In presenting the Report of the Seventy-Eighth Year of the labors of “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” we are struck with what in this country may be regarded as a remarkable instance of longevity. Few benevolent societies in the United States survive their founders. Some effect a certain object and are allowed to fall into uselessness and disorganization. Others arise, with kindred purposes and similar means, and produce other good with an advantage of new zeal and fresh machinery. In Europe numerous philanthropic associations have outlived their usefulness, not so much from a diminution of the numbers that need aid, as from changes in their circumstances. The funds do not fail, but the right to apply them, in the changed condition of society, has ceased. The continued existence of the association is secured by the capital upon which it was founded, and the lumbering machinery is annually reviewed by those charged with its custody, and it is then consigned to another year’s seclusion and repose. The dust of antiquity settles upon it, to give it an interest with some, but the idea of usefulness is no longer entertained.

In many of the cases of defunct associations in this country, the wrongs or sufferings that suggested their organization were only temporary, and with the accomplishment of their objects they ceased to exist, or they have given place to others better adapted to the good ends proposed. Most of the still remaining inoperative associations of the old world were called into existence by permanent evils, but their usefulness was made temporary by certain fixed requirements that were soon to render them inapplicable to the changes in the political, religious and social condition of the people. But “The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons,” has before it a work, which though it may vary with time, is not likely to lessen. While society exists we shall have vice and crime; while vice and crime abound we must have prisons to restrain the violators of the laws; and while prisons have inmates, the duty of reforming their morals and ameliorating their condition, will devolve upon some of those who seek the good of society by the improvement of individuals. That duty in its broadest sense has been assumed by this Association. Not merely to lessen the sufferings of the condemned, not alone to assist the innocent, not merely to teach sound morals to those who are suffering from a violation of the laws of God and man, not merely to prevent a too rigid enforcement of special enactments, not alone to prescribe and ensure a separate confinement to the condemned, but so to use that confinement that vice or crime, so communicable in its character, shall not propagate itself through the cells of the prison, and thus make a penitentiary a nursery for misconduct rather than a school for mental and moral discipline; not alone to deal justly and faithfully with a convict while he occupies his cell, but to secure to him, when he shall have completed his penal term, some position in which he may carry into effect his good resolves, without incurring risk from those associates that led him into crime, and especially to secure him from recognition in the world by those who have passed months or years of separate confinement in the same prison with him. We repeat it, it is no one of these measures that is the single or even the great object of the Society. It is every one of them, separate, or all of them combined, with whatever else may present itself for alleviation or correction in the affairs of prisons or the condition of prisoners. Nor is this all; while this Society has in view the whole of these and other benefits, it is no less its intention to continue its labor of benevolence as much upon the fruit of its own existence as upon the evils which it was organized to ameliorate. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, will accommodate its labors to the new state which its exertions may have produced, and, thus, what has been improved to-day may be perfected to-morrow. Nor does it escape the notice of the Society that new work is presented or new forms of labor are suggested as the system which it produces becomes more and more operative. The vicious are to be reclaimed by gentle exhortations and encouraging sympathy. The young criminal is, by kind monitions and encouraging confidence, to be lured from the path into which he has been seduced, and the felon is to be made to understand that there is a hope of regaining the respect of society by that repentance which consists as much in reparation for the wrong and resolves for the future, as in regret for the past; or, failing to acquire for himself the forfeited regard of his fellow men, he may secure a hope of a better rest. True philanthropy seems but the embodiment of religion, and never do the consolations of the Divine promises operate with greater efficacy than when they are poured upon the heart of the convict in the solitude of his cell.

In claiming for the Association such an extensive field and such a variety of labors, we do not overrate its plans nor over-estimate its means and devotion. It may safely be said that as no circumstances of the prisoner are beyond the aim of the Society, so no class of prisoners are excluded from its benevolent intentions. The visitor of the Society when he presents himself at the cell of the prisoner, is not to be deterred by the rank, grade, condition or color of the prisoner. Nor are his efforts to be lessened by any circumstances of his case. We must say with the Roman,

I am a man, and nothing which relates to man can be foreign to my bosom.

And it is a part of the qualification of the visitor of the Society, that he can accommodate himself and his ministrations to the varied circumstances of the occupants of the cell, becoming all things to all classes, that he may gain access to their confidence. Failing in all this, as almost any one must come short of some of the objects of his charitable effort, it is a part of the wisdom and prudence of the representatives of the Society to discern their own want of adaptation to the peculiar circumstance of the prisoner, and call in the aid of those who by different gifts, by other attainments, or higher functions may be better qualified to meet the wants of a particular case.

The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the miseries of Public Prisons, is known by its works. It desires to be judged according to those works. Some of the Society’s efforts have obtained for it European fame, while a part of its labors are of so humble a class as to be little known beyond the cell of the vagrant, or in the small circle of which such a beneficiary may form a part. The great system that seems to concern all mankind, that of separate confinement, is discussed, understood, and partially practised in Europe, and if it is not general, the cause is not so much a want of confidence in the system as a want of the deep, practical interest in the unfortunate victims, which should lead governments and legislators to incur the expense of erecting buildings, especially for penal purposes, adapted to the idea of separate confinement and special discipline, as substitutes for those prisons which are only modifications of antiquated palaces, abandoned convents, or delapidated baronial castles. Even the houses that were constructed for prisons owe their erection in many cases to a time when confinement and cruelty were the means of public or private vengeance, and when the convicted felon became an outcast for life, or rather when the conviction of felony was the Cain mark for perpetual infamy.

