USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time > Part 35
USA > Indiana > Historic Indiana : being chapters in the story of the Hoosier state from the romantic period of foreign exploration and dominion through pioneer days, stirring war times, and periods of peaceful progress, to the present time, centennial ed. > Part 35
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Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 503
can also feel assured that there is a continuous over- sight and frequent inspection, that was not possible before. This board has secured laws which insure non-partisan boards of trustees; four trustees are appointed by the governor to administer the affairs of each State institution, not more than two of whom may be of the same political affiliation. Each board appoints its own superintendent, and the superin- tendent in turn appoints all officers and employees under him. No other qualification than fitness must be taken into consideration in making appointments; and the trustees are prohibited from interfering in the selection or discharge of employees. The appoint- ment of separate trustees for each institution insures more direct personal responsibility and interest in the administration of that particular institution's affairs than if there was a general board for all of the State's wards. As the demands on the time of the trustees are less, they can be more faithful to the trust imposed in them by their acceptance of ap- pointment. Non-interference on the part of any of the trustees in the selection of employees makes the superintendent entirely responsible for the work done by his assistants. Since the new régime of admin- istering the State charities, under the watch-care of a strong advisory board, which has had the advantage of the valuable services as secretaries of such men of national fame as Ernest P. Bicknell, Alexander Johnson, and at present Amos W. Butler as field officer, the supervision has so greatly improved the business methods that the expenditures have been economized in many particulars. In the adminis- tration of townships' trustees' relief, an average saving of $300,000 a year has been accomplished.
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In the State institutions, the annual expenditure would probably be $225,000 less than it was prior to 1895. At the same time the standards of the in- stitutions have been raised in every particular. More humane treatment of the State's wards has been assured, and better instruction given than could have been imparted in the isolated county asylums. All of this improvement in administration has secured for the plan of central supervision the confidence of the people, the support of the press, and an influ- ence with the legislative body for further betterment.
Among the wise laws, and amendments to laws, that the board has secured, a few may be mentioned, to show the position attained by the State, in com- parison with other sections. The Board of Children's Guardians has been authorized for every county, and the terms neglected and dependent have been explicitly defined, so that there need be no doubt as to the rights of boards to act. It adds to uniform- ity of administration that, throughout the State, no child can be made a public dependent except by the judge of the Juvenile Court. Any citizen can, without personal expense, bring the case to the attention of the Juvenile Court. In cases where such children are brought before the Juvenile Court, the parents or those having the custody of the children, who wilfully neglect their duty to them, may be brought before the court and fined any sum not exceeding $500. But, in accordance with the new theories of dealing with the criminal classes, the court has the power to suspend the sen- tence, and release the person so found guilty, putting him or her on probation for two years, on condition that he or she shall appear before the court at such times as shall be designated, and show that he or
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 505
she has provided and cared for the children. In such cases the children may be given to them, but if they, in any way, violate the parole they may be sentenced at any time. This gives the court the necessary hold on the parent or guardian, which is most effective in keeping them to their duties. Few parents will neglect their children, or contribute to their delinquency, if they are in danger of being sent to prison for a long term. At the end of two years, if there has been no violation of the court's order, the person is free from the sentence. The Legislature has also given the Board of Guardians a general power to take a child under their care where the associations of such a child are such as to contaminate and corrupt it. This gives the board the power to act when it may be unable to prove specific charges, although it is evident that the welfare of the child is at stake. Not only has Indiana provided for a special court for juvenile offenders, either by special judge in cities of 100,000 or more inhabitants, or in other counties, by the regular judge of the circuit court sitting, but it has increased his jurisdiction by empowering him to hear juvenile cases in vacation time. The powers of the court are almost concurrent with the juris- diction of the criminal court, for the judge is given power to punish any person that the evidence shows is guilty of contributing to the delinquency of a child, if such contributing act be a misdemeanor. If it is shown to be a felony, the juvenile court is given the power to bind him over to the criminal court. An act has been passed making it a felony, and sub- jecting the offender to a term of two to fourteen years imprisonment, to contribute to the delinquency of girls under eighteen years, by enticing them into
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a wine-room, saloon, or other questionable place for immoral purposes. There has been State legislation authorizing county commissioners of adjoining coun- ties to unite in the erection of asylums for the care of dependent children, who have heretofore been kept in the county poor asylums. Better still is the provision made for the placing of such children in homes, and the continuous watch-care over them afterward. Prolonged institutional life is recognized as a great wrong to a child, and a "childless home for every homeless child" is the object of this method of caring for dependent children, as soon as it is pos- sible. All of the various State institutions especially designed for the care of defective children are equipped with modern appliances to insure their education, and industrial training; as in the State schools for the blind, the deaf, the feeble-minded, epileptics, the soldiers' orphans, and the boys and girls who are delinquents.
