Three Reforms Urged in Maine.Several reforms are being strenuously urged upon the Maine legislature by the prison association of that state. A farm for inebriates in Cumberland county, a reformatory for women, and a system of juvenile courts are those propositions attracting the most attention from the press and the public. Civic clubs, men's clubs and church organizations are being drawn into the effort to get the necessary bills passed by the legislature. The proposed farm for inebriates will provide physical and mental training for the inmates, and the bill authorizing it fixes minimum and maximum sentences of three months and one year respectively. The bill providing for a women's reformatory asks for an appropriation of $30,000 for an institution on the cottage plan, to which commitment will be on the indeterminate sentence plan. The proposed juvenile court bill was spoken of as follows by Judge Ben B. Lindsey, of Denver. Colorado:

"This bill is the best measure yet proposed to protect and correct helpless, neglected or offending children."

In connection with what promises to be a state-wide investigation of several departments in New York which come. under the control of the governor, it is interesting to note that Governor Dix declares his intention to make a personal inspection of the prisons, and a thorough study of their affairs. Cornelius V. Collins, Superintendent of Prisons, has stated publicly that he will welcome any investigation of affairs in the Prison Department.

A bill to abolish the different prison

boards and establish a new board to control all state prisons and perform the functions of the present advisory board in the matter of pardons, is in preparation by Rep. Robert Y. Ogg, of Detroit, Michigan. Both parties declared for such a bill in their state platforms.

A stop has been put in South Boston, Mass., to the practice of sending juvenile offenders from the detention station to the courthouse in the same vans with adult prisoners.

A bill to compel the sending of prisoners under 18 years of age to the state reformatory, and to permit the sending of first offenders, except those guilty of serious crimes, to the same place, and to prevent the sending of prisoners over 30 years of age to the reformatory, is being urged upon the legislature in Colorado. It is argued that some of the judges think the reformatory merely a branch of the penitentiary.

On the ground that imprisonment in the city jail for petty crimes brings punishment on the family of the culprit no less than on the culprit himself, Mayor Pratt, of Spokane, Wash., is urging the establishment of a work farm where petty criminals can be given employment that will contribute to the support of their families. Mayor Pratt is also said to favor an institution where the destitute can find employment.

A bill for the establishment of a reformatory for first offenders, now before the legislature of California, is said to have the backing of many organizations interested in prison reform. The bill provides for an institution to which prisoners convicted of felony for the first time may be sent for confinement, instruction and discipline, with the object of fitting them for self-support on release. The sentence of such prisoners is to be indeterminate.

A plan for sharing profits with the prisoners of the Rhode Island state prison at Howard, R. I., has been proposed by Warden James F. McCusker, and is now in the hands of a committee charged with reporting upon it. It proprison those who have worked steadily vides that in each department of the for the preceding six months shall share in a monthly distribution of the earnings of that department over and above a stated minimum amount.

It is expected that legislature of Tennessee will make an appropriation at this session for a reformatory where boys convicted of crime may be kept separate from hardened criminals. The state has already purchased a farm five miles from Nashville on which to erect such an institution.

1911

THE

If some one of the prison officials of New York were to suggest the turning out of hundreds of the prisoners on Blackwell's Island and Sing Sing into a colony in the fertile valley along the Hudson or the Mohawk river, under the care of a superintendent and a half dozen assistants without an armed guard, the inhabitants not only of New York state but of all the states in the Union would immediately hold mass meetings of protest and set their political organizations to work to have the official making the suggestion removed from office and incarcerated in an insane asylum. This would be the action taken in this far advanced, civilized country.

Yet in the Philippine islands this very thing has been done, and done with success. It has been done with a people said by leading officials of this country. and other countries to be incapable of self-government.

To be explicit, there are today 1,423 prisoners, or "colonists," as they are now termed-prisoners of all classes and sorts, serving terms of from five years to life imprisonment, and for crimes from petty thievery to murder-living without a guard in a small, fertile valley along the river of one of the islands in the archipelago just south of Luzon, the largest island, of which Manila is the capital.

Here the 1,423 convicts live, not alone,

*First published in the New York World.

Member Ex. Committee

isolated as the prisoners of Siberia are, but much the same as they would have lived had they never committed a crime against the community-in peace, prosperity and happiness, with their families, engaged in the pursuit of agricultureand the only guns on the place are those mounted at the superintendent's office for saluting purposes and the "six-shooter" the superintendent keeps locked up with his cash in the safe of the penal colony office.

There is a guard on the reservation, but it is only a police guard, and the only arms its members carry are a small policeman's club, which is more ornamental than useful.

With this lack of military display on the part of the authorities, there has been but one outbreak or attempt at escape, and that occurred soon after the colony was first established and before the valley has been drained and rid of malaria and cholera. Since that first outbreak and the subsequent capture of all but one of the nineteen who escaped (and that one died) there has been peace and quiet on the reservation.

It was in 1904 that George N. Wolfe, then warden of Bilibid, the "bastile" of Manila, now director of the bureau of prisons of the Philippine islands, found the prison fast becoming overcrowded. He had male and female inmates confined there who were serving sentences

for all manner of crimes. He was confronted with the problem of finding an additional housing place. He took the matter up with the superintendent of prisons with the result that it was determined to establish a colony of prisoners under a guard.

Accordingly, in November, 1904, the superintendent of prisons appointed Warden Wolfe, Prof. William S. Lyon, horticulturist of the bureau of agriculture, and Dr. Arlington Pond, star pitcher on the old Baltimore Oriole baseball team in the McGraw and Keeler days, then city health officer of Manila, to select a site for a penal colony.