The Society is represented in its labors at the prisons in Philadelphia by two Committees. The duties of one of which are confined to the Eastern Penitentiary, in Coates street; the other committee is appointed to labor at the County Prison, in Moyamensing. These two committees are really practical operatives. They have little to do with theories or plans. Their work is in the cells of the prisoners or at the doors of the cells, and their dealings are directly with the individual.

In the experience of the visitors of the Society to the two prisons, there is necessarily great difference arising out of the different circumstances of the inmates of the County Prison and those of the Eastern Penitentiary. In the latter the length of incarceration and the closeness of the application of the rule of separate confinement, seems to break up so entirely the relations of the prisoner with the world from which he is banished, that many seem willing to listen to the admonition of visiting friends, and to accept the invitation to review their lives and to form resolves of future amendment. Not merely do the monitions and invitations, of the visitors to the cells, lead prisoners to promises of good, but the isolation of their condition and a want of outward objects to strike their senses and occupy their minds induce them to thought, to meditation, and lead them to the commencement of that reformation, or, at least those solemn resolves of reformation which are the object of their imprisonment. It can scarcely be doubted, that almost every prisoner in the Penitentiary who has been frequently visited by those who evince an anxiety for his temporal and spiritual good, has been led to resolve to refrain from the crimes which placed him in prison, and to seek a maintenance in the world by means which that world sanctions and which God approves; but it is certain that a large portion of those who thus resolve, find it easier on their return to the world to resume their associations and habits and to become three fold more offenders against the laws than they had been. In vice and crime there is no halting, they are progressive; he who has yielded to their influence must be carried forward with their advancement, or he must renounce entirely their influence. The arts of crime are like all other arts by which a man undertakes to acquire position or a living; they demand advancement. Pride in success leads to undertakings of difficulty, and he who enters a jail a “sneaking thief,” may be stimulated by professional emulation to advance in crime till he attains the dignity of a penitentiary cell for some boldly executed robbery, or some brilliant act of extensive forgery. The released half converted criminal feels all this, but he feels the difficulty of relinquishing plans of life which seem to have been devested of a part of their chances of defeat by the very imprisonment into which they led him; and, as a resolution to reform does not always include the means by which virtuous living may be obtained, the outgoing prisoner finds in his circumstances an excuse for violating the resolutions of good, or postponing their fulfilment till at length he becomes involved in the same labyrinth of difficulties and crimes that caused his former incarceration. Is he then to be neglected? Is he then to be cast off? Is he then to be marked as one who has forfeited, with the esteem of the good, the right to the cares of the good? The Great Master of benevolence gave no such advice, nor did He sanction such conduct by example. He to whom all hearts are open, and who, aware of the evils and hostility of vice and ambition, at once their object and their pardoner, He never but once refused time and attention to the profitless; and His only positive direct malediction was upon the unfruitful fig-tree that had outlived its time of usefulness, and which, under His frown, withered into a leafless and lifeless condition, that could experience no resuscitation.

If we confess, as we must, that much of the evils which we deplore in the prisoner, is the result of adverse circumstances, then we must also admit that he may owe a future reform or repentance to some favorable circumstance, to that circumstance which the thoughtless and the infidel deem the providence of man’s fate, but which reason and religion declare to be the instrument of God’s care of his creatures. It is the duty of the philanthropist to provide for such a contingency, to have in the mind of the offender an appreciation of wrong and right, so that when unexpectedly the circumstance occurs, there may be a knowledge of its capabilities and a readiness to improve it.

In preparing this Report, reference was had to the fact, that some of the great objects of the Society have already been discussed in every light, and with masterly effect. Essays given in the publications of the Society, from men of distinguished talent, have been productive of great good in strengthening the confidence of active members, and in removing prejudices from the minds of those who lacked experience to correct false impressions.

The great system of separate confinement has been presented to the public in a most convincing paper, by an able writer of this city, so that, for the present, it seems only necessary, in our Annual Report, to make a short reference to the system, and then to allow a statement of the proceedings of the Society to illustrate its effect.

It is the object, then, in the present Report, rather to make known the details of proceedings, than to announce the abstract views upon which action is founded; to give up this Annual Report to a presentation of the mode of procedure; to a detail of the daily duties of the active members and agents; to a consideration of some of the antagonistic circumstances that hinder our progress, and to the means upon which reliance must be placed in efforts to alleviate the miseries of prisons.

In attempting to present the report under various heads, it was found difficult to avoid a repetition of argument and explanation, or rather, having made the repetition, it was found difficult to correct the text without impairing the fulness of that part of the subject. Indeed, when it is considered that with the exception of enlightening the public mind, to procure co-operation, and soliciting legislative enactments to enable the Society to act more beneficially upon prisons, and through them on the prisoner, the great work of alleviating the miseries of public prisons, is to be upon the minds of individuals, we shall comprehend how all the divisions of the actions of the Society centre upon the single prisoner. Not for sympathy alone, but for amendment, must we “take a single captive,” and so, in reporting upon the action of the Agent; upon the doings of the various Committees; in setting forth the success, or want of success, at the Penitentiary or the County Prison; in referring to the movements on behalf of males or females; in the plans for future action, as on the records of the past, it is the incarcerated individual, it is the single mind whose experience we are to record, or whose susceptibilities we are to note. Hence it has seemed almost natural, at least it is hoped that it will be regarded as excusable, that what is the great means of all our hopes of alleviating the miseries of prisons, viz., separate confinement, and consequently individual dealing, should pervade every division of the report of our proceedings.