Prison Reform

In the Federal Penitentiary at Leavenworth, Kan. supper begins promptly at 3:10 p. m. Reason: the institution is so overcrowded that eating must start early to get the last convict fed before bedtime. To remedy this and many another condition of convict-herding, which goaded U. S. prisoners to riotous fury last year, the House of Representatives last week approved a batch of bills to start President Hoover's $7,000,000 prison reform program. Among other things they provided for:

1) A new U. S. Penitentiary, comparable in size to those at Atlanta and Leavenworth, situated "north of 38DEG north latitude [about Fredericksburg, Va.] and east of 80DEG longitude [Pittsburgh]."

2) A reformatory for men "west of the Mississippi River."

3) A penal hospital for convicts diseased in mind or body.

4) A new parole board of three members (salary: $7,500) to sit in Washington and take the place and power of the Attorney General in passing on applications for release which now come to him at the rate of 9,000 per year.

5) Industrial training for all U. S. prisoners.

6) An increased number of probation officers to be appointed by the several U. S. District Judges without regard to civil service tests.

7) A new division in the Department of Justice to be called the Bureau of Prisons, headed by a director (salary: $10,000).

An abandoned Department of Justice policy: undercover-men as prisoners spying on wardens. Declared J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the department's Bureau of Investigation: "Our bureau did the work upon the specific orders of the Assistant Attorney General [Mrs. Mabel Walker Willebrandt]. . . . It was very distasteful. . . . That practice is not indulged in at the present time. I have received orders from the present Attorney General. . . ."

Though the House obediently passed this legislation without major change, Wets raised their usual cry that Prohibition was responsible for filling the U. S. penitentiaries,* taunted the Drys with their pre-Prohibition claim that the 18th would empty the jails. Representative Leonidas Carstarphen Dyer of Missouri, potent member of the Judiciary Committee, who ten years ago wrote the interstate automobile theft act to break up organized car-stealing, decried the use of his law by judges to jail young violators.

* Last fiscal yar the U.S. jailed 11,192 convicts. Largest class: dry law violators, 3,389. Other imprisonment: 2,234 under Harrison Narcotic Act; 1,515 under Dyer Automobile Theft Act; 903 under postal laws; 236 under Mann Act.

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