The average earnings of the convicts engaged in industrial labor in the Wisconsin State prison, in 1864, under State management, were $1.36 a day, which was fully thrice the per diem of our New York convicts let to contractors the same year.

In Maine, where the industries of the State prison are managed by the warden, Mr. Rice, the convicts do even better than this, many of them netting the State two dollars a day. Under the contract system the prison went behind-hand from ten to fifteen thousand annually. Under Mr. Rice's administration, with an average of prisoners hardly amounting to a hundred, there has usually been a surplus of several thousand dollars.

In some States the practice has existed of leasing the prison at a stipulated annual bonus, or on the principle of dividing the profits equally between the lessee and the State. In Kentucky, both principles have obtained at different times; and under both, successive lessees have retired with large fortunes. Mr. Thomas S. Theobald managed the prison for ten years on the principle of dividing the profits. During that period, with an average of prisoners not exceeding one hundred and fifty, the clear profits amounted to $200,000; and every dollar of the State's share $100,000-was paid into the public treasury; the lessee himself retiring with an equal sum.

Another effect of the contract system is to impair the discipline of the prisons. First, it places for the entire working day, all the prisoners contracted for, to a great extent, under the control of men with no official responsibility; men independent, to a great degree, of the prison authorities; men who see in the convicts only so much machinery for making money; men whose only recommendation to the positions they hold in the prisons is the fact that they proved the highest bidders for the human beings offered for hire. Secondly, it introduces among the convicts, as superintendents of their labor, strangers who are employed as agents, clerks, foremen, and, in some instances, even as simple laborers, men utterly irresponsible; men selected with little regard to their moral character and often without morals; men who do not hesitate to smuggle liquor and other contraband articles into the prisons and sell them to the convicts at 100, 200, 300 per cent above their market value. Thirdly, it sets up in the prisons "a power behind the throne, greater than the throne," a power which, by the almost unanimous testimony of present and former prison officers, is well nigh omnipotent; a power which coaxes, bribes or threatens in pursuit of its selfish ends; a power which makes and unmakes officers, inspires or remits punishments through officers whom it has bent to its will, and even stoops to devices to get the poor prisoner who has incurred its wrath into straits and difficulties,

that its revenge may gloat over his punishment. The result of all is, that more than half of all the irritation, discontent, insubordination and punishment in our State prisons is due, directly or indirectly, to the baneful influence of this system.

A third effect of the contract system is, to obstruct and render nugatory all influences and agencies looking or tending to the reform of the prisoners. In former times, the moral amendment of criminals was regarded as an impossibility. Thrust away from public view, they were abandoned as irreclaimable to the mercy of men often more wicked than themselves. Happily, this hard, cold, cruel doctrine has been exploded. Experience has shown the possibility of reformation even within the walls of a prison, and has brought thinking men to the conviction that the proper object of prison discipline is to cure the bad habits of criminals, and make them honest, industrious, useful members of society. But reformation does not follow as a matter of course upon imprisonment. It can be effected only through a system of agencies wisely planned and patiently carried out. The chief of these are religion, education and industrial training. The successful application of these agencies is a work in which time, and no small amount of it, is an essential element. It is at this point that the contract system impinges, with a crushing force, upon the great work; and too often the collision proves fatal to it. Contractors, as such, have no interest in the reformation of prisoners. Their interest and the interest of reformation not only do not run in parallel lines, but are repellant and antagonistic. Let any change be suggested with a view to giving more time to the mental, moral and industrial improvement of the prisoners; such a suggestion is sure to be met with the objection: "The contractors would not agree to such an abridgment of the convicts' labor." Thus does this system of convict labor, by an instinct of its very nature, oppose itself to all those vital forces of reformation, by which, if at all, the inmates of our prisons must be redeemed, regenerated and re-absorbed into the mass of upright and honorable citizens. 3. The financial management of our prisons. The Prison Association has given much time and thought to this question, and the results of its investigations have been, from year to year, spread before the Legislature and the people in its annual reports. Our State prisons ought to be self-supporting. If managed by competent and upright men, they would be; but they fall short of this by tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

The contract system has much to answer for in this respect. We have already, in part, but only in part, shown the prejudicial effect of this system financially. Direct losses to the State have been

shown in our reports to occur, through it, not only from the low rate of wages paid by contractors, but also from reclamations, on their part, for real or imaginary claims for damages; from bad debts and cancellation of contracts; from the corruption of keepers; from overwork, as at present managed; and from sales to the State, at exorbitant rates, of the property or rights of contractors under their contract. It would swell this review beyond due limits to reproduce, at any great length, the facts, under these heads, with which our reports have been burdened in past years. Let a few instances suffice for illustration. Alfred Walker made a contract, March 1, 1867, for working the marble quarry at Sing Sing prison. It called for 100 men, and was to continue five years. This contract was owned in June, 1868, in equal shares, by himself and William Sands. At that time he bought the interest of Sands in the property and contract for $11,500. It thus appears that the estimate put by the contractors upon the whole concern was $23,000. The State had become dissatisfied with this contract, and had authorized the inspectors to buy it back. Did they purchase it at $23,000, or even at a fair advance to Walker on that sum? Not at all. Within one month from the date of Walker's purchase from Sands, he resold to the inspectors the property and franchises of the contract at $125,000! What was this less than public robbery to the tune of $102,000? The Prison Association made an earnest attempt to find out who shared in the plunder, but they have to acknowledge that they were baffled in the attempt.