Desertion of wife and children has been made a felony. The granting of marriage licenses has been more strictly regulated by the law passed in 1905. This law makes the county clerks liable to a pen- alty should they issue a marriage license without the observance of its provisions. Under this statute, the first of its kind probably, no license to marry shall be issued where either of the contracting parties is an imbecile, epileptic, of unsound mind, or under guardianship as a person of unsound mind; nor to any male person who is, or has been within five years, an inmate of any county asylum, or home for indigent persons, unless it satisfactorily appears that the cause of such condition has been removed and that such male applicant is able to support a family and likely
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 507
to so continue. Nor shall any license be issued when either of the contracting parties is afflicted with a transmissible disease, or at the time of making ap- plication is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or narcotic drug. Uniform blanks to be filled out are required for the whole State alike; and no license to marry shall be issued except upon written and verified application. This application, stating in full the previous history and condition of the applicants, becomes a matter of record, and open to public inspection.
Under the supervision of the State board, the poor asylums have been improved in administration, and their complete renovation urgently pressed upon the various counties that are remiss in this particular. Before the new régime, they were as great a stigma on the good name of the State as are the county jails. Legislation relating to the county jails and asylums must be the next step in advance in the history of Indiana's progress. Indiana has a pro- vision for police matrons in the police stations of the cities of 10,000 population or over, and jail matrons in counties having 50,000 population or over. There is also a later law providing that condemned women, sentenced for ninety days, shall be sent to the State workhouse, where they are taught an industry, in- stead of lying in idleness in the county jail. These are all very gratifying advance measures. The State board also serves in an advisory capacity in the plan- ning of new county jails, and poor asylums, as to their arrangement and sanitary provisions.
One of the most desired objects was obtained when the village of epileptics was authorized. With a number reaching four thousand in the present pop-
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ulation, the wisdom of providing separate care for these afflicted ones, and a possibility of their having an opportunity to be self-supporting, was recognized by all workers for humanity. Twelve hundred and forty-five acres, near the town of Newcastle, was selected for the village; and the necessary buildings are to be erected as they are needed. This institution will, in time be partially self-supporting, as many of the inmates are capable people when not ill. Many of them will be able to help care for others who are stranded by this incurable affliction. The handicap of this disease will be less cruel when the conditions of living are accommodated to the inmate's misfortune.
The feeble-minded children are no longer to be kept in the county poor asylums, but have provisions made for them in a State school at Fort Wayne. This home is situated on a farm of three hundred and ten acres. More buildings are needed for the accom- modation of other unfortunates that are suffering for the care given here; but the institution is managed on the most humane lines, and the children are taught all that they are capable of learning. It is recognized that accommodations are imperative in State asylums for both feeble-minded children and adults, as well as for the incurable insane.
By a law enacted in 1903, Indiana recognized the humanity of the State providing for its sick, and authorized the establishment of hospitals by county commissioners and their maintenance afterwards. They may do this in conjunction or without the aid of hospital associations. Indigent patients may be received into such hospitals from other counties, by a payment of the cost; and it is also provided that two or more counties may unite in building a
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 509
hospital, for the use of those counties; making it possible, by either of these methods, for even the most backward communities to care for the sick and afflicted.
Aware of the awful waste of life from that dread disease tuberculosis, Indiana has made provisions for a State hospital for the treatment of patients suffering from this affliction. The State has authorized a commission to secure a site of five hundred acres for the important work. There care and treatment will be instituted by the trustees, without the delay of waiting for great buildings. A law has been passed directing the proper authorities to supply free anti- toxin to citizens too poor to purchase it, at the expense of the Board of Health.
Indiana has four hospitals for the insane, in dif- ferent districts of the State, and a fifth is under con- struction. There is also established a state soldiers' home, located at Lafayette, which is open not only to old soldiers and sailors, but also to their aged wives and widows. Here they may not have the hardship of separation added to poverty and old age. The orphans of soldiers and sailors are provided for in a home and school at Knightstown, on a farm of two hundred and forty-seven acres.
Since the Board of State Charities has suggested needed legislation, the whole system of out-door relief of the poor has been rearranged, and the duties of officers defined. Now, the township trustees are the overseers of the poor to give the temporary relief; and when permanent aid is found necessary, the re- cipient becomes a charge of the county and is trans- ferred to the county poor asylum. This system of direct responsibility to the immediate constituency of the trustee, and the required reports, has effected
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an enormous saving to the taxpayers, amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars; and also insures more careful investigation into the conditions of the family assisted.
