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19 Prison J. 493 (1939)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl19 and id is 1 raw text is: President's Report Our able Executive Secretary, Mr. Fraser, will review the work of the Society during the past year and I shall content myself with referring to certain matters which are before the public at the present time and as respects which the Society can be of use. A new administra- tion is taking charge of our State government and our minds are natural- ly turned to the future and asking what may be accomplished in the way of penal reform. First, there is the proposed House of Detention for adult defend- ants awaiting indictment and trial in our courts. It will be recalled that the project was started at our dinner last January when we heard from Hon. Raymond MacNeille on the subject. It was then determined to form a Citizens' Committee to bring the matter to the attention of the Judges and ask them to appoint a new Board of Managers for a House of Detention as contemplated by the Act of July 19, 1917. The Judges later appointed an excellent Board consisting of Joseph S. Clark, Jr., Walter B. Gibbons, Earl G. Harrison, George S. Koyl, and Mrs. Percy C. Madeira, Jr. The Board so constituted took up the matter of select- ing a suitable location and applied to the appropriate Committee of the City Council for the approval of a P.W.A. project for the erection of the necessary buildings. Unfortunately there were other matters claim- ing the attention of the Councilmanic Committee, and the House of Detention was not included among their recommendations. The project, however, must not be allowed to drop, and the Citizens' Committee is arranging for a luncheon in February at which the Managers of the House of Detention will have an opportunity of meeting persons inter- ested in the movement. An address will be delivered by Hon. James V. Bennett, Director of the Bureau of Prisons of the Department of Justice in Washington. It is hoped that there will be a full attendance at this luncheon, which is being sponsored by the Committee on Penal Affairs as well as by our Society. In accordance with its time honored policy our Society supported at the last sessions of the Legislature the Falkenstein bill for the aboli- tion of capital punishment and took part in the noteworthy hearings at Harrisburg which were so successful that the bill passed the lower house and would probably have passed the Senate had it been ordered out of Committee. We hope that a similar bill will be presented and passed at the coming session of the Legislature. A matter of great importance, which certainly will be before the Legislature, will be the securing of an effective civil service law which will extend the merit system to our State penal institutions, and mini- mize the pernicious results of politics in the appointment of guards and other employees. Our Society should of course do its utmost to secure this much needed reform. The greatest curse of our prisons is idleness. Bad as it is in the State penitentiaries, where the few existing prison industries do not begin to give full occupation to the prisoners, it is far worse in the County prisons where there is little pretense of any work at all beyond 493

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