Commitments to Joliet, Menard, and Pontiac between June 30, 1926, and June 30, 1927, numbered 3,373. On June 30, 1927, there were already in Joliet 2,882 prisoners; in Menard 1,824; and in Pontiac, 1,636. These are the figures given on April 18, 1927, and in June the number must have been fully as great.

All of these institutions are overcrowded to such an extent that their proper management is greatly interfered with and the proper training of their inmates is practically impossible.

In order that room may be made each year for the 3,373 additional convicts (and that number will grow larger as time goes on), at least 3,373 persons must be released from our institutions, or new institutions must be built to provide for the increase. These facts must be confronted,1 and they have been acknowledged in other states. Even in Minnesota it has been estimated that an increase of but one year in the average penalty would involve the erection of a new penal institution.2

Every prisoner in our penitentiaries also involves a cost to the State for supervision and maintenance. What this cost actually is it is difficult to determine, for the statistics in regard to these matters are unreliable. The estimate at Sing Sing for the year 1926 was $382.90 for each man, or a total of $559,806.97 for the 1,562 inmates.

In Illinois the estimate for the year ending June 30, 1926, is $286.49 per capita at Joliet; $263.63 at Southern Illinois; $274.36 at Illinois State Reformatory; $476.29 at the Women's Prison; and $347.12 at the Illinois State Farm. According to these figures, if we take the estimate at Joliet for the year 1926 as a basis, the yearly cost of the 3,373 persons who would have to be provided for in the new penitentiaries would amount to $966,340.77.

One advantage of the parole system is that, although the prisoner is not released from supervision until the maximum term of his sentence has expired, he is not required to be confined in the penitentiary but is able to earn his living without any charge to the State except his small per capita of the overhead expense of the Board of Paroles.3

1 It has been estimated that at the present ratio of increase of crime to the civil population, the attendance in the state penal institutions will be doubled in eight years. The number of convicts committed to penal institutions in Illinois from January 1, 1921, to December 3, 1926, range in total per year from 1,800 in 1921 to 2,454 in 1926. It has also been estimated that about a quarter of a million persons are arrested annually and only 13,000 are being convicted and sent to jail. "On page 51 of the Minnesota Crime Commission Report, we find the following: "We pause to point out the prison capacity that would be necessary if terms of imprisonment were lengthened or the maximum required in all cases. The number of prisoners has grown rapidly in recent years. The increase in the population of the three institutions during the two years ending June 30, 1926, was 370. All three institutions are now full. The prison has a capacity of 1,044 and a population of approximately 1,250. A statistician has advised the Commission that an increase of one year in the term of all prisoners would necessitate another institution of the capacity of the prison at once. From January 1, 1924, to March 31, 1926, 1,005 inmates were released from the three institutions before their maximums had expired. The average time left to serve was 3 years 5 months. If the addition of one year to the term would necessitate one additional institution, it is easy to calculate what would be necessary if the maximum were required in all cases.

See report of George W. Alger on the Board of Paroles of New York (J. B Lyon Co., Albany, 1926).

CHAPTER XV

THE JUSTIFICATION FOR THE INDETERMINATE

SENTENCE AND THE PAROLE

The wisdom of the policy of the indeterminate sentence and the parole, if properly administered, is now almost universally recognized, not only in America, but throughout the civilized world. The policy can hardly any longer be classed as a product of unenlightened sentimentalism.

In 1922 only four states of the American Union were without either the indeterminate-sentence or the parole system. In 1925 the laws of forty-six of the forty-eight American states made definite. provision for the release of prisoners on parole, only Mississippi and Virginia having no such laws.

In 1925 also, the International Prison Commission, meeting in London with fifty-three nations represented, adopted a resolution favoring the indeterminate-sentence and the parole laws and recommending their adoption to the governments of the civilized world.1

THE PAROLE SYSTEM AND THE PROTECTION OF THE PUBLIC The policy of parole is fundamentally humane, but the fact of its humanity does not militate against its profitableness and its practicability, nor the measure of protection that it affords to society, and it has been these elements of public protection rather than the welfare of the individual prisoner which have led to its general acceptance. It has been adopted indeed more as a means of supervising and controlling the conduct of the prisoner after his release.