The progress made in the State's laws for the pre- vention and punishment of crime has been most marked. First, the laws for the care of children are being modelled with the object of preventing crime and pauperism, if possible, before the evil is done; this is shown in the provisions for universal education enforced by truant officers, the establishment of the Juvenile Court, industrial reform schools, and the children's guardian laws, whereby it is provided that there should be a board of children's guardians in every county in the State.
In the laws for the punishment of criminals, Indiana has taken the position that it is correction, and not degradation nor vengeance, that the State wishes to accomplish by the punishment awarded. Says Alex- ander Johnson: "The fundamental principle of it all was adopted nearly a hundred years ago; for in the first constitution of the State is a magnificent dec- laration, never surpassed in a written constitution, on the subject. The eighteenth section of the bill of rights declares that 'the penal code should be founded on the principles of reformation and not of vindictive justice.'" 1 Although it was many years before this. prophetic statement, of some advanced thinker, came to be fully incorporated in the statutes, still the truth has been gradually formulated in the later laws. In this spirit the four correctional institutions of the State are certainly administered. The Indiana boys"
1 Johnson, Alexander, in an address before the State Conference. April Bulletin, 1907.
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 511
School at Plainfield is an industrial school to which are admitted boys over eight and under sixteen years of age who are guilty of vicious conduct. Such boys are committed until they attain the age of twenty- one years; but through good conduct they may obtain release from the board of control by discharge, but are still under the watch-care of the institution. Should such a boy's presence in the school prove detrimental to its welfare, if committed for crime, he may be transferred to the Reformatory, with the consent of the governor, after he is sixteen years old. The State prison at Jeffersonville is the Indiana Reformatory and the State prison north, at Michigan City, is the real prison. "The Reformatory is governed," says Alexander Johnson, "by the best laws on the subject upon the statute books of any state of the Union." 1 All men between the ages of sixteen and thirty years who are found guilty of a felony, other than treason, or murder in the first degree, are committed to the custody of the board of managers of the Reformatory. Men guilty of treason, or of murder in the first or second degree, and all men convicted of any felony who are over thirty years of age, are sentenced to the State prison. To both of these institutions men are committed under the indeterminate sentence and parole law. There is an allowance for transportation, clothing, and necessary money, to all men who get out on parole. Another very advanced position was taken when the State added the law enabling circuit and criminal courts of Indiana to suspend a sentence which they had just imposed, and release upon pro- bation persons convicted of crime and misdemeanors,
1 Johnson, Alexander, in an address before the State Conference. April Bulletin, 1907.
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in certain cases. While still keeping them under the surveillance and control of the prison authorities, the offender is subject to all of the laws applying to paroled prisoners; also subject to the court, which may revoke the parole at its discretion, and order im- prisonment to begin. This vast change in penal law was undertaken to give guilty ones another opportunity to start right in life without the shadow of a prison record. There was also enacted a law ordering life imprisonment for all habitual criminals, upon a third conviction of crime in any State. This is to prevent degenerates from resuming their criminal careers upon release from every sentence, endangering the se- curity of life and property. To check the important part played by heredity, a law was passed making it the duty of all State institutions intrusted with the care of confirmed criminals, idiots, rapists, and imbeciles, to have such surgery performed, by experts, on these specified incurable inmates, as would prevent procreation. Insane criminals are to be transferred from the State prisons to hospitals for the insane.
Indiana was the first State in the Union to establish a woman's prison. The State has also provided an institution called the Indiana Girls' School, which is located eight miles northwest of Indianapolis, and which is intended for the training of wayward girls. Its regulations are similar to the Plainfield school for boys, and it is constructed on the cottage plan. There are thirty girls in each cottage, which is a complete home in itself. Here they are taught life's tasks and given school lessons throughout their period of com- mitment. In maintaining this industrial correctional institution for girls, and a separate woman's prison, the State provides for the complete separation of
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The Indiana Reform School for Boys. From a photograph by Deweese, Plainfield, Indiana.
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 513
the sexes, and also divides the adult female criminals from the younger delinquents. Industrial training, and the rudiments of an education, are provided in both of these institutions; and the indeterminate sentence and parole laws apply also to these inmates, the same as in the prisons for males. The State work- house already spoken of has also been established for women who are sentenced for ninety days or less; they would otherwise have to serve out their sentence in the county jails, in idleness, and are here taught to be of some use.
