When we remember that the number of ex-convicts now abroad in the United States is not much short of a quarter of a million, we can realize the importance of having them under police supervision.

In the State of New York alone the official reports for 1881, gives the names of 1129 convicts dismissed during that year from the three long term prisons, while of felons and misdemeanants both it is estimated that there are 10,000 of them annually emptied from the prisons upon society in that State. Multiply these figures by ten and we have a fair approximation of the annual deluge precipitated upon the people of the United States as a whole.

How to control this flood of crime, or at least how to deal with it so that society shall suffer the least, is the question we have in hand. My own opinion is that police supervision, thus far, presents the most promising results of any yet proposed. With police supervision outside of the penitentiary, and progressive classification inside, it seems entirely practicable to sift out, with a high degree of certainty, the good from the bad, the savable from the unsavable, and so handle them that the one shall be disinfected, and the other permanently quarantined.

Courts and juries, in the nature of things, can not discriminate to any large extent. Ihe drag net of the law takes in all alike who come within its sweep, and empties the catch into the penitentiary in an unsorted lump. Under the present system it remains unsorted, with the result in the end of making the whole mass either wholly bad, or at least largely tainted by its worst ingredients.

What is wanted is to eliminate as quickly as possible the leaven of evil and purify the rest. How to do this is the problem to solve. The methods presented in this paper are attempts in this direction, and as such I submit them to the consideration of the Conference.

Dear General Brinkerhoff:

I send you several papers written at d'fferent times on Police Supervision, with a book which will show you how it was badly done in England and well done in Ireland, and it is worth something to see how it ought not to be done.

The history of Police Supervision is this: Our criminals used to be transported to Australia or Van Diemans-land; but about 1850 most of our colonies refused to receive them; the convict prisons were very full and very bad and our Government want d to get rid of them. In 1853 an act was passed inventing Penal Servitude. • This was to be a tripartite punishment, i. e., first about nine months in a separate cell; about three-fourths of the rest of the sentence in associated labor; and about one-fourth at liberty under supervision. It was intended that liberty on license should not be granted to a man until a place of w ork was found for him; but Sir Joshua Jebb, then Chief Director of convicts in England, was in a hurry to get his men out, or could not find places for them, and so discharged t'em with the form of a license, but never inquired about them. The effect was as bad as might be expected. .

On the other hand, in Ireland, Capta:n (now Sir Walter) Crofton, the Director of convicts in that island, carried out the system properly and added a new stage to the Penal Service gradation. The success was admirable and the number of convicts sank in a few years to one-fourth of the former number.

I must explain that here we use the t rm convict (improperly) restricting it to the more serious class of offenders sentenced to penal set vi ude, while those sentenced for short terms to the smaller prisons are called prisoners.

In the black book I send you, Wheatley Balme givf s you the description of the English and Irish systems in 1862, with his quaint humor but most truly. In 1864, however, a new penal servitude act was passed and a clause wa* introduced — desperately opposed by the ministers in loth houses — ordering that all convicts on license should report themselves to the police eve y month, and this was well carried out in most place-*. The change was great. In 1863 scarcely a newspaper passed a we k without recording some "atroc ties of ticket of leave men." In 1865 scarcely a case was stated. I watched it closely in my own county and found nearly all in steady work. I think about one in eight offended again and were caught and recommitted, and about one in ten or fifteen absconded and was not caught.

At a social science conference in 1868. Sir Walter Crofton proposed that the association should memoralize Government to give power to pass sentences of not exceeding seven years Police Supervision on all convicted of felony for a second time. I seconded him and we fought it with all our might, and in 1869 an act was pa-sed to allow it.

It was not a good act; the House of Commons had spoiled it, and cut out the monthly reporting, but in 1871 Lord Aberdeen carried an act giving us nearly all the power we wished, and all has gone well since.

Papers 182, 219, 221, 244 and 245 are on Police Supervision solely, the last being the account* of its being carried out in Londou by my friend Howard Vincent. This was remarkable because, though it had been remarkably successful in rural districts, the police of the larger towns declared that they cou d not carry it out and all said that i<i London it would be impossible! Yet Vincent, a young man appointed to a high office (Director of Criminal Investigations) within [ Wednesday

three years of h*s appointment, carried it out successfully in London,, with 4,000,000 inhabitants.

Papers 207, 209, 210, 211, 216, 254 and 263 give the account of our system of preventing discharged prisoners (not convicts) from concealing their antecedents, but employing the police to find them places of work with money to relieve them if necessary (which it very seldom is) and in fact making them act as the agents of our "Discharged Prisoners' Aid Society," and admirably they act as the kindest friends of the libere so long as he works honesUy, but the sure detectors if he relapses. Paper 263 gives the unanimous opinion of our quarter sessions in favor of its success.

Paper 220 is a scheme I have long thought of, but, though many leading men, Sir Edmund Dufane, director of convicts and prisons,, amongst others, tell me it would certainly stfcceed, yet all have their hands full of woik, and it would be a great change, and none of them will take it up actively. Poor Crofton is too ill; so am I, >et t doubt not, please God, that it will come some time, though long after I am gone hence. Will not you '* go ahead" of us?

Sincerely yours, T. B. LI. BAKER.

