number of criminals in California is and has been such as to arrest the attention of every one who has devoted even a passing thought to prison matters. We have in California nearly two thousand criminals incarcerated in our State Prisons, a number unduly large in proportion to our comparatively small population. In the Eastern States and in European countries the subject of prison management and prevention of crime has for many years received a vast amount of public and governmental attention. Volumes have been written by men who have given their lives to this study, and in the thickly populated countries, where crime and poverty grow like twin children, almost inseparable companions, the safety of society has required that the State should put forth the most strenuous endeavors to prevent the wavering from passing the boundary line that divides virtue from vice, and should endeavor to reclaim those who had not become completely hardened in crime.

In California, prior to the appointment of the present Commission, little has been done by the State, save in a desultory way, to treat the subject of penology in the manner its importance deserves. Each State has its own peculiar conditions of climate, topography, and population. What might be successful in one State might prove a disastrous failure in another. We have always had this truth in mind in considering the various topics connected with our labors. We have endeavored to study and master them all; then to cull the practicable and discard the impracticable, always endeavoring to lean to the side of the plans most adapted to the peculiar conditions of our State.

SEC. 4. INCREASE IN CRIME.

Mr. Frederick Howard Wines, the Secretary of the Illinois State Board of Charities, who is a recognized authority on prison matters, says:

The increase of crime in the United States, in proportion to the population, is a demonstration of the failure of existing methods of dealing with it, and must arrest the attention of thoughtful and honest men. No single answer to the question, What is to be done? will cover all that should be done, in the way of preventive measures, the more vigorous prosecution of criminals, and the improvement of morals in the community at large.

SEC. 5. COST OF THE CRIMINAL CLASS.

The cost to the State of its criminal class is well shown in the revised report of the Assembly Committee on Prisons of this State, made in 1881 by Hon. Chancellor Hartson, Chairman of the committee. Says the report:

Sixteen millions is the approximated cost of the 45 State Prisons in the United StatesThe cost of the jails, penitentiaries, and reformatories in the United States is supposed to be much greater.

The number of officers and employés in the 45 prisons is about fifteen hundred. The aggregate annual salaries paid them amount to $1,015,000. The total annual costs of the State Prisons for ordinary current expenses, including salaries of officials, amounts to about $3,000,000. The aggregate annual earnings from all of these prisons amounts to about $1,500,000.

I insert the following interesting and startling statement of the history and progress of pauperism and crime, taken from the Montreal Weekly Witness:

The rapidly augmenting cost of caring for the indigent and criminal classes in the United States is causing some degree of alarmı among political economists, for should the annual increase in the cost of supporting these classes continue for thirty years to come, in the same ratio as in the past thirty years, it will exceed the cost of maintaining the army and navy. In 1850, with a population of 23,191,876, it cost yearly $2,954,806, public funds, to support the poor and criminal classes. In 1860, the population had increased to 31,443,321, but the annual cost of maintaining parasitic population had increased to $5,445,153, which sum had increased to $10,930,429 in 1870, while the whole population numbered 38,558,374 souls. It is now estimated that when the census tables are computed

for 1880, the annual expenses incurred in maintaining these classes will amount to $20,000,000, or 40 cents per head of the entire population, while in 1850 the annual cost was but 12 cents to each inhabitant. The population has been doubled in the past thirty years, but the cost of supporting the wicked and infirm portion of it has increased nearly sevenfold. The immense extent of unoccupied fertile lands in the Western States has hitherto acted as a kind of safety-valve to draw away and absorb large numbers of persons who would otherwise have become burdensome to the public, either as paupers or criminals. It is probable that within ten or a dozen years all the valuable agricultural lands will have passed out of the possession of the Government of the United States, and no more free homesteads will remain to tempt people from a life of vice or indolence. When this takes place there will probably be a greater ratio in the increase in these classes than in the past thirty years, so that in thirty years more, or in 1910, their support will cost $140,000,000 annually, or about $1 25 for each head of population within the territory of the United States at that time. And this estimate omits the enormous cost of arrest and criminal trials engaging the time and attention of Judges, prosecuting officers, juries, Sheriffs, and other executive and judicial officers who administer criminal law in some of its forms or processes.

