We now bring together, for convenience of reference, our various: suggestions in the form of propositions. 1. There shall be established for convicted criminals of an age not exceeding thirty, a correctional institution, to be called. "The State Reformatory," and to be placed upon a farm of at least two hundred and fifty acres. 2. It shall be under the charge and superintendence of a board of managers of prisons, to be composed of five persons appointed by the Governor, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, who shall hold office for ten years, except that the five first appointed. shall, as the Legislature may direct, be so classified that the term of one shall expire at the end of each two years during the first ten years. The clerk of the reformatory shall be the clerk of the board. The members of the board shall receive no compensation other than reasonable traveling and other official expenses. The board shall appoint the warden, clerk, physician, and chaplain of the reformatory, and an inspector of discharged prisoners, and shall have power to remove them for cause only after opportunity to be heard upon written charges. All other officers shall be appointed by the warden, and removable at his pleasure. The Governor may remove the managers of prisons for misconduct, or neglect of duty, after opportunity to be heard upon written charges. 3. The persons to be sentenced to the reformatory are male convicts, not exceeding thirty years of age, and not known to have been previously sentenced to a State prison in this or any other State, or country, or to this reformatory. Where, under the law of the State, the sentence for crime is five years or more, the sentence to the reformatory shall follow the law, and the prisoner shall have the benefit of the commutation law, as applied to State prisons. Where the sentence is by law for less than five years, the sentence to this reformatory shall be until reformation, not exceeding five years. The board of managers shall be charged with the duty of determining when such reformation has taken place. 4. The government and discipline of the reformatory shall be under the general control of the board of managers. 5. The contract system of labor is to be discarded and the prisoners are to be employed by the State. 6. The buildings are to have a capacity for not more than five hundred prisoners, and not more than one prisoner is to be placed in a cell. They are to be so constructed as to admit of the classification of prisoners. 7. Should a prisoner escape, he should be held to serve out the residue of the time of his sentence, whether the time of his original sentence has expired or not. 8. The sum of $200,000 should be appropriated to purchase the farm and erect the necessary buildings. The board of managers shall constitute the building committee, and their plan shall meet the approval of the Governor, Comptroller, and State Engineer, or a majority of them. The board shall have the power to appoint an architect, superintendent, and other agents, with such compensation as shall be provided by law. 9. The discipline to be observed shall be reformatory. The prisoner shall be advanced from a condition of close restraint to comparative freedom, according to his merit. Privileges are to be conceded and withheld, in accordance with his conduct. While he is to be employed in industrial occupations, those industries are to be selected which are most likely to lead to his own improvement. Time and opportunity for suitable instruction are to be granted, and he is to be stimulated to intellectual exertion. In short, is to be the aim of the warden, with the co-operation of the board of managers, to contribute to the general improvement and mental and moral training of the convict, in every practicable manner, at the same time possessing a reserved power of punishment in case the opportunities offered to the prisoner are wantonly slighted or abused. We purposely refrain from further minuteness of detail. All this, we believe, may be safely left to the board of managers which are provided for, and the warden who may be selected by them. We would leave the subject of modes of punishment to them, without specific legal prohibition. The treatment of prisoners must be, in the nature of the case, subject to no absolutely fixed rules, but must vary with the circumstances of the case. A warden fit to manage such an institution would only make use of severe punishment in the last resort. If inflicted, it should be in his presence, and reported to the board of managers, with reasons for its exercise. What we desire is a board of trustworthy men, to whom we would give all necessary power, and then hold them responsible for its abuse. We trust more to men, in such details, than to measures. An institution such as that we have sketched will meet with no success unless under the control of men imbued with reformatory ideas; and upon them we need lay no restrictions other than deliberation, and openness, and publicity of action. We look with confidence to the selection, by the Governor and Senate, of men fit to be trusted with the use of all the machinery of executive action. It is our belief that the practical working of this scheme will open a new era in prison discipline, and that its results, if faithfully carried out, will lead, in time, to a re-organization of our State prisons, and will furnish suggestions. to other States, whereby the increase of the dangerous classes in society will be checked, and the great problem respecting the disposition of our criminals will be substantially solved. III. THE SITE. For the purpose of making an intelligent decision upon the location of the proposed reformatory, the Commissioners visited, at the invitation of leading citizens, several villages and cities in the judicial district to which our inquiry was by law restricted, namely: Binghamton, Owego, Elmira, Watkins, Unadilla, Norwich, Oxford, Cooperstown and Richfield Springs. A careful personal examination was made of the advantages offered by these places respectively, and the committees in each made official reply to a carefully prepared series of questions designed to bring into compact form the comparative cost of land, the facilities of approach, the prices of food, fuel and building materials, and, in general, to embody information important to impartial and satisfactory action. The tabulation of the answers to these questions demonstrated that in nearly every essential particular equal advantages were offered. After much consideration and after listening to open discussion, in which the chosen representatives of several of the localities named presented the claims of