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 PRISONS AND PRISON DISCIPLINE founders of the cellular system, Edward Liv- ingston, Francis Lieber, Elam Lynde, the founder of the Auburn system, Amos Pilsbu- ry, for 40 years the head of the Connecticut state prison and the Albany penitentiary, and John W. Edmonds, the founder of the New York prison association. These are no longer living; but the work is still carried on by Dr. E. C. Wines, whose extended labors in behalf of prison reform are well known throughout the civilized world, by Sanborn, Brockway, Richard Vaux, and many qthers. In Europe . the subject of penitentiary reform has been earnestly discussed in recent years, and re- forms have been urged in all countries. Prom- inent among the leaders have been Sir Walter Crofton in Ireland ; Mr. Crawford, Alexander Maconochie, Gen. Jebb, Matthew Davenport Hill, and Miss Mary Carpenter in England; Stevens in Belgium ; Pols in Holland ; De Metz, Berenger (de la Drome), Bonneville de Mar- sangy, and Loyson in France; Obermaier, Varrentrapp, and Holtzendorff in Germany; Guillaume in Switzerland ; Count Sollohub in Russia; and Beltrani Scalia in Italy. Various prison congresses have been held in Europe since 1845, when the first, proposed by Ducpe- tiaux, then inspector general of prisons in Bel- gium, was convened at Frankfort. The most important of these was the international con- gress proposed by Dr. Wines and held in Lon- don in 1872. A second international congress is to be held in Europe in 1877. A permanent commission for the study of penitentiary re- form, organized by the congress of London, held sessions in Brussels in 1874 and in Bruch- sal in 1875. Commissions for the revision of the penal code and prison reform have been at work recently in France, Italy, and Russia. In the United States national prison congresses were held in Cincinnati in 1870, Baltimore in 1872, and St. Louis in 1874. The leading prin- ciples which it is sought to introduce into pris- on management in all countries are thus epi- tomized by Dr. Wines : " Reformation of pris- oners as a chief end to be kept in view ; hope as the great regenerative force in prisons; work, education, and religion as other vital forces to the same end ; abbreviation of sen- tence and participation in earnings as incen- tives to diligence, good conduct, and self-im- provement ; the enlisting of the will of the prisoner in the work of his own moral regen- eration ; the introduction of variety of trades into prisons, and the mastery by every convict of some handicraft as a means of support after discharge; the use- of the law of love as an agent in prison discipline, to the exclusion, as far as may be, of the grosser forms of force ; the utter worthlessness of short imprison- ments, and the necessity of longer terms even for minor offences, when repeated ; and the intellectual, moral, and industrial education of neglected, vagrant, and vicious children, this last being, in aim and essential features, an anticipation of the industrial school and juvenile reformatory of our day." The refor- mation of the prisoner is sought primarily for the protection of society. A marked tendency of advanced American opinion on the subject of penal treatment is the centralization and unification of control of all the prisons of a state, and their correlation for preventive and reformatory ends. Under the law of 1873, all prisoners in Maine, except the boys in the state reformatory, are practically under one board of control. There is also a growing ten- dency toward the recognition of prenatal in- fluences producing the criminal impulse and transmitting it from one generation to another, and of the existence of physical causes of dis- ease and degeneracy. The prevalence of these views frequently induces great caution in in- flicting retributive punishment. Indeed, in some states the abolition of definite term sen- tences is urged, as being necessarily vindictive in some degree, and the substitution of indefi- nite committal to custody until such observa- ble modifications of character are wrought as give good hope of the criminal's reform. The association of convicts day and night was for- merly much practised, and still prevails to a limited extent in some prisons of Europe; but this plan is now generally condemned. Three systems are in use : 1, the separate or cellular, known also as the Pennsylvania or " individ- ual treatment;" 2, the associate or congregate, also called the Auburn; 3, the Irish convict, or Crofton. Transportation was practised in Great Britain as early as 1619, when 100 con- victs were sent to Virginia, and afterward small numbers were occasionally sent out and sold to the planters for 7 to 14 years, a prac- tice often alluded to by Defoe and other wri- ters; but the business was not-conducted sys- tematically till after 1718, when for a number of years as many as 2,000 convicts were annu- ally transported. In 1786 it was determined to establish a penal colony in Australia, and the first cargo, of 850 convicts, was sent out in 1787, to Port Jackson, near Sydney. The convicts died by hundreds of fever on the passage out ; or if they arrived they were unable to earn a subsistence, and perished of famine, or, to pre- serve life, adopted the savage habits of the native bush rangers. At length the influx of free settlers, the extensive sheep culture, and the building up of large towns, made their condition tolerable ; while the grants of lands to the emancipists, as those who had served their time were called, and the plan of allow- ing tickets of leave, which in some cases short- ened their term of punishment almost one half, soon gave to the convict settlers a pre- dominating influence in the colony. This led to the organization among the free settlers of a party opposed to the system, and in 1840 transportation to South Australia ceased. It was maintained in Tasmania till 1853. In 1857 an act was passed abolishing transpor- tation entirely as a means of punishment ; but convicts sentenced to penal servitude might