SEC. 6. SAME SUBJECT.

In the same strain an Eastern writer, speaking of the cost and results of our penal system, says:

There are the thousands of regular policemen in our cities-the thousands of special policemen the thousands of so called detectives, both public and private. Then there are in the neighborhood of 50,000 constables in this country, and about as many magistrates. Then there are nearly 2,200 Sheriffs, and perhaps 10,000 Deputy Sheriffs. Then come grand juries-for most of the States still retain this system-meeting on an average of three times a year, and composed usually of 18 men each; then the petit juries for about 2,200 counties, meeting as often as the grand juries, and including talesmen composed of about the same number of men; then, lawyers for the State; next, Judges for the trial and appellate Courts, clerks for these Courts, keepers for police stations, keepers for about 2,200 jails, keepers for all of the penitentiaries, to say nothing about witnesses for the State and defense. In all these you behold a vast multitude of men, numbering nearly a million, all forming a part of this machinery, many giving it all their time, some getting salaries, and others relying on the fees they can collect from those arrested, actually getting their living, or trying to get it, out of the shortcomings and transgressions of their fellow-men.

So much for a glance at the size of this machinery.

Turning for a moment from the size to the "cost of the thing," we find that the sums expended are more than any man can count. It is impossible to estimate the amount now actually invested in prison buildings and equipments throughout the land. There are nearly 50 large penitentiaries supplied with workshops, machinery, etc. Then there are nearly 2,200 jails, besides numerous police prisons. Perhaps $100,000,000 would be a low estimate of the cost of all these improvements. This is all dead capital. Nobody thinks of getting any return on it—even in those prisons that are said to be self-supporting; nobody thinks of paying interest on the investment. Placed at 5 per cent, the interest on this suni alone would be $20,000,000 per annum.

The above sinks into insignificance when compared with the yearly expenses. While a few of the penitentiaries have for short intervals been “self-supporting," the most of them have to apply annually to the Legislature for large appropriations. Then the expense of keeping up the jails and smaller prisons and the police force may be called a dead loss. In 1880 the average cost in Illinois of every prisoner in jail, including expense of arrest, etc., was about $27. Assuming this to be a fair average, it would make $4,087,800 as the total expense for jail prisoners for a year, on the present basis of population.

For the year 1882 the expense of the Police Department of Chicago was a little over $800,000, making an average of about $24 for each of the 32,800 arrests. As_the_Police Department of Chicago is run as economically and the force is as effective and well managed as any in the land, this is a low average; and yet if this sum is multiplied by the total arrests throughout the land, it would make $36,000,000 annually as the amount paid by the Government for arrests simply, to which most of the jail expenses, the costs of prosecution and of confinement in the larger prisons must yet be added. These sums are large, and yet they represent only a part of the expense. They approximate only the amounts paid directly in the shape of taxes; they do not include the large sums paid as costs by those convicted, nor do they include the larger sums expended in various others ways in connection with our criminal procedure.

SEC. 7. SUBJECT CONTINUED.

Such is the size and cost which a mere glance at our penal machinery reveals. It is immense; it is costly, and its victims are counted by millions. Surely, one would suppose that in this country crime was repressed; that life and property were protected. And as the terrors of the law are scattered so profusely in the shape of numerous arrests,

one would suppose that the hardened criminal was perfectly restrained and the young were deterred from the paths of crime.

But, strange to say, quite the opposite seems to be the case. The young are not deterred, nor are the vicious repressed. Revolting crimes are of most frequent occurrence in all parts of the land, and the feeling is spreading that somehow or other our penal system does not protect society. In short, it does not seem to be a success. It does not deter the

young offender, and it seems not to reform nor restrain the old offender.

