Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/350

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336 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

strictly defined administrative agency differentiated from the executive office. The governor and his assistants are charged with more or less clearly defined powers over the prison officials, and the pardoning power has been handed down by ancient legal traditions.

b] Then we have states in which a supervisory state board of charities and corrections has been established. Occasionally limited administrative functions are assigned to these unpaid boards.

c) Recently a movement has been promoted which is very significant for our purpose, to secure the establishment of boards of control over state institutions as in Kansas, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota.

cT) The next more highly specialized method is that of New York, where an administrative agency is established for prisons as for the insane, and for other interests of the people. Similar in principle are the arrangements in Massachusetts.

Looking at the history of development in a large way, this tendency to centralized and specialized administrative control seems to be logical, inevitable, and beneficial.

3. Your committee has also made use of the "ministerial regulations" for the penal institutions of Europe and America, including the rules and regulations drawn up by boards of prisons and reformatories in the United States for the conduct of officers and prisoners, so far as they bear on central supervision and control. This wider survey was made in accordance with the resolution under which we were appointed, since that resolution calls for facts of experience and method throughout the civilized world.

Fortunately the chairman of your committee had already- been at work for a long time collecting and translating docu- ments. These documents, with an explanatory introduction, are now for the first time brought together and presented in the English language. By the courtesy of our valued colleague, Dr. S. J. Barrows, of the secretary of state, and of Congress, the volume containing these documents will be accessible as House Document 452, 1903, second session 5/th Congress, and they give