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The prisons in which this

criminals upon her sister States. system is adopted grade their prisoners into three classes. A convict goes into class No. 2. If he behaves himself, and gets no black mark, he is promoted after one year into class No. 3. If he misbehaves himself, he is put down into class No. 1. The inducement, therefore, to the criminal is to improve himself by good conduct. In Ohio, if he reaches the third class, and has served the minimum term which the statute has prescribed for the particular crime for which he is sent to the penitentiary, he is then said to be eligible for parole; that is to say, if the prosecutor of the county will certify that the prisoner is a man of such and such character, and that this is his first offense, he can then be paroled. If the criminal can then secure a responsible person to say that he will employ him at wages and will be responsible for his good conduct, the criminal is then intrusted to his care to labor under the supervision of this man, not to depart from this man's employ, or go away without the permission of the prison authorities, and to report once every month precisely what he is doing, how much he has made during the last month, and generally what his situation is.

at once.

The result is this: It has freed the State of Ohio to a very great extent of the difficulty in regard to prison labor. Secondly, as a process of corrective punishment, it is undoubtedly far in advance of anything yet devised, as any man can see The difference between the man who has been allowed to go out upon this system of parole and work himself into a good position in life, and that of the convict who has served his time and then is turned out of prison, not knowing where under God's heavens he is to go, is very apparent. The object of the parole system is to relieve the prisoner from this condition of helplessness, and induce him by good conduct and the hope of pardon into a decent position. Now, then, I come back-sorry for having taken so much time. The Committee do not recommend the State of New York to change their statute, but they say:

"Resolved, That in the judgment of this Association the system of liberating convicts on parole requires better safeguards than those which are provided by the legislation in the States of New York and Ohio on that subject, so as to secure the retention of paroled prisoners more effectually within the supervision and control of the prison authorities, and keeping them strictly within the limits of their respective States. The dispersion of criminals by the authorities of a State in other States or countries should never be permitted."

We do not undertake to dictate. I am, like the gentleman from Georgia, somewhat of a State-rights man, and I should not pretend to dictate to Georgia or any other State about that; but we simply say it is the opinion of this Association that this thing is not right, and our advice is not to leave the law open to such abuse as this statute seems to have been perverted to in New York.

It is not necessary to trouble the Association further, or I would read the table, from which you would be surprised to see the extent to which this abuse has gone. There is an Ohio judge in the room now who has sent to the Ohio penitentiary two of these New York parole men in the past year.

Henry Wise Garnett, of the District of Columbia:

In pursuing the line in which Mr. King has just spoken I think it right that the Association should hear the resolution under which we acted. In 1886 the following resolution was introduced, and it is the one under which the Committee acted:

"That the Committee on Judicial Administration and Remedial Procedure be instructed to inquire into the subject of indeterminate sentences of convicted criminals and to report to this Association at its next session the extent to which the practice of such sentences has been adopted, if at all, with their recommendations upon the subject.'

Now, I submit that this is certainly a general resolution, to single out no particular State

Augustus O. Bacon:

Will the gentleman permit me to ask him a question?

Henry Wise Garnett:

Certainly, sir.

Augustus O. Bacon:

Were the statutes of the different States examined?

Henry Wise Garnett :

Now, sir, I turn to the report of the Committee in 1886. The report begins at page 313 and runs to page 318. I don't propose to read it all. The Committee reports this in answer to the question which the gentleman just asked: "This practice, so far as the Committee can ascertain, has been adopted in the States of New York and Ohio only. As the Ohio statute has been-"

Augustus O. Bacon:

I just beg the gentleman will give us specific information whether or not the statutes of the different States were examined.

Henry Wise Garnett:

They were, so far as we could examine them.

Augustus O. Bacon:

Did you examine them?

Henry Wise Garnett:

I cannot state whether we commenced with Maine and went to California. I know we procured all the statutes we could. We had a year to examine them. We did make the examination, and the result that we came to is this: That we only found it in two States. Since then it has been adopted by two more. After the year's research, after the communication with each other, and after meeting and deliberating with each other on this subject, we had only this information. If the gentleman has any other I would be happy to receive it. We, therefore, prepared and offered this resolution, which was laid over. Now, we picked out those States because they were all we could find. We had no desire to reflect on New York or Ohio. Mr. Benedict is from

New York and Mr. King from Ohio. We certainly did not desire to give them any bad prominence. I do not know but that the dispersion of criminals in other States might have been effected in some other manner. I have heard of a practice formerly in the State of Virginia of a whipping-post-which subject of the whipping-post, by the way, is to come up for discussion here. It has now been abolished in that State. They had an old justice of Alexandria who, we people in the District of Columbia were informed, had a practice when a man was sentenced to thirty lashes of only giving him fifteen, and discharging him with the admonition to come back the next week and get the other fifteen. The result was the man generally landed in the District of Columbia before night. So there may be other ways of dispersing criminals besides this. We endeavored, however, to find this method in other States, and we reported that these were the only States in which we found it, and as we were directed to make a recommendation, this is the recommendation that we made.

Julius B. Curtis, of Connecticut :

Mr. President, it has been said here in the recommendation of this Committee that this system which has been adopted in Ohio and in New York has also been adopted in two other States. I suppose they are the States to which the President alluded in his address, namely, Connecticut and Massachusetts. So far as Connecticut is concerned, I wish to say that they have adopted no such system. It was Professor Baldwin's idea of putting the mark of Cain upon prisoners who had been convicted twice and sentenced to State Prison which was adopted in Connecticut. It is not the parole system at all. When a man has been convicted twice and sent to prison he is to stay there forever. He cannot get away. It does not contemplate the Ohio system. It is a plan which in my opinion ought to be taken up and discussed by all the States and by all the civilized communities of the world.

The President:

The question is now on the adoption of the resolution. All those who are in favor of its adoption will say aye.

Carried.

The President:

There being no other business before the Association, the meeting will stand adjourned until to-morrow morning at ten o'clock.

The President:

SECOND DAY.

Thursday, August 18, 1887, 10 A. M.

The Association will please come to order.

George G. Wright, Chairman of General Council, presented the names of two candidates for membership, who were elected.

(See List of Members Elected, at the end of the Minutes.) The Secretary:

Mr. President, Mr. Wade also comes as a delegate from the Montana Bar Association. Mr. Henry Hitchcock represents Missouri as a delegate.

I have endeavored for some time past to collect names of the Presidents and Secretaries of the several State and local Bar Associations. If gentlemen present will be kind enough to hand them in to the Assistant Secretary at the table, I will have them printed in our next report. It is a means of diffusing information that may be useful.

John F. Dillon, of New York:

I

Since yesterday Mr. W. W. Guthrie, a delegate from the State Bar of Kansas, has attended and is now present, simply rise to make mention of the fact.

The President:

The business now in order is the delivery of the annual address. I introduce Mr. Henry Hitchcock.

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