This being so, one is naturally led to ask whether there is not something wrong with the system; whether it is not based on a mistaken principle; whether it is not a great mill, which, somehow or other, supplies its own grist, a maelstrom which draws from the outside and then keeps its victims moving in a circle until swallowed in the vortex.

SEC. 8. WORK OF THE COMMISSION.

The Commission has held meetings at least once a month, and sometimes has convened two or three times, for the transaction of its business. Among one of the first things it did was to commission the President, Mr. Hendricks, to make a careful and full investigation of the best features adopted by the various prisons in the Eastern States and to obtain the opinions of prominent people on prison management. This examination covered a period of over two months and a half. Mr. Devlin, the Secretary, has been constantly engaged in sending letters of inquiry to persons in the East and in Europe for information, opinions, and documents, and in the preparation of this report of the Commission. Several of the replies received to these inquiries are appended to this report. The Commission, in addition to these meetings for the transaction of business and consideration of penological matters, has held two public meetings to which all were invited. The first was held in the Supreme Court-room of the State Capital at Sacramento, on July 8 and 9, 1886. The second was held in the parlors of the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, September 30, 1886. At this meeting President Hendricks submitted a report of his tour of inspection and inquiry, which was of great assistance to the Commission, and which the Commission gave him permission to have published separately.

SEC. 9. DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.

The subject of penology is naturally and logically divisible into three different heads: 1. The preventive stage. 2. The incarceration stage. 3. The after-discharge stage. Under the first subdivision may be properly considered all matters relating to the care of abandoned and dependent children, and the reformation of juvenile offenders. In this connection the language of Dr. Channing, occurring in a discourse delivered in 1841, is peculiarly pertinent:

Society has hitherto employed its energy chiefly to punish crime. It is infinitely more important to prevent it, and this I say, not for the sake of those alone on whom the criminal preys. I do not think only or chiefly of those who suffer from crime. I plead also, and plead more, for those who perpetrate it. In moments of clear, calm thought, 1 feel more for the wrong-doer than for him who is wronged. In a case of theft, incomparably the most wretched man is he who steals, not he who is robbed. The innocent are not undone by the acts of violence or fraud which they suffer. They are innocent though injured. They do not bear the brand of infamous crime-and no language can express the import of this distinction. What I want is, not merely that society shall protect itself against crime, but that it shall do all that it can to preserve its exposed members from crime, and so to do for the sake of those members as for its own. It ought not to breed monsters in its own bosom. If it will not use its prosperity to save the ignorant and the poor from the blackest vice, then it must suffer, and deserves to suffer from crime. If the child be left to grow up in utter ignorance of duty, of its Maker, of its relations to society, and to grow up in an atmosphere of profaneness and intemperance, and in the practice of falsehood and fraud, let not the community complain of its crime. It has quietly looked on and seen him, year after year, arming himself against its order and peace, and who is most to blame when he deals the guilty blow? A moral care over the tempted and ignorant portion of the State is a primary duty of society.

In this country, and particularly in California, our attention has been devoted principally to the incarceration of those convicted of crime. Without mentioning the various efforts made in different countries of Europe with respect to the saving of children from crime, it will be sufficient to say that this subject has for over a century engrossed the attention of the best thinkers. One of these societies, organized in England in 1815, named the "Society for the Improvement of Prison Discipline, and for the Reformation of Juvenile Offenders," acted on the idea that “ youth nurtured in guilt would never become in manhood respectable members of society.' The society found that the causes for the large amount of juvenile criminality that prevailed in London were: want of employment and dislike of work; homelessness; want of mental, moral, and religious training; parental neglect; destitution; flash houses of drink and debauchery. In 1835 a Parliamentary Committee obtained a great deal of evidence in the several reformatory institutions existing in England, and recommended that reformatories should be added to the prison system of that country. In 1882 there were in Great Britain sixty-one reformatory schools and one hundred and thirty-eight industrial schools. In a report made by the Royal Commissioners on Reformatory Schools it is said as to the reduction of crime in England:

The effect of the system of certified schools established by these enactments has been on the whole very satisfactory. They are credited, we believe, justly, with having broken up the gangs of young criminals in the larger towns, with putting an end to the training of boys as professional thieves, and with rescuing children fallen into crime from becoming habitual or hardened offenders; while they have undoubtedly had the effect of preventing large numbers of children from entering a career of crime. These conclusions are confirmed by statistics of the juvenile commitments to prison in England and Wales since 1856, two years after the passage of the English Reformatory Act, and one year before the first Industrial School Act. In 1856, the number of these commitments was 13,981; in 1866, 9,356; in 1876, 7,138. Since then the number has gradually decreased, and had fallen in 1881 to 5,483. Before these schools came into operation it is beyond doubt that a large portion of adult criminals of the worst classes consisted of those who in their childhood had been neglected or abandoned or trained to a career of crime.

Your dirtiest British youngster is hedged around with principles of inviolable liberty and rights of habeas corpus. You let his father and mother, or any one else who will, save you the trouble of looking after him, and mold him in his years of tenderness as they please. If they happen to leave him a walking invalid, you take him into the poorhouse; if they bring him up a thief, you whip him or keep him at high cost at Millbank or Dartmoor; if his passions, never controlled, break out into murder, you hang him-unless his crime has been so atrocious as to attract the benevolent interest of the Home Secretary; if he commit suicide, you hold a Coroner's inquest, which costs money; and however he dies, you give him a deal coffin and bury him. Yet I may prove to you that this being, whom you treat like a dog at a fair, never had a day's, no, nor an hour's, contact with goodness, purity, truth, or even human kindness; never had an opportunity of learning any thing better. What right have you, then, to hunt him like a wild beast, and whip him, and fetter him, by expensive and complicated machinery, when you have done nothing to teach him any of the duties of a citizen?

And again:

I do not say that it can be done; but, in order to transform the next generation, what we should aim at is to provide substitutes for bad homes, evil training, unhealthy air and food, stagnation, and terrible ignorance, in happier scenes, better teaching, proper conditions of physical life, sane amusements, and a higher cultivation. But who is to pay for all this? The state, which means society, the whole of which, to its last member, is directly interested. I tell you that a million of children are crying to us to set them free from the despotism of ignorance and crime protected by law.

SEC. 12. NUMBER OF CHILDREN.

In California it is difficult to assert how many children or what proportion need the fostering care of the State, or how many are guilty of misdemeanors, for which their punishment is imprisonment in the county jail. By the last report of the Prison Directors of this State it appears that there were in the State Prisons of California one hundred and eightyfour persons who had not yet attained their majority.

In 1853 the Grand Jury of the County of New York reported that, “Of the higher grades of felony four fifths of the complaints examined have been against minors, and two thirds of all the complaints acted on during the term have been against persons between the ages of nineteen and twenty-one."

In 1852 the Warden of the City Prison of New York said:

The astonishing fact that more than one fourth of the entire number committed to this prison, and that nearly one half of those charged with petty offenses against persons and property, have not attained the age of 21 years, calls loudly for the adoption of some measures which shall stay the progress of these cadets of crime.

SEC. 13. PROGRESS IN NEW YORK.

The progress in the abatement of these evils, by an organized system of private charity, made since that time in New York, is shown in the thirtythird annual report of the Children's Aid Society, made in November, 1885. First, the following extract is taken from the report made to that society in 1865:

For the sake of more clearly seeing the effect of these charities toward children, we go back nine years, to 1855, the criminal records of which lie conveniently to our hand, and from which the five-year census dates. The population of New York in that year was 629,810; in 1860, 814,254, or an increase of more than 29 per cent during the five years, or more than 5 per cent per annum. Our latest returns from the city prisons are for the year 1863, being made out on January 1, 1864. The census of that year has not yet been rendered, but we can safely estimate the increase of population since 1855, in eight years, as 40 per cent (forty per centum). It is probably much nearer 50 per cent.