The valuable water power at the Auburn prison was, some years ago, granted to certain contractors. It was not sold to them along with the labor of the convicts, but was just thrown in gratuitously. These men afterwards, on the ground of a deficient supply of water at times, claimed damages from the State in the sum of $200,000. The Legislature authorized the inspectors to settle the claim in their discretion, which they did by allowing the contractors $125,000. This was another robbery, to the full amount thus allowed. There are other similar cases not a few, though fortunately not of such collossal proportions; for if they had been, all the revenues of the State would scarcely have met the expenses of the prisons.

But the subjection of the prisons to political influence has a relation to their finances, as the Association has discovered, no less real and hardly less disastrous than the contract system. This influence is mainly felt in the effect produced upon the inspectors themselves. They naturally regard their position as a prize gained in an exciting political contest, instead of considering it as a sacred trust to be administered solely in the public interest. To them, the appoint

ment of warden and keepers is a source of political power, if not of direct pecuniary gain, rather than the means of promoting the interest of the prisons and prisoners. The financial returns to the State are thus made secondary to the advantages which will accrue to themselves. Doubtless not all inspectors are governed by such considerations; but the tendency of the system is strongly in this direction, and the results pointed out do often, and indeed, constantly occur. The influence thus operating on the inspectors is communicated to all the officers, through the uncertainty of official tenure; and there is much reason to fear that the temptation thus held out to spoliate upon the public proves, in numerous instances, too strong for resistance. It is difficult to assign the limits to which the State in this way, year by year, suffers loss either through the incompetency or the venality of its prison officers.

4. The reformatory agencies of the prisons.-The investigations of the Association on this head have revealed a state of things by no means creditable to our prison administration. Dr. Bates, after serving six years as inspector, testified in 1868: "I think there are some reformations in prison, but the number is small. Very many, especially the younger prisoners, go out worse than they come in." Mr. Augsbury, an ex-warden of Auburn, said: "As reformatories, our prisons are a failure. Men are there educated in crime." Mr. Williams, who was for several years a contractor in Clinton prison, swore: "The reformation of the convicts does not appear to me to enter into the thought of the authorities." To the same effect was the testimony of the physician, principal keeper, clerk and schoolmaster of Auburn prison; the chaplain and the principal keeper of Clinton; and the chaplain and principal keeper of Sing Sing. The active agencies employed with a view to the moral and mental improvement of the prisoners are: one religious service in each prison on the Sabbath; Sunday schools; a Bible in each cell; private counsels from the chaplains; the merest modicum of secular instruction; and the use of the prison libraries. Beyond this, no effort, no contrivance, no anxiety, no zeal, no thought even appears to be expended by the authorities to this end.

COUNTY PENITENTIARIES.

There are eight penal institutions in the State which have received the name of penitentiaries. They are situated in the counties of New York, Kings, Albany, Onondaga, Monroe and Erie. The penitentiary in the county of New York is on Blackwell's Island, and is managed by the Commissioners of Public Charities and Correction. The others are under county control and management. The peni

tentiaries in the counties of Albany, Erie, Monroe and Onondaga are, in effect, though not in name, district prisons, each receiving prisoners from the counties adjacent thereto, by special agreement with their several boards of supervisors. The Association, by its committees, has often inspected these institutions, and has not hesitated to characterize them as, in general, the best managed of our penal institutions, owing to the comparative freedom of some, and the absolute freedom of others, from the blighting control of party politics.

ADMINISTRATION OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE.

The Prison Association has not confined its inquiries, to the administration of penal institutions, but has extended them to the administration of penal law as well. The review of its quarter century work would be incomplete without at least a brief exhibition of its discoveries in this field of inquiry.

The disproportion between the indicted and the tried is a striking feature in the criminal administration of the State. Of 3,624 persons indicted in forty-four counties, fifty-two per cent were brought to trial; thirty-two per cent confessed their guilt; fourteen per cent were convicted; five and one-half per cent were acquitted; one per cent failed of conviction by the disagreemeut of the jury, and fortyseven and one-half per cent were discharged on bail or nolle prosequi. In almost all cases of conviction by confession, the confessions were of crimes of a lower grade than those with which they stood charged. In most cases, also, those who confessed were on trial for their first offence, the old criminals preferring the chances of escape by trial. Of 236 persons indicted for homicide, only thirty-five- about ten per cent were convicted and punished; of whom but six were sentenced to the death penalty. It is in relation to the higher crimes that the disproportion between the arrests and the convictions is so enormous. Moreover, not only are the more serious crimes rarely punished, but even in cases where a conviction is obtained, it is apt to be so long delayed that its moral effect is almost wholly lost. More commonly, however, in crimes of this character, the transgressor, by hook or by crook, manages in the end to escape the just punishment of his misdeeds.

The large disproportion, noticed above, between the committals and the convictions, is mainly owing, as our investigations have led us to believe, to two causes - viz., the practice of bailing, and the mode in which prosecuting attorneys are compensated-by salary instead of fees. The bail accepted is mostly what is called straw bail; at least forfeited bail bonds are very rarely collected. The records in the offices of the county clerks show some curious readings on this point. Inquiry