkwood, and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This book was produced from images made available by the
HathiTrust Digital Library.)






Transcriber’s Notes:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.

       *       *       *       *       *

VOLUME I, No. 10. OCTOBER, 1911




THE REVIEW


  A MONTHLY PERIODICAL, PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL PRISONERS’ AID
  ASSOCIATION AT 135 EAST 15th STREET, NEW YORK CITY.

  TEN CENTS A COPY. ONE DOLLAR A YEAR

  T. F. Carver, President.
  Wm. F. French, Vice President.
  O. F. Lewis, Secretary, Treasurer and Editor Review.
  Edward Fielding, Chairman Ex. Committee.
  F. Emory Lyon, Member Ex. Committee.
  W. G. McClaren, Member Ex. Committee.
  A. H. Votaw, Member Ex. Committee.
  E. A. Fredenhagen, Member Ex. Committee.
  Joseph P. Byers, Member Ex. Committee.
  R. B. McCord, Member Ex. Committee.




SOME PRISON PROBLEMS


[At the recent meeting of the American Prison Association, Frank L.
Randall, Superintendent of the Minnesota State reformatory at St.
Cloud, read as chairman the report of the committee on reformatory work
and parole, from which we print the following extracts.]

To the chief executive officers of penal and correctional institutions
in the United States and Canada was submitted the following question:
“To what extent do you recognize mental inadequacy and constitutional
inferiority among the persons in your charge?”

The estimates are various. Among prisons for adults they range from
3 persons out of 240 in Wyoming, to 10 per cent. in Nebraska and
Philadelphia, 20 per cent. in Rhode Island, 25 per cent. in Vermont, 30
per cent. in Indiana, 30 per cent. to 40 per cent. in Wisconsin, fully
50 per cent. in Kansas, 60 per cent. in West Virginia, 50 per cent. to
75 per cent. in Minnesota, and a still higher percentage of prisoners
lacking in energy, mentally or physically, in one Michigan prison.
Major McClaughry, and Warden Wood of Virginia, wrote that they could
not answer the question.

From state reformatories came estimates covering a range from 25 per
cent. to 40 per cent. only in Iowa, Washington, Kansas, and New York
(Elmira). The writer, regretting his inability to report more exactly,
because the work in his institution has not been completed, feels
safe in concurring in the general approximations cited by reformatory
superintendents.

From the New York reformatory for women at Bedford Hills we have the
following: “Realizing that a large percentage are subnormal, July 1,
1911, we employed a trained psychologist who will make it a year’s
study.” From juvenile institutions the returns are neither more
hopeful, nor more satisfying, and many institutions of that class seem
to have no special facilities for caring for weaklings, and depend upon
a relaxation of the discipline in their behalf. A study of 200 in the
boys industrial school in Kansas disclosed that 174 were mentally dull,
markedly defective, or two or more years behind their proper place in
school. In the industrial school of New Hampshire about 75 per cent.
are reported to be four to five years below their normal grade in
school.

Other letters say “probably 25 per cent., at least;” “one-third;”
“50 per cent.;” “to a very large extent;” and so forth. The Idaho
industrial training school reports: “A very small per cent.; I think
not above five per cent.;” and the Georgia state reformatory reports
that “the discipline has to be based on the fact that 75 per cent. of
inmates are mental defectives and 99 per cent. are moral defectives.”
The girls industrial home of Ohio says: “Fully nine-tenths are
subnormal mentally, and a large per cent. physically weak or crippled.”
From the Iowa industrial school for girls comes the following: “There
is a certain inferiority, either mental or constitutional inadequacy,
in each and every one. In the majority of cases it is a weakness; that
is, they are easily influenced, therefore easily led astray.”

It seems fair and right to allow for a difference among the writers
as to the full import of the question to which they have responded