In examining the returns of commitments to the various city prisons for the year 1855, for what are usually juvenile offenses, we find that there were imprisoned, in the year 1855, 46 pickpockets. By the natural increase of population there would be, in 1863, 64; but the true result is, in 1863, 37 pickpockets, or a proportional decrease of nearly 40 per cent of this class of young offenders.

Petit larceny is especially a crime of children. There were imprisoned for this offense, in 1855, 3,299. By the natural increase in population there should be, in 1863, 4,618; but the true result is, in 1863, 3,099, or a proportional decrease of about 33 per cent of petty thieves in eight years.

Vagrancy is peculiarly a cause of crime and its punishment among boys and girls. There were imprisoned for this offense, in 1855, 3,376. By the natural increase there should be, in 1863, 4,726; but the true result is, in 1863, 2,908, of whom it should be remarked that 1,756 were females. We have thus, in eight years, a proportional decrease of about 40 per cent of vagrants.

But lest some should suggest that possibly this decrease of crime is among the adults, the war having removed so large a portion of the criminal population, let us turn to the commitments of boys and girls-of minors. The only returns at present furnished from the city prisons are of those under 20 years, the class under 10 years being included. Of these there were, in 1855, 4,669. By the natural increase there should be, in 1863, 6,536; but the true result is, in 1863, 4,998, of whom 2,945 were boys and 2,454 girls. So that during the war the number of boys who are criminals has increased only 424, and of girls has fallen off about 400.

The report then continues:

During a portion of the period through which the following figures run, the population of the city increased from 629,810 in 1855, to about 1,356,958 in 1884. While, as usual, great numbers of poor people remained here, left by the foreign immigration.

COMMITMENTS OF FEMALE VAGRANTS.

1857.

1859

1860.

5,880 1879.

-1 2,045 1884.

1871

1872.

2,243 1881.

1,854

1,788

434

2,520

361

309

392

298

267

In regard to commitments of young girls, it should be remembered that our police statistics include now all those committed to charitable and reformatory institutions;

⚫ whereas, formerly, only those imprisoned were reported in these tables.

It will be seen from these figures that the commitments of girls and women for vagrancy fell off from 5,880 in 1860, to 2,520 in 1884, or from 1 in every 138 persons in 1860 (when the population was 864,224), to 1 in every 538 in 1884 (when the population was 1,356,958). This certainly looks like some effect from reformatory efforts. Again, the commitments of petty girl thieves fell off from 1 in every 739 in 1863 to 1 in every 5,082 in 1884. Male vagrants, also, have diminished in twenty-five years largely in proportion to the population. Male petty thieves have fallen off some 700 during twenty-five years, and greatly in the average to the whole number, as have also the commitments of boys under 15 years. Our classification in the police reports of what is called "juvenile delinquency," shows a like diminution of children's crime.

JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. Number Arraigned.

The above figures, though they show an increase of crime during the past year (1884), which is partly owing to the classification of the new Code, yet prove a great decrease in the past twenty-five years.

A remarkable effect of all these reform movements is also seen in the general reduction of crime in this city, as is proved by the following record from the police report of 1881:

This remarkable decrease of over 12 per cent in all crimes against persons and property during the past ten years, as well as the decrease from previous years, is one of the most striking evidences ever offered of the effects of such labors as those of this society and of many similar charities. It has gone on regularly in years both of business depression and prosperity. It proves that such labors are diminishing the supply of thieves, burglars, vagrants, and rogues.

This is instructive as showing what can be done by organized effort, and showing how large classes may by proper effort be saved from a criminal life.

SEC. 15. PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.

How far the public school system of a State can be utilized to operate as an educator in the moral sentiment is a problem difficult to solve. All experience teaches that crime prevails among the idle. For this reason, in large cities it is found by experience, that juvenile criminals are copfined almost exclusively to those who are not engaged in some honest employment. While the amount of crime among newsboys and bootblacks, although members of this class, are exposed to the same temptations as others of their age and surroundings, is comparatively small. Idleness leads to crime. Employment has the opposite effect.