After hunting up and looking over several sites the committee finally selected Iwahig, a small valley on the Iuhuit river on the southern point of the island of Palawan and directly opposite the town of Puerto Princesa. The valley is about ten miles long and contains something like 270 square miles.

The site selected, sixty prisoners of all classes and confined for all manner of crimes, most of whom were hardened criminals, were sent there under an armed guard.

At first health and discipline were not good. Malaria and cholera made great inroads upon the little band. The valley, while of fertile soil, was covered with water more than half the year, and that which was not under water was densely overgrown with bamboo timber. The first sixty dwindled down to less than one-third that number. Others were sent to take their places and they, too, became either infirm or more hardened criminals. Conditions got worse, and one day there was a mutiny, in which nineteen of the prisoners made their escape. All but one of the nineteen were captured and sent back to the colony. Things became so bad that Warden Wolfe decided to make a change in the superintendent of the colony, and he made a request therefor to the superintendent of prisons.

At that time the penal institutions of the Philippines were under the jurisdiction of the secretary of the department of commerce and police. They were later placed in the bureau of public instruction and under the bureau of prisons.

The governor general of the Philippines in 1906 appointed Major John R. White of the constabulary superintendent of the colony.

Major White immediately set to work to cure the evils. He got several physicians and sanitary officers of the Philippine government to lay out general plans for draining the valley, so as to rid it of the malaria and cholera. He was more than successful; in fact, in 1907, when he turned the colony over to the present superintendent he had obliterated both diseases. Major White also started a radical reform in the system of handling the prisoners, and instead of driving them and herding them in a few buildings he used kindness.

The real change from a penal colony to a "Golden Rule" colony took place in the latter part of 1907, when Carroll H. Lamb was appointed superintendent.

Mr. Lamb had ideas of handling the prisoners that were different from those of his predecessors. He exercised from the first a humanitarian policy, and instead of asking for the worst behaved of the convicts of Bilibid he asked for the "trusties," who were the greater in number. His requests were granted.

Superintendent Lamb consulted with sociologists and leading criminologists, after which he laid down for himself and the prisoners the following principles by which a good convict might be made a good citizen:

"Proper environment and association, fixed habits of conduct and industry, intellectual and moral instruction and industrial and practical teachings."

He instilled these principles into himself and into the convicts, as the method to fit them soonest to return to society, cured mentally and physically, and to teach them to be law-abiding and selfrespecting citizens.

Mr. Lamb devoted much study to the character of the Filipino and found him, as many others have found him, easy to manage, especially where tact and kindness is used. He also found that the primitive civilization of the Filipino people and their natural bent toward agriculture aided in the application of the principles he laid down.

He began by reducing the restraints

and increasing the independence of the colony as a whole. He also began the utilization of agriculture as the burden. of the convicts' labors, and impressed upon them the idea that not only were they working for the government against which they had committed offenses but for themselves. He pointed out that they would not only gain virtual freedom at once, but would participate in the earnings of the colony.

His first lot of prisoners numbered more than 100, and they were, as in the early history of the colony, made up of all classes of criminals, but men who had been given certain liberties in Bilibid for good behavior. He had as assistants two Americans, the oldest of whom was less than 30, and the youngest of whom was but 21, a Filipino band director, a Filipino physician, a Spanish padre for chaplain, and a matron. The matron was necessary, as among his prisoners were some twenty women.

Today, three years since Mr. Lamb first went to Iwahig, there are 1,423 prisoners. He still has his two American assistants and the two Filipino assistants. In addition he has thirty-one petty officers, all of whom are prisoners. Two of these petty officers are "lifers," serving sentences for murder in the first degree; two more of them are serving long terms for offenses almost as serious as murder, and the rest of the thirty-one are men who have more than five years yet to serve.

Every one of these thirty-one petty officers lives in his own home, has his wife and family, and is a director in the colony's bank, established last year for the deposit of the colony's funds and the gratuities saved by the prisoners. These gratuities are paid monthly, and as the convicts raise everything they use, even to beef and to the leather shoes they make from the hides of the cattle, their gratuities amount to a considerable sum.

Each of these petty officers is in charge of a certain number of prisoners called squads. The squads in turn are formed into brigades or battalions and commanded by the superintendent and assistants. The distribution of all prisoners is about the same as in a military garrison, where a company of soldiers is divided into

squads in charge of a corporal and a sergeant.

The petty officer is responsible to the superintendent for the deportment of the members of his squad. The general orders, which are really regulations, are known by every colonist, and once a month must be recited by him to his petty officer.

In the Philippine islands there are many more holidays than in the United States, and on each of these holidays all work is suspended and the colonists are allowed to engage in sports, church fiestas and social intercourse. The American game of baseball is the principal sport. There are four crack teams in the colony, among the players being several American convicts. Each dry season the superintendent gives a pennant to the winning team and a small sum of money to be distributed among the players. The rivalry for the "flag" is sometimes as keen as in some of the games between teams in the United States.

The colonists have their own court, too, with the superintendent as a supreme judge. He acts finally and independently of the lower or convict court, but with one or two exceptions his action has always confirmed that of the lower court.

At this court are tried such cases as the police report to the petty officers. Last year there were 102 cases before this court, ninety-four of which were minor, or for slight infraction of a rule. The punishment meted out was generally a loss of gratuity and a mark against the individual to be used against him for any future offenses. In each of these the convict court sentenced the culprits to be returned to Bilibid, and Superintendent Lamb approved their decision and returned them. Six of the eight have since been sent back to the colony at their request and on their promise of good behavior.

A bill appropriating $50,000 for a reformatory for women, and authorizing the government to appoint a commission to secure plans and specifications has been proposed in the Connecticut legislature.