The County Prison presents a vast field for contemplation and labor. It is the receptacle of the vagrant, the drunkard, the disorderly, the suspected, and the convicted. All the elements of crime are found in its cells, and sometimes the unfortunate, the oppressed, and the innocent are made more miserable by a forced association with the vicious and the guilty. Sometimes an accidental association with the bad has procured for the careless, well-meaning innocent, a companion that has indoctrinated him with vice, and made him a proficient in crime. All degrees of servitude are experienced in this prison, from that which terminates with the twenty-four hours for intoxication, to that which is extended to years for some flagrant violation of the law. Nay, there are those who, in the midst of years, have no hope of escaping from the prison cells till they shall “be carried forth of men,” to be buried under the rules of the prison, or by the charity of those who knew them in better days. These last are men convicted of willful murder, by a jury, and sentenced to death, by the Court, but in whose behalf some circumstance suggests a withholding of the death-warrant, and their cases remain from one term of gubernatorial office to another, transmitted by the ruling chief magistrate to his successor, among the matters unfinished, but which seem not to impose upon the new governor the necessity of discharging the painful office which was avoided by his predecessor.

The occupants of the County Prison cells are of the following kind:—

The First Class.—Those committed for vagrancy, breach of the peace, drunkenness, and disorderly conduct.

Second Class.—Persons charged with violation of the laws, whose cases are to be decided by the Criminal Court.

Third Class.—Persons sentenced to short imprisonment, and the payment of fines and costs.

Fourth Class.—Those convicted of crimes of a high character, and sentenced to confinement and labor. And we may add a

Fifth Class.—Formed of those already mentioned, who, having been sentenced to death by the Court, are yet detained in prison by the withholding of the death-warrant for their Execution, or of the pardon which would ensure their release.

With all these the Society has relations by means of the Committee on the County Prison, and to prevent interference in labors, and to secure attendance at all the cells, the Committee is divided into classes, to each of which is assigned a particular division of the prison, though a member of the Committee is permitted to visit the inmates of any of the cells, in addition to those specially assigned him. But it can scarcely be doubted that where one visitor is punctual and faithful in his labors, the interference of others may rather tend to disturb the mind of prisoners than to aid them in the new path of duty upon which they have hesitatingly entered. Such matters are, of course, left to the judgment of visitors, who can easily discern when the ground is fully occupied by a successful laborer. Too much culture is said to be almost as fatal to vegetation as entire neglect. Frequency of interference by persons of varied habits and different modes of approaching the prisoner, can scarcely be productive of good, although each one separately operating, might, with God’s blessing, work out an incalculable amount of improvement.

The laborers at the County Prison are not so numerous as at the Penitentiary, in proportion to the number and character of the inmates. The County Prison is a less desirable field of labor. At the Penitentiary the inmates have a fixed and protracted residence, and may be approached by the same teacher so long as hopes are entertained that “the continual dropping” of moral truths “will wear the stone” of his heart. And his separation from those whose language or presence might encourage his resoluteness in wrong intention, leaves him almost entirely within the influence of those whose duty and pleasure it is to make his banishment from bad society the means of his reformation.

At the County Prison, one large class of prisoners, by far the largest, is always changing. Day by day the vans arrive, crowded with wretches who have entered upon the path of vice, and are hastening down that terrible declivity. Incarceration for all crimes, commences here, even though the criminal should be consigned to the Penitentiary when convicted. The vicious, the drunkard, the disorderly, the peace-breaker, and the vagrant, are committed to the prison, and must abide their monthly incarceration, unless “sooner released by course of law.”

We have already mentioned the various classes of offenders that occupy the cells of this prison. With one class, viz., convicts for various terms, the mode of dealing by the visitors from the city, is changed from that in the Penitentiary only so far as to suit the different character of the confinement, and the occupation of the inmates. The visitor is regular in his calls at the cell of the convict, and follows his own plan of moral and religious instruction, usually successful in proportion to the assiduity of the instructor, and the time in which he exercises his office of benevolence towards the inmates of the cell. Pamphlets, tracts, books of devotion, the Holy Scriptures, are supplied to the prisoner, and his attention to the prescribed lesson is urged by his teacher, and tested by his recitation and comment. And when the unhappy occupant of the cell is unable to read, additional attention is bestowed in imparting the instruction, so as to supply as far as possible the deficiency of primary education.