P. S. If you want to lessen crime the best means thereto is to lessen temptation. This is a moral, a political, and a religious duty, as we ourselves are taught to pray that ourselves may not be led into it.

Put yourself in the place of one just discharged f T>m prison. It is difficult to find work, and with no friends to help or advise, it would be hard not to steal. Again, fancy yourself coming out of prison under police supervision. You are asjked where you want to go. You say "Mansfield." Your photograph and description are sent to the police who offer you one or two places of work, not very highly paid, but where you can live honestly until after some years you have regained your character. You have to call on the police once a month. If you were tempted to st al something don't you think you would feel "I've got to go to that policeman in three weeks, and I can't, or shan't, like to face him if I've stolen anything." Would it not help to prevent your tempta*ion?

Again, men say it will be no good in America, because a libere may go off west and be lost. At least if he does you are rid of him, and if he returns you will take him up for absconding. He is no more likely to go west when he has work than, by the account of some of your writers, he is now when refused work and persecuted by all.

AID TO DISCHARGED PRISONERS.

JUDGE J. W. HENRY.

"No enlightened government inflicts punishment upon its criminals in a spirit of vengeance, nor has any government the right to do it."

The divine injunction, "Thou shalt not kill/' applies as well to communities and bodies politic, as to individuals, and when a government in a spirit of vengence> inflicts capital punishment, it commits murder.

"Vengeance is mine, I will repay" saith the Lord. God's canon against murder is older than the statute of any nation on the subject, and no government is justifible in taking the life of a citizen, except for its own preservation, or the security of society, and no punishment is defensible on any other ground.

"Every punishment,"says Montesquieu, "which does not arise from absolute necessity, is tyrannical." And Beccaria observes that: "The intent of punishment is not to torment a sensible being, nor to undo a crime already committed." Says the same learned author: "The end of punishment, therefore, is no other than to prevent others from committing the like offence."

A wise law giver, in prescribing the punishment for crime, adopts that which is most likely to deter men from its commission. The infliction of pain upon the criminal is not the main, or a material consideration, with intelligent legislators. Punishment is resorted to, because experience has proved that nothing else so effectually restrains men from committing crime.

If it could be demonstrated that reward for keeping the law, would be more effectual to accomplish the desired object, than the infliction of punishment for its infraction, would any wise human law giver reject such a system, and insist upon punishment instead?

If the punishments inflicted upon criminals neither tend to their reformation, nor to deter others from the commission of crime, then no punishment, except that which restrains them of their liberty or terminates their' lives, can be inflicted but in a spirit of vengeance.

The principal objects to be accomplished by the confinement of criminals in state prisons, are: first, to restrain the criminal from perpetrating other crimes; second, to deter others from committing similar offenses; and third, the reformation of the prisoner himself.

It should ever be borne in mind that punishment is a means, not an end, and government should inflict it in the same spirit which actuates a Christian parent in the* chastisement of his child. No good parent punishes his offspring as an end, but as a means/and if the end to be accomplished—the reformation of the child—could as well be effected otherwise, he would " spare the rod."

All state prisons, therefore, should be reformatory, as well as penal institutions, and such as are only the latter are a disgrace to our religion and civilization.

The interest and care of the government for the imprisoned criminals should not terminate, either when the doors of the prison are closed upon him, or when they are opened to set him at liberty, for while a humane prison discipline must, of necessity, be strictly enforced, humanity dictates that regard should be had to his comfort and health, and that such culture should be bestowed upon his moral as well as his intellectual nature, that when his term of imprisonment expires, he may leave the prison a better man than* when he entered within its gloomy walls.

And here a duty rests upon the government which has been most shamefully neglected by every state of this Union. The prisoner comes out into the busy world a branded man. Shunned, detested and feared, the avenues to employment are all closed against him. Good society is as inaccessible to him as to a wild beast. He is excluded from all association, except with the vicious and depraved, and is thus driven back to the very haunts in which he started on his career of crime, with the same evil influences which first made him a felon, ever present, tempting him back to a life of lawlessness.

Is it strange that one who has served a term in a state prison is likely to return to the same or some other prison, when he is thus forced back to the dens of vice in which he took his first lessons in crime and iniquity? Would it not be more remarkable if, with such surroundings, he should become an honest, upright citizen? (Here are omitted statistics with respect to the number of prisoners who are serving a second or more terms.)

In most of the states no means are provided by the government — and in no state are they adequate — by which a discharged convict can earn an honest living, and his application for employment to individuals engaged in the ordinary pursuits of life, is attributed, if he is known to be a discharged convict, to a desire on his part of an opportunity to rob or steal, and they shun him as they would a contagion. But one of two courses is open to the miserable discharged convict. He must begin a new life under an assumed name—start out 'with a falsehood upon his lips in order to get employment and gain admission to decent society, or in his own disgraced name starve, or return to the infamous dens and associates in which, and with whom, he took the steps which led him as a criminal to the state prison.

What right have we, under their present treatment, to expect such men to become honest, and useful members of society?

Society itself is to blame, in a large proportion of the cases of discharged convicts, who return to JJieir former dishonesty and lawless practices. It is not expected of reputable citizens that they will take discharged convicts nto their confidence, and introduce them into the