IN PRISON.- | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 1, 1873

IN PRISON.—

The commonwealth of Massachusetts is at present inflicting every year between 1800 and 1900 sentences of imprisonment for offenses of every grade from drunkenness to murder, and for terms of every length, from life down to days. About 11,000 persons are in prison at any given time on an average. This number of sentences is increasing, as the report of the Board of State Charities shows, at the rate of over 1600 a year. What it costs in money actually expended to keep this number of persons from doing day's work we do not know, though the total expense of the State during 1871 for charities and correction, which includes together the cost of prisons, paupers and vagrants, and that of lunatic, and other asylums and hospitals, was $1,574,000. But the real cost is increased by the amount of money which the State loses by this idleness.