With the third class, viz., those sentenced to short terms, and the payment of a fine, it may be supposed not so much good can be expected. Yet there are not wanting instances of thorough reform consequent upon the gentle zealousness of the visitor, and the yet lingering sense of right in the mind of the prisoner. Indeed, as some of those suffering short sentences are obtaining the first fruits of wrong doing, it happens often that their consciences and their affections are more easily touched, and thus a hopeful reformation is more readily commenced. This occurs especially when the person arrested is admitted to bail, or, as can rarely happen, placed in a separate cell before conviction, so that a direct and necessary intercourse, by constant association with others in a similar situation may be avoided. The fact that many of these third class prisoners never return, may be regarded as evidence that the discipline of the prison, and the care of the visitors, have done the good work of reformation.

EVIL SOCIETIES.

The experience of visitors with some of this class is of a very interesting character. Occasionally are heard, in the out-break of passion, resolves of the avenging upon the world, the wrong inflicted by the first incarceration. It cannot be denied that these resolves are frequently carried out, and a life is consecrated to crime, in revenge for punishment—and the cell of the prisoner is the first degree in that education which terminates in a full graduation in the State Prison, or on the gallows. Of course, far back of this first imprisonment lies the evil; neglected education; want of parental direction, or the evil influence of pernicious parental example; evil associations at the corners of the street; and especially, and to be particularly noticed, COMPANIONSHIP IN SOCIETIES formed for mischief before the initiates understood the nature and tendencies of their confederacy. The prison and the penitentiary of our city have been made populous by members of these societies, whose object and origin are often emphatically set forth in their abhorrent names. Thousands of lads have thought they were honored in their position by being admitted to fellowship with those who had become a sort of terror in their neighborhood; and others have gratified a pugnacious inclination, by associating with vulgar heroes, who were bound to protect them from assault, and assist in gratifying their malevolence. It is no argument against the evils of these societies that there are in them very few persons of mature age. Alas! the ranks are crowded with those who have the vigor of nascent manhood, without the restraints of a sense of responsibility. Plans of evil, which if proposed to men, even young men, would have been voted down from the danger which the actors would incur, are adopted with acclamation by grown-up boys; and the quiet of neighborhoods is disturbed, property destroyed, personal safety jeoparded, personal injury inflicted, and sometimes human life wantonly taken.

In this class of prisoners, however, as we have already remarked, are often found the proper objects of the visitors’ most hopeful attentions. The young man or young woman, who by the error, we will not say the accident, of bad associates, is arrested for an offence of which he or she is only partly guilty of the act, and innocent of intention, after a few weeks’ confinement begins to hear with interest the voice of friendship “breathed through the lattice,” and though shocked at a new contact with the innocent, yields soon, not merely attention but confidence, opens up the heart to the friend at the cell door, receives the proffered book, accepts the offer of frequent visitations, and in time, not at once, shows that deep sense of degradation which is the beginning of true repentance. The visitor finds himself depended on, the confidence begets protection, and the punishment for the first offense or for the first detection becomes the means under Providence of permanent amendment.

In this department of the prison the separate system is practised as far as can be done consistent with the plans of employment, and, with regard to the effect of the system, even with the limited advantage which it has in this place, favorable reports are made. One instance is mentioned by a visitor, who is most faithful to the duties he assumes and whose regular labors are almost entirely limited to convicts, and to those of a particular gallery, so that he may not by diversity of labors, or a multitude of objects, lessen the good effects of his visits or diminish the means of a close intimacy with the minds of those whose good he seeks. He has within a short time received letters from two soldiers in the Army of the Potomac, both of whom had been under his moral dealings in the County Prison at one time, and both were members of the ——th regiment, both returned thanks for the valuable instructions and kindness of the visitor, both professed to have derived the most important benefits from his care, yet neither of them knew that they had occupied adjoining cells in the County Prison, and neither of them was acquainted with the fact that the other was addressing their common benefactor. Instances of this kind, if not frequent, do at least occur sufficiently often to strengthen the hopes of the Society that the labors which its visitors perform in the name of benevolence and under the direction of the Association, are fruitful, in individual and social benefit. Fruitful in that good which was contemplated in the formation of the Society.