1 John Lewis Gillin in his work, Criminology and Penology, page 682, says: "In 1910 parole of Federal prisoners was provided for, except those sentenced for life, and in 1913 a law was passed, recommended by the members of the Federal Board of Parole and the attorney general in two different annual messages, which provided for the parole of Federal prisoners even though sentenced for life. A number of the states had anticipated the Federal Government in thus extending the possibility of release even to life prisoners. In Minnesota, for example, a man sentenced for life may be released on parole if he has served thirty-five years less 'good-time' allowances; in Wisconsin after 30 years; in Nebraska, Ohio and Utah after having served 25 years; in Louisiana, Oregon and Virginia after 15 years; in Texas after 10 years; in California after 8 years, and in Kentucky after 5 years. "Moreover, recently municipalities have extended parole to the inmates of their municipal institutions. New York, for example, in 1916 set up the first municipal parole commission and appointed a woman as its head.

"There is a tendency for states to allow by legislative enactment managers of workhouses to parole inmates. So rapidly has parole been extended in the United States that it is doubtful whether the proper supervision has been provided to make it really effective.

"In only 9 states in 1921 had parole been extended to misdemeanants. In these states parole was extended to this class of delinquents only when they were incarcerated in state institutions, not when they were sent to jail.".

from the penitentiary and minimizing the possibility of his returning once more to the paths of crime, than for the purpose of reducing his term of imprisonment.

As administered by Mr. Clabaugh, it certainly has not reduced the terms of imprisonment to a lower level than would have prevailed if the flat-sentence method had been adhered to by the legislature. Indeed, under the system of parole since 1897, the period of incarceration in the Illinois State Penitentiary at Joliet has increased from 1.5 to 2.1 years. Without good-time deductions these average sentences figure more than twice as long as is shown. Then, too, since the introduction of parole the number of pardons and commutations of sentence has declined until during the year ending June 30, 1926, there were only 8 cases of pardon and commutation of sentence.2

NECESSITY OF ADEQUATE SUPERVISION AND ADEQUATE
PROVISION THEREFOR

If adequately administered, the policy serves both to protect society and to benefit the individual prisoner. The indeterminate sentence is necessary to its successful operation. It needs honesty

3

2 Based on a special analysis of Tables 125, 126, 127 in the Fifth Report of Statis tician of the Department of Public Welfare for the Year Ending June 30, 1926.

3 Harry Elmer Barnes on page 160 of his work, Repression of Crime, says: "The first application of the principle of an indeterminate sentence in America, if not in the world, seems to have been in the New York House of Refuge provided by a law of 1824. A very similar condition was introduced into the government of the Philadelphia House of Refuge which was created in 1826. Here the Board of Managers was given large discretion in the matter of discharging or indenturing inmates. This application of the indeterminate sentence principle was, however, wholly limited to juvenile institutions, and few, if any, reformers possessed any idea that the principle might be beneficially extended to institutions for adult delinuents. As with the practice of commutation, one has to turn to Europe for the origins of the principle of the indeterminate sentence as applied to adult convicts. Archbishop Whatley had certainly anticipated the principle in his letter of 1829. It has been held upon reputable authority that the first comprehensive statement and defense of the theory of the indeterminate sentence was contained in the Moral Philosophy of the brilliant if eccentric Scot, George Combe, written about 1835. In 1839 Frederick Hill, inspector of prisons for Scotland, in his report to the secretary of state for home affairs, definitely recommended the introduction of the intermediate sentence into the prisons of England and Scotland. As far as the writer is aware, it has never been fully determined whether or not Hill obtained the idea of the indeterminate sentence from Combe or as the result of his own experience. But whoever may claim the honor of having first presented the principle, it is doubted by no one that its most effective exponent was Matthew Davenport Hill, the brother of Frederick Hill.

"Almost from the first it has been agreed that the indeterminate sentence must have as a supplementary principle and practice, the system of parole or 'ticket-of-leave' as it is known in England. The fundamental value of the parole system in the discharge of prisoners was noted by Jeremy Bentham as early as the close of the eighteen century. The elaboration of the principle was left, however, to Bonneville De Marsangy of France, who became its great and untiring exponent. The 'twin principles' of the indeterminate sentence and parole were combined by Crofton in his Irish prison system and were introduced into American practice in the famous Elmira System,' where they were first applied in the treatment of young and relatively petty offenders, though the Cincinnati Prison Congress of 1870 recommended their immediate application in all state penitentiaries. Though it is generally held that the parole and the indeterminate sentence are a fundamental unity in principle and successful practice, their progress and acceptance in America was more or less uneven. The parole system being less radical in appearance, as a rule, came earlier, entering the state prisons of this country rather generally in the decade of the nineties. The indeterminate sen

in its administration, and ample financial support. Above all it needs the same divorcement from so-called practical politics which usually is accorded, though not always in Chicago, to our public schools, public hospitals, and state institutions of higher learning.

