The one progressive penal act for which the last Legislature deserves credit is the bill “providing for the selection and purchase, or the appropriation from State forest reserves, of a tract of land and the erection thereon of buildings for the Western Penitentiary; making an appropriation therefor; authorizing the removal thereto of the inmates of the said penitentiary, and directing the sale of the site now occupied by the said penitentiary, and the buildings and materials thereon.” This is in line with the recommendation of the Board of Charities, which, in its preliminary report for the years 1911-12, called renewed attention to the very unsatisfactory conditions surrounding the Western Penitentiary, and strongly urged its removal to some large tract of land in a rural section, so that labor, not in conflict with existing laws, might be provided for the inmates. In pursuing this course Pennsylvania will only be doing what some other States have already done or are about doing; and it is to be hoped that in due time similar provision will be made for the eastern part of the State. Might it not be well to keep in mind, however, the need of a central state prison for the confinement of habitual criminals, so that the two penitentiaries now in existence could be used only for first-termers? This would make the reformatory process contemplated by the indeterminate sentence infinitely easier.
Another bill of extremely doubtful utility passed by the last Legislature, authorizes the judges of the courts of quarter sessions and the courts of oyer and terminer, after due inquiry, to release on parole any convict confined in the county jail or workhouse of their respective districts, and place him or her in charge of and under the supervision of a designated probation officer. County jails as now conducted are not reformatory institutions.
It will be seen from this survey that Pennsylvania is not making rapid progress in improved penal legislation; nor is it likely that we can hope for better things until some future Legislature will see fit to empower the Board of Charities or a specially appointed commission of expert penologists to devise a carefully articulated and homogeneous system of penal and reformatory institutions for the State. Such a system should provide for a radical change in the construction, management and internal administration of the county prisons; it should include a state system of workhouses, a woman’s reformatory, a central penitentiary for recidivists, and a favorably located institution for criminals suffering from tuberculosis or dementia, where they could receive skillful treatment; it should make a strict separation between habitual criminals and first offenders, between young delinquents and those of mature years; and it should everywhere introduce approved reformatory methods, and make it possible to give those in confinement ample indoor and outdoor employment. It might, of course, be objected that a system so carefully planned and wrought out would be too expensive; but let it never be forgotten that in the end it is far better for the State, and indeed cheaper, to make _men_ than to arrest, try and support criminals, and suffer the results of their depredations.