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28 Prison J. 361 (1948)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl28 and id is 1 raw text is: ONE HUNDRED SIXTY-FIRST ANNUAL REPORT OF THE PENNSYLVANIA PRISON SOCIETY And I doubt not through the ages And increasing purpose runs And the minds of men are broadened With the process of the suns As I have studied the history of the Prison Society covering one hundred and sixty-one years of its existance, I have been impressed with its singleness of purpose. That purpose has been to serve the individual prisouer in such a way as will be most helpful to him in re-establishing himself as a member of a demo- cratic society. As the years have come and gone, the focus of in- terest has been consistently on that purpose. The Society was instrumental in establishing the old Eastern State Penitentiary with its separate and solitary confinement almost a century and a half ago. In advocating that system, they saw with rare insight for their time, that imprisonment in itself would not effect reform and they proposed a system of lay visiting whereby members of the Society were authorized by law to visit with the men in their cells. This was a serious undertaking but they knew that change in men's lives is wrought through a purposeful relation- ship with others. The preamble to the Constitution of the Society, adopted in 1787, puts it this way: The link which should bind the whole family of mankind together under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken; and such degree and modes of punish- ment may be' discovered and suggested as may, instead of con- tinuing habits of vice, become the means of restoring our fellow- creatures to virtue and happiness. No one can doubt their belief in the inherent capacity of the individual to achieve a fuller life, and I think there is no doubt that they understood also that the new democratic society which was being established at that time, would continue to operate successfully only if individual mem- bers of that society would join with their fellows in an effort to achieve that end. For more than one hundred years, the Society achieved its purposes wholly through the activities of volunteers. When that method began to prove unsatisfactory and professional social work developed as a better way to meet the needs of a highly industrialized civilization, the Society, after careful study and deliberation, introduced a, casework program in 1925. That action seemed to some members of the Society at the time to be a be- trayal of its original purpose, but subsequent history has proven quite the contrary, for in taking this decisive step, the Society pioneered in applying casework as a, method of dealing with a.. dult offenders. By reason of this pioneering, the Society has been privileged to share its experience with a number of other Prison- 361

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