their places of residence, the Commissioners fixed upon the city of Elmira, as, on the whole, the most eligible location for the reformatory. By the terms of the law, this decision is subject to the approval of the Legislature. There is submitted herewith a conditional contract entered into with the owners of the land selected in Elmira, compris ing not less than 250 acres, at an average price of $125 per acre; and, also, a stipulation from the Elmira Water Works Company guaranteeing a supply of water. The Commissioners respectfully recommend, in accordance with this report, that the penal institution for which it provides be located at the city of Elmira, upon the land described in the contract submitted. It should be stated that one of the Commissioners, the Hon. Robert Earl, of Herkimer, who upon the first of January entered upon the duties of justice of the Court of Appeals of this State, did not participate in the action of the Commisssoners with reference to the location of the reformatory. The plan of organization and management had his full sanction. All of which is respectfully submitted. JOSEPH WARREN, T. W. DWIGHT, Commissioners. NEW YORK CITY, Jan. 25, 1870. NOTE.-It is a singular fact, and indicates the earnestness with which philanthropic and reflecting minds are directed to the solution of the great problem of crime and its cure, that, while the foregoing paper was going through the press, the Corresponding Secretary received a remarkable communication from the Hon. William H. Merrill, editor of the Western New Yorker, at Warsaw, and late a member of the Convention called to revise the Constitution of the State. The letter is as follows: OFFICE OF THE WESTERN NEW YORKER, MY DEAR SIR: Two clergymen of this vicinity, both gentlemen of great talent, culture and oratorical power, and of broad philanthropic views, have conceived the idea of organizing and building an educational and reformatory institution upon this general plan: 1. With the purpose of reclaiming persons convicted of a first offence, the punishment for which is imprisonment for not more than five years. 2. Vesting its entire management in the hands of a board of trustees-eight to be named in the charter and made self-continuing, and five to be appointed by the Governor of the State. 3. Giving the managers authority to purchase grounds and erect buildings capable of accommodating 400 inmates, at this place, from funds to be raised by voluntary contributions from the people. 4. Providing by law for vesting discretion in the courts to send convicted persons here, of the class indicated, with the sentence suspended over them, to be executed should they prove incorrigible. The theory of the gentlemen is to found a half-way house, so to speak, between society and the State prison, where there shall be neither walls, gates nor bars-" not even the smell or hint of the prison "— basing discipline upon the latent manhood in every human heart, so generally crushed by prison experience. Their idea includes a farm and workshop, educational and religious appliances, and in general such influences as will reform and reclaim men who, transgressing once, are lost, too often forever, by the terrible plunge out of the bosom of society into the prison, with its degradations and blighting associations. They realize that, under the influence of such labors as yours, the prison system is vastly bettered; but they have faith in being able to establish a more excellent way. Several of our prominent judges, lawyers and laymen have doubted, heard and believed, though the scheme seemed visionary at first. Messrs. Fiske and Cravens are prepared to take the field and labor for the funds, which I have little doubt they could raise. They think of applying for a charter this winter, and will visit you and lay before you their plan, which I have very coldly and imperfectly shadowed. I write you, at their request, to obtain your idea of the general principle and the practicability of such a plan. They have seen President Dwight's report on the proposed reformatory prison at Elmira, and think it will not conflict with theirs at all. If you can write me, even very briefly, within a few days, I shall esteem it a great favor. With high respect, Your friend, WM. H. MERRILL. Rev. Dr. WINES, Albany. 1 VI. REFORMATORY WORK IN THE UNITED STATES FOR THE YEAR 1868. BY THE CORRESPONDING SECRETARY. In a paper similar to the present, published in our last report, giving a view of reformatory work in this country for 1867, while admitting and commending the excellence of our refuges and reform schools for juvenile delinquents, we took occasion to say that though the quality of the work is good, its breadth is far more restricted than the exigencies of the case demand. This remark is as true now as it was a year ago, except that Minnesota has established a juvenile reformatory for boys, and Connecticut and Ohio a similar institution for girls, and that Indiana has a girls' reformatory in process of construction. A short statement of the number of institutions of this general class in the leading countries of Europe, will present our own deficiency, in this respect, in a very conspicuous light. The number of juvenile reformatories in Great Britain, exclusive of ragged schools, is 64; in Germany, 404; and in France, scarcely less, proportionally, though we are unable to state the exact number. The little kingdom of Bavaria, with a population less than that of the State of New York, has 78 reformatories; Wurtemberg, 32; Brandenberg, 37; Pomerania and Silesia, each 31; the republic of Switzerland, 44. It is true that European institutions of this class are generally smaller than ours (though some of them run up to 800 inmates); yet this fact diminishes only in part the disparity between Europe and America as regards the extent to which they respectively carry this work. CALIFORNIA. The State Reform School of California, of which we gave some account in our last report, has been since by law merged in the Industrial School of the City and County of San Francisco. The tenth annual report of this institution for 1868, is before us. The institution, which receives children and youths of both sexes, appears to be in a prosperous condition and doing a good work, although the absence of any reports from the superintendent, principal teacher, and matron leaves us without many items of information which it would be interesting to know. We take a few sentences from the report of the president of the board of managers: The facts and figures of the secretary's report leave no room to doubt that parental neglect is the root of the tree that produces such a prolific crop of degradation, |