Trade schools are conducted in the State Reform- atory, intended to train men in useful trades, and to provide for the manufacture of products needed in the various State institutions. The State prison employs about half of its population on contract work, and the remainder are employed on the farm, or in the manufacture of binder twine, and on articles for the State. Under these arrangements, in all of the penal institutions, the inmates have the advantage of the saving grace of employment, at the same time lowering the cost to the State of their maintenance; combining conditions more favorable than any other State. Superintendent Whittaker has said that no State in the Union has as satisfactory laws upon the question of prison labor as has the State of Indiana. These were prepared, and passed, with the approval and co-operation of the labor leaders of the State, and of those citizens directly interested in the management of the penal institutions.
The results of carrying out the reform methods of punishment and the indeterminate sentence and pa- role system are of interest in making an estimate of the value of Indiana's humanitarian laws. Economy
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of funds, stricter oversight, more careful assignment to the institution best suited to the individual case, scientific treatment, home instead of institutional life for normal children, and less pauperizing of the derelict members of the communities, are some of the results of the modern methods in charities and corrections. In the ten years that the new penal laws have been in force, we find, says the superintendent at Jeffer- sonville, that boy prisoners from sixteen to thirty years of age are being educated and taught trades; that every influence is thrown around them to make them useful and respected citizens. It is not an un- common experience for the management to be re- quested by the boy himself, that he be not paroled, but be held in the institution until he has finished his education and trade. These boys when paroled are given tailor-made suits, costing less than did the misfits that were given them ten years ago. Positions at good wages are found for them before they are allowed to go out. While on parole, friendly advice and encouragement are given when needed. Under these conditions, both in the State prison and re- formatory, we find that sixty per cent. of the men and boys who leave the institutions become law- abiding and useful citizens. We find, further, that prisoners are now serving in the prison and reformatory, an average of two years and four months. Counting the year on parole, it amounts to an average of three years and four months that the State has control of the convicts; while under the old method of fixed sentences they were held but one year and nine months; which means that the management is not turning confirmed criminals loose upon society as rapidly as was done under the old law. An outline
Her Civilization as Shown by Her Laws 515
of the methods used with convicted prisoners, upon entrance, under the present laws, is useful in passing judgment on their desirability. After a boy is registered as an inmate, and his previous record and sentence have been duly recorded, a bath is administered and an entire suit of military clothes given him. He then undergoes a strict physical examination, and a school test. A complete history of himself and his family is taken. After instructions about the rules and regulations, and an invitation to the religious services, the boy goes to the general superintendent, who impresses him with the fact that each officer of the institution is there as his friend and adviser, and that they are there for the purpose of making a man of him; and if they do not help him, it will be his fault and not the fault of the management. They tell him that his sentence does not mean one year, nor fourteen years; but that he is sent to the institution exactly as a patient is sent to a hospital, with a case of typhoid fever; and that he will not be paroled, or discharged, until he is cured. He is informed that he is to be given an education to at least the seventh grade, and taught some trade, so that he will be an asset rather than a liability to the State when he is released. The boy is then placed in the school of letters, under a competent teacher, for two hours each day. Here he is given instructions on how to study, and how to prepare his lessons for the next day while in his cell in the evening, as he is provided with an electric light in his cell until time for retiring, at nine o'clock P.M. In addition to his school work, the boy is placed in one of the trade schools, usually the one that he prefers. The trade school, if it be printing, or any other, is under a competent instruc-
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tor, who gives his time to teaching this boy, so that he may be a practical workman on leaving the institu- tion. There is employment for every inmate. During the first year he learns to read and write, and to be able to earn at least seven dollars a week. Then the board of managers hear his story, and the reports of his good behavior in the institution. They may grant him a parole, if they think best. Employment is found for each one, before he goes out into the world; and a strict watch-care kept over him for the remain- der of the sentence. Not, said Professor Freudenthal at the international penological conference, "by a police oversight, but a well-wishing friendly interest which is maintained by parole officers. These serve either for pay, or for the honor of it, or they represent a combined system of both kinds of parole officers as in the model state for parole, Indiana." The paroled one reports regularly to the superintendent his earn- ings and expenses. If he proves recreant to the trust placed in him, he is returned to the prison; but if, at the expiration of his time, his conduct is approved he is discharged free. Superintendent Whittaker reports on the life within the walls, and speaking from the experience he has had in the last ten years in the work says:
"I find there is nothing that will prevent crime more than education and instruction in some useful and practical occupation, and there is no better means of bringing about reformation with the class of our citizens such as we re- ceive at the Reformatory than instruction from a competent educator in a school of letters, followed up with practical instruction in some useful trade. We also find that any method adopted in such institution that humiliates the inmate in the eyes of the other prisoners or of the officers
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