Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/349

 SUPER VISION AND CONTROL OF PENAL INSTITUTIONS 335

As a general thing the whole educational administration has been quite highly centralized within the past half century. In New York, also, the administration of the public health of the local authorities is subjected to quite an administrative control and supervision, to be exercised by the State Public Health Board.

He also mentions the care of pauper lunatics, factory inspection, railway supervision, and local assessments and control of various quasi-public corporations. If he had written his book a little later, he could have covered our point exactly by a reference to the administrative commissioners of New York in regard to prisons.

Professor Goodnow concludes his opinion thus (pp. 271, 272):

We are therefore justified in expecting that this central administrative control over municipal corporations will, notwithstanding that it may be regarded at first blush as quite contrary to our historic and fundamental principle of iocal self-government or administration, be given a much wider development just so soon as the people of the country become convinced of the unwisdom of our present system of legislative control of local municipal matters.

In his book on Municipal Problems, chap, vi, Professor Goodnow gives a convincing array of facts showing how, in England, central control has rapidly elevated the system of education, improved the public health, reduced mortality, and raised the credit and financial efficiency of local governments.

These illustrations of historical facts could easily be multi- plied, and they all bear us onward to one conclusion.

2. The central organization for administration of penal insti- tutions in the United States, as exhibited in the laws of the several states of the Union. To secure and present this set of facts required considerable labor. 1 All that we can do here is briefly to summarize the most vital elements in the laws, and show their bearing on our problem, their significance, and the tendencies noted the details being presented better in book form.

The various methods of administering prisons may be briefly indicated by describing the types shown by different states :

a] Thus we have examples of states in which there exists no

1 1 gratefully acknowledge the help of my students, Messrs. F. G. Cressey, J. B. Billikopf, and J. P. Valentine, who labored many hours through nine months in the library of the Law School of the University of Chicago to collect data.