One other instance of the effect of zealous, affectionate kindness and watchful care in this department may be mentioned. A visitor who has for twenty years been constant in the discharge of his voluntarily assumed duties, found in a cell a lad who had by bad association and repeated crimes deserved and received a sentence for many years imprisonment. He was one of those impressible persons who yield to circumstances and follow out fully the course into which they may have been conducted. Notwithstanding the effect which several years’ bad conduct had produced on the perceptions of the youth, separate confinement had afforded him a means of preparing himself for that species of mental hostility to the world which the young convict is likely to entertain, and when the visitor entered his cell and asked for a statement of the circumstances of his short but miserable career, the voice of affection and the tone of deep, almost of parental interest with which the prisoner was addressed, secured his confidence, and his tale of wrong doing was readily told. In time the unfailing attention of the visitor became almost necessary to the existence of the prisoner, and the prescribed devotion was performed. The Scripture lessons were well studied, and all that could be required of the inmate of the criminal cell seemed to be so well done that the “visitor” felt authorized to second the wishes of the prisoner for Executive clemency. A full pardon was obtained, and in a short time afterwards, the released convict was seen occupying a place of peculiar trust, where his own word was all that could be demanded as a statement of cash received. The many failures and disappointments which pain and mortify the visitors in their labor of love, are not recorded. But such an instance as we have noticed above, will serve as a reward for many years of toil, as compensation for many hundred disappointments, and as encouragement to future exertions, and especially to careful studies as to the best mode of improving the means of usefulness. We are not to forget that the labors of the visitors are low down. In other callings it is a comfort to know that the good have been made better by well sustained efforts. The mission of the Society’s Visitors is to those whom the world deems already lost. To snatch even a few from the many, very many, of those who constitute the class of depraved and criminal, publicly exposed, is a work in which the laborers must find much of their reward in the sense of suffering mitigated, and the feeling of kindness gratified. Their highest boast must be that God has accepted the services for the permanent benefit of even a few.

In making an annual report of the doings of the Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of Public Prisons, we might be justified in multiplying our statements of favorable results of the labors of the members of the two great Committees. For these are the fruits of all our plans, the result of all our labors. If the great object to many is to secure the adoption of the separate confinement of prisoners, this separate confinement is only to ensure the moral improvement of the individual prisoner. If the Society puts forth its efforts to create and multiply auxiliary institutions, it is only that there may be a greater concurrence of zeal and talents to make our State Penitentiaries and our County Prisons the schools of reform of individual prisoners; and the Society for Ameliorating the condition of Prisons, while it rejoices in the adoption of its views by institutions in other States of the nation, and by governments abroad, rejoices not as having triumphed merely in extending a knowledge of itself, and as having secured an adoption by others of what it deems its peculiar plans, but as having conciliated the prejudice of other benevolent associations, and secured their co-operation in the work of promoting the good of society, by multiplying the means of improvement of individuals.

We shall have occasion to speak more extensively of the nature of the labors of the Prison Committee, each one of whom is a “Visitor,” when we come to consider the labor in the female department of the County Prison. And that, too, will afford opportunity to notice the operation of the primary judiciary system of the city, and its effects on prisoners and on society.

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY.