FAILURE OF THE FLAT-SENTENCE POLICY AND THE RISE OF THE NEW POLICY OF REFORMATION

The demand for the parole system arose from the fact that in the great majority of cases, in all cases in fact, except where the death penalty or life sentence was imposed, the convict had to be sooner or later returned to society; and the prison system as originally administered and the practice of looking upon the penitentiary as a place of punishment merely and at the end of that punishment turning the prisoner loose. without any further supervision or even protection had proved a failure.

We had punished, it is true, and no doubt we had furnished object lessons to other would-be offenders, but only too often we had returned to society brutalized and discouraged men and women who were incapable and often undesirous of adapting themselves to the requirements of their new freedom and who, therefore, not only returned once more to careers of crime, but became teachers and missionaries of the art.

We became convinced that reformation as well as punishment was necessary and that in order to assure that reformation and to enable the convict once more to take his place among the ranks of the honest workers, some measure of supervision and some measure of protection should be afforded to him after his release from the penitentiary. This supervision would be difficult under any fixed penalty system, as after the sentence had been served, legally speaking, the crime had been atoned for and we had no right to further control the culprit. We could, however, provide for an indeterminate sentence. We could sentence an offender for a term of from one to ten or one to twenty years. We could put it in our power to release him at the end of a year or a few years, and in crimes such as the larceny of $20.00 or $30.00 surely a year would be sufficient. But we could also still retain control over him and keep him under parole until the expiration of the ten or twenty years. By this means we could not merely supervise his conduct, but we could protect him from the annoyances of the police who only too often hound a man with a record so that it is impossible for him to obtain or keep employment.*

tence found no wide-spread welcome until about 1910 when a campaign for its introduction was waged by the enlightened jurists of the country and by the American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology. At the present time over half of the states have adopted some form of the indeterminate sentence and still more the parole system."

During the past year there has prevailed an unfortunate practice in Chicago of weekly arresting every ex-convict or person with a criminal record, even though no offense can be charged against him, for what is called supervision and to enable

THE PAROLE SYSTEM AND THE INDETERMINATE SENTENCE NOT POPULAR AMONG THE PROFESSIONAL CRIMINAL CLASSES

It is a mistake to confound the indeterminate sentence and the parole with the absolute pardon and to imagine that a prisoner who is released upon parole is free from all further punishment. Legal restraint and legal supervision is a restriction upon liberty and to that extent a punishment, and though released from the walls of the penitentiary, the convict is still under the control of the law and is deprived of his liberty. At any moment and until the termination of the period of his maximum sentence he may be rearrested and returned to the penitentiary if his parole is violated. He is not a

free man.

The real fact is that the indeterminate sentence is not popular with the professional criminal classes. When fixed sentences alone are imposed they rely not merely upon the probability that perhaps a lesser plea will be accepted, but on the kind-heartedness of the individual judge and on the appeal that may be made to him by family and often political influences. When they are confronted with an indeterminate sentence, they know that their release is dependent upon their own behavior and a more thorough investigation of the causes which led to the commission of the crime. The discipline of imprisonment under the indeterminate sentence is more severe since the prisoner must always be on his guard and be sedulous to obey all regulations.

When the sentence is fixed and determinate, except so far as good-time allowances are concerned, it matters not what the prisoner's conduct may be. So, too, usually at the trial and almost always where a plea of guilty is entertained, there is no inquiry into or an opportunity to investigate the prior conduct of the defendant, his past crimes, or his associates. Under a system of paroles if properly administered, all of these matters can be and are inquired into and constitute determining facts on the question of how long the convict's period of incarceration shall be, and when, if at all, it would be safe to return him to society.

LENGTH OF INDETERMINATE SENTENCES

Contrary to the usual understanding, it is an interesting fact that in recent years periods of incarceration which have been required by our Board of Paroles have been longer than those which were formerly imposed under the flat-sentence practice and much

persons who complain of burglary and other offenses to possibly identify someone out of the horde that is incarcerated.

This practice, of course, makes it impossible for any ex-convict to retain or even to obtain permanent employment, as employers naturally desire the services of such persons at their plants and factories and not in the police stations

In such a case the only protection that the ex-convict possibly has is the protection which is afforded by the parole officers who are the guardians of such persons and have the right to call the police to account and to put a stop to the practice.