Prison Gate Mission of the Salvation Army in the United

Number of prisoners for whom employment has been found Number of prisoners who have been assisted in addition to those for whom employment has been found..........

152

1,067

Prison Gate Mission of the Salvation Army, United States, Eastern Territory Only, Twelve Months Ending September 30, 1908

Father Foy-I have now the honor and the pleasure of presenting to you a distinguished official of the Christian church in this country, Rt. Rev. Samuel Fallows, Chicago, Ills.

THE DUTY OF SOCIETY TO THE DISCHARGED
PRISONER.

RT. REV. SAMUEL FALLOWS, CHICAGO.

The report which has just been read is the report of the committee, and although as is generally the case with reports, the individual members of the committee did not have the privilege of reading the report in advance, I may say here that I am heartily in accord with all that has been contained in it. Taking the brief address of the chairman of the afternoon and this report, but very little is left for me to say in general upon the subject. I will confine my remarks, therefore, to two practical points. The first one is that the discharged prisoner is a man and a brother. He has not forfeited his sonship to the Everlasting Father by his transgression of human law, in accordance with the great law of grace under which we all are living. And so our sympathy must ever go with the one who has been released from confinement.

The second point is this: that society must endeavor to do its utmost to help rehabilitate the man who has been guilty of an infraction of its laws, must be ready to extend the helping hand, must be ready to bid him Godspeed, and above all things must be ready to give him employment. Now the great test of the reforming power which the institution, whether it be penitentiary or reformatory, possesses, is the willingness of the man to work when he comes out. If he is willing to work and to continue in his work, you have the very best evidence that the man has been reformed.

I want to give some facts regarding the institution with which I am connected, the Illinois State Reformatory, and I take a concrete instance in order to justify the conclusion that I have reached, namely, that the great majority of those who come from places of incarceration, especially from the reformatories, justify this test of willingness to work and thus justify their claim upon society to do its utmost for them.

I may as well confess that I am an optimist through and through. I do not believe there is one particle of pessimistic blood in my veins. If there were, I would get down on my knees and almost in an agony of supplication ask that by some kind of surgery, human or divine, it might be removed from me. I believe that as "long as the lamp holds out to burn, the vilest sinner may return." And the older I grow and the wider or larger my experience with my fellowmen, the more am I convinced of the truth of that saying of Isaac Watts.

I have taken special pains to find out with regard to the Illinois State Reformatory, of whose board of managers I have the honor of being president, to ascertain whether the young men we have turned out are willing to work and are willing to continue in their work. I made as thorough an investigation as I possibly could by conferring either personally or by letter with the superintendents of every reformatory in the United States and with the wardens of every prison in the United States, to know what became of the boys or the young men graduating from our reformatories; to know whether they were to be found after their discharge in these higher penal institutions. I did all I could possibly do to get at the facts in the case. Of course it was impossible to get perfect statistics.

The warden of one of our penitentiaries stated that out of 315 inmates, seven only had admitted they had served terms in reformatories. In our own Joliet Penitentiary, out of a population of 3,219 received in 10 years, 306 had previously served in reformatories in Illinois and other states-less than 10 per cent. During the same time 2,843 inmates had been received in the Southern Illinois Penitentiary. Of this number 155 had served reformatory sentences-less than 6 per cent. In another penitentiary out of 4,179 prisoners, the records show 65 were graduates of reform schools and 26 of reformatories. Another very prominent penitentiary in the west with a population averaging 1,100 inmates yearly, in the language of its warden, and he is here today, known throughout the whole United States as one of the most eminent prison officials, "does not have more than one dozen graduates of reformatories or even of reform schools."

A thorough investigation was made of the record of the boys paroled from our institution to Chicago from July 1, 1901, to January 1, 1906. The statement had been made in one or two of our Chicago papers that these boys or young men who had been paroled were instituting a carnival of crime. They wanted the parole law repealed and the indeterminate sentence made determinate. They wanted the reformatories blotted out or else a radical change made in them.

In order to set at rest forever these unjust statements, this investigation was instituted. In Chicago is the Bureau of Identification, which for twenty-five years has been in charge of Captain M. P. Evans, of national reputation. In this bureau is kept a registration of every person in Chicago charged with major offenses against the law. Every paroled man thus charged would be found in the bureau's list. After weeks of patient labor on the part of the investigators, some of them experts, aided by Captain Evans and his office force, it was ascertained that out of 780 inmates paroled to Chicago, 83 per cent. were not violators again of the law. It was then determined to still make sure, doubly sure, the evidence of reformation; so the record of every Chicago boy paroled up to July 1, 1901, was gone over, which would include a period of seven years. It was found that among 1,286 paroles, there were over 70 per cent. of ultimate reclamations, which included those who had been returned to the reformatory for violation of parole, but afterwards had remained faithful to their parole conditions and when discharged had obeyed the law. During the first seven years of the institution the number of juvenile offenders was much greater and the time of detention shorter than in the six years following. For the entire period of twelve years there has been an average of seventy-five per cent. of reformations.

Now, what about the willingness of these young men to work and their willingness to continue at work. That is the test. I have taken at random 80 names from the list of boys paroled to Chicago from the Reformatory during the last five years and I find their earnings were nearly $40,000 per year from actual statistics. The highest salary was $100 per month and the lowest $20 and board. Many were earning $80, $70, $65 and $52 per month. The wages of more than 600 boys who had faithfully kept their parole can be safely estimated at an average of $500 per year, and as that number are now still steadily employed, so far as is known, their annual productive value is $300,000 per year. Making a very conservative estimate that sixty-five per cent. only of the more than two thousand boys who have been sent back to Chicago, have become good citizens, and taking the average earnings just given, these 1,300 young men are anually receiving $650,000 for their services.

I took the names of 30 Chicago boys on parole at the present time and found that they were receiving on an average $400 per year. Later on they will average $500. Just before coming I took again at random an average of 20 boys who are now out on parole and they were earning an average of $56.50 per month. Since July 1, 1906, 343 boys have been paroled to our city. Of this number 220 have served their parole and been finally released; 18 were returned for violation; 9 were sent to the prisons; 2 joined the U. S. Army, and 5 were wanted for violation of parole. Of this total number of 343, but 5 were wanted for violation of parole, less than 11/2 per cent. who were unaccounted for. And those that were sent back for violation of