Before closing this part of the Report, it is deemed proper, if not indeed a duty, to refer again, and with stronger emphasis, to the evil “associations” of young persons of our city, their immoral combinations, and the evils to which these societies give rise. Lads whose parents are laboring hard all day to procure a scanty support, find themselves without the restraint of domestic authority, and they use their freedom to procure the gratification of wishes which have been formed without domestic discipline or moral restraints. In many of these cases the parents are little better than the children, and the example of intemperance and ill temper at home is easily followed abroad. In some cases the parents, though virtuous, lack the mental ability to correct the evils of bad association in their children, and the foolish son, without any criminal intent or neglect on the part of the parents, becomes a grief to his father and bitterness to her that bore him. There is scarcely to be found a more effective school for vice at first and crime in succession, than is furnished by one of the clubs of lads with which parts of our city are infested,—infested as much now, though not as obtrusively, as when “nights were made hideous” by the uproar of their juvenile members, and the “day deformed” by the inscription of their titles and deeds upon the fences and house-fronts in the vicinity of their operations. He who would alleviate the miseries of prisons by lessening the number of prisoners, may find object of labor among these most injurious societies.

He who would stay the progress of vice and crime in that direction, must deal first with those parents whose vices or whose negligence of parental duties supply members for the clubs, and candidates for the penitentiary. Parental indifference, total disregard to all the obligations of domestic life, is the cause of such a deterioration in the young of the city,—the young we mean of both sexes; for neglect at home operates as injuriously upon girls as upon boys; and the evidence of the equality of the evil is as conspicuous in the bad associations of the young female as in her miserable brother, and the result may perhaps be far more lamentable to the former, because of the almost impossibility of reclaiming her. If the clubs and associations absorb the boys and prepare them for a guilty manhood, public “parties,” coarse exhibitions, and service at the drinking saloon, at dancing halls and casinos, qualify the girl for the lowest grade of vice. The two sexes have different paths downward to destruction, but in this world those pathways usually terminate in the prison; and the cells at Moyamensing have more than once, and at one time, contained father, and mother, with their sons and daughters,—terrible illustration of the evils of home vices, and the neglect of parental duties, the forbearance of domestic restraints.

It is not intended to assert that all the vice and errors of children are referable to parental example: that would be a gross injustice to those sorrowing ones who see the stray one from their domestic circle, disgracing in his vicious career the lessons and examples of piety in which he was reared, and forming a marked exception to the character and condition of his relatives. But we have a right to speak plainly where the evidences of neglect and even of bad example in the parents are manifest in the error of the child. We have a right; nay, in the position which this association is now occupying, we have a duty to society, to urge attention to the evils which our community is made to suffer from a neglect of domestic discipline, which crowds the cells of our prison with guilty parents, and fills the House of Refuge with their erring children.

We repeat it, that we distinguish between those cases of parental sorrow which flow from some exceptional cause, and those domestic miseries which are consequent upon vice or criminal neglect; but care must be taken not to weaken a sense of parental responsibility by referring to misfortune, too much that may be referable to vicious error. In this matter, as in others of a different character, perhaps the language of the poet may be painfully applicable:

STATISTIC.

While on the subject of the County Prison, it may not be amiss to present a few statistics regarding the number of those who have been its inmates during the year 1863. The whole number of commitments was 17,219. The philanthropist who looks at the effect of vice or misfortune on individuals, will be startled at such a statement, when he considers how much private misery and domestic grief there were involved in all these incarcerations; not only in the separation of so many persons from their social and domestic associations, but more than that, often the long career of annoyance to family and friend, from the regular advance in crime and vice which led to the incarceration. One other fact is noticeable, the increase in imprisonment in 1863 over those in 1862 was 2,573. That, it is evident to those who visit the prison and examine into the cause of such painful effects, is, in part, one of the bitter fruits of the present war. And the mortifying fact, that 794 of the increase of committed were females, is evidently referable to the same cause. In 1861 and a part of 1862, the number of commitments of males was greatly decreased, as the army was absorbing with better elements, many of those who were almost monthly successful candidates for the prison, while at the same time, the number of females increased, owing to the absence of those to whom they were responsible, and to the periodical reception of money in larger amounts than they had been accustomed to receive. The return of whole regiments to our city, serves, by supplying only a few vicious from each, to bring up the number of males without diminishing those of females committed. Yet we must not overlook the fact, that a large portion of those extra commitments are of persons who contrive to make their appearance at the prison in about ten days after having served thirty days in the cells. They are new commitments, but they are old offenders; and they furnish one strong argument, or rather, perhaps, show the necessity for a House of Correction.