Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/114

 98 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

victed prisoner within the limits of the state is subjected to the reforming influences of the most approved system of treatment.

The administration of prisons, under the system, or lack of system, now prevailing, is of a miscellaneous and haphazard character. Some are under state control, some under municipal control, some under private charitable management and others are under a mixed charge, partly private and partly public. In the state of New York, for example, there are three state prisons, five reformatories, and one industrial school under the exclusive control of the state; there are six penitentiaries under the exclusive control of the counties where they are severally located; there is a county jail in each of the counties of the state under the exclusive control of the county; and then there are numerous city prisons, houses of refuge, juvenile asylums, pro- tectories and other institutions under local control and manage- ment. And though the state takes no part in the administration of these municipal and other local prisons, they are crowded with persons convicted of violating the laws of the state.

The county jails afford the most convincing proof (were any proof needed) of the unfitness of a municipal corporation to operate a prison. Some forms of cruelty were expelled from the modern prison, never to. return, by John Howard and Elizabeth Fry ; but most of the surviving abuses that are still found in the worst prisons in civilized countries now exist in our average county jail. Unsanitary conditions that are positively dangerous to life, insecurity against escapes, danger from fire, undue crowd- ing from insufficiency of space, the absence of facilities needed for personal cleanliness and of accommodations required for com- mon decency, the prevalence of vermin and of all filth and squalor, the absence of sunlight, and an all-pervading and nauseating stench these are some of the features that characterize the buildings which are used for the average county jail. The administration of the jails is even worse than their physical con- dition; the management of the jail is a perquisite of the sheriff of the county, who derives a large part of his income from the profits gained from boarding the prisoners and from extortions levied on the prisoners and their friends. Thus the jails are