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on the part of some foreign observers to criti cize this country as more backward than other lands.
Thus Thomas Holmes, secretary of the
Howard Association of London, found the iron-grated cells at the Elmyra Reformatory demoralizing, and J. S. Gibbons, chairman of the Prison Board of Ireland, said:— I tell you what I think you lose sight of in this country-that all these splendid reformatories deal with merely a drop in the ocean compared with the county and city jails to which your thousands of prisoners go and where many are manufactured. We were exactly in the same condition up to 1877. when we brought county and city jails out from under local authorities in the United Kingdom. We found the antecedent to all reform was state cen tralization. . . . In that way we were able to close about half. . . . I am full of admiration for what the New York prison authorities have done for improving the Tombs, putting in windows and tinkering here and there. But they ought to pull the thing down.
Other tendencies in American prison admin istration which were criticized were that to put more than one prisoner in a cell, and that to build larger prisons than a system of proper classification would show to be expedient. The first section of the Congress, which dealt with penal law, gave more attention to the indeterminate sentence than to any other subject. The following resolutions were adopted after much debate, in which the Latin delegates, particularly, showed them selves cautious about departing from old established principles :~-— The Congress approves the scientific principle of the indeterminate sentence. The indeterminate sentence should be applied to moral and mental defectives. The indeterminate sentence should also be applied, as an important part of the reformatory system, to criminals (particularly juvenile offenders), who require reformation and whose offenses are due chiefly to circumstances of an individual character. The introduction of this system should be condi tioned upon the following suppositions:— 1. That the prevailing conceptions of guilt and puishnment are compatible with the principle of the indeterminate sentence. 2. That an individualized treatment of the offender be assured. 3. That the board of control or conditional release be so constituted as to exclude all outside influences, and consist of a commission made up of at least one representative of the magistracy, at least one representative of the prison administra tion, and at least one representative of medical science.
The second section, that on prison admin istration, concerned itself with the problems of prison labor, the parole system, and re formatory methods. Important resolutions on each subject were adopted,‘ those on con ditional liberation on parole being as follows :— Accepting the principle of conditional liberation on parole as an indispensable aid to the reformation of the prisoner, the Congress approves the following resolutions : 1. Conditional release should be given not by favor but in accordance with definite rules. Prisoners of all classes, including workhouse prisoners. should be eligible for conditional release after serving for a definite minimum period. 2. Conditional liberation should be given on the recommendation of a properly constituted board, but reserving always the control of the govern ment. This board should have the power of recall ing the prisoner in case of unsatisfactory conduct. 3. The duty of caring for conditionally liberated prisoners should be undertaken by state agents, by specially approved associations or individuals who will undertake to befriend and help them and to report on their conduct for a sufiiciently long period. 4. Where the ordinary rules for parole are not applicable to life prisoners, their cases should be dealt with by the supreme government as a matter of clemency. The third section, on prevention, adopted
resolutions favoring the remuneration of prisoners according to their industry and dis tribution of relief to their dependents, the classification and separate treatment of habitual drunkenness, vagrancy, and mendicancy, and the extension and proper supervision of pro bation work. The fourth section, on children and minors,
went on record as favoring a system of deten tion and trial for juvenile delinquents wholly independent from that for adults, a scientific investigation of the problem of mentally de fective young delinquents, measures to pre vent habits of vagrancy and idleness, and legislative and philanthropic action for the protection of illegitimate children. Sir Evelyn Ruggles-Brise, K.C.B., president of the English Prison Commission, was elected president of the Congress, which will hold its next meeting in London in 1915. Prof. Simon
Von Der Aa of Holland succeeds Dr. Guil laume of Switzerland as general secretary.
l Iba'd. pp. 217-8.
