Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/430

398 transportation was adopted about forty years ago, and still exists in the penal colonies of Guiana and New Caledonia, The French system has strong advocates, and found one of its warmest defenders in Prof. Leveillé, of the faculty of law of Paris.

The subject of compensation or restitution for injured parties has been commended at previous congresses. It has long been felt that modern laws do not sufficiently indemnify the victim of crime. The difficulty is to show practically how this may be done. It might be possible to apply a portion of the prisoner's earnings to the relief of his victim, but the amount thus gained would not be large. It is suggested that by combining conditional liberation with the idea of reparation much more might be effected. In some respects the laws are harder upon the victim than upon the offender. Thus in France, while in a case submitted to a jury costs are not assessed upon the complainant if the complaint is sustained, in all other cases the complainant is obliged to defray the costs of the process whether for or against him. The congress passed resolutions looking for a change in such laws, and decided to take into serious consideration at its next session, in 1900, various propositions for the relief of the injured party.

Imprisonment is not the only means of checking crime; and no question more important came before the congress than the subject of probation for first offenders. On this subject America has some experience to offer, and Mr. Charlton T. Lewis, of New York, and the writer had the honor of presenting to the congress brief expositions of the method and results of the probation system in Massachusetts. That State now has a probation officer attached to each criminal court in every city and county, and there are seven in the city of Boston. In the year 1893-'94 47,249 cases passed under their examination before going into court, and 5,317 were placed on probation. This probation system deserves wider attention. One of its most important features is not only the examination by the officer before trial, which induces the judge to place the accused on probation, but the visitation and surveillance exercised by the officers during the probation period.

In the whole matter of prison administration the congress had the advantage of the presence of a large number of practical and experienced prison directors. Politicians on this side of the water are fond of tampering with the subject of prison labor. But labor in prison was recognized by this, as indeed by every prison congress, as an essential element in discipline and reformation. To deprive prisoners of labor is simply inhuman, and in the end results in transferring the criminal from a prison to an insane asylum. The need of special prisons for women with women directors was affirmed, and while the right of a prisoner to wage