Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 274, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 November 1916 — Value of Parole Law Shown by Number of Delinquent Boys Who “Make Good” [ARTICLE]

Value of Parole Law Shown by Number of Delinquent Boys Who “Make Good”

by RT. REV. SAMUEL FALLOWS

Bishop of Reformat! Episcopal Church

For 21 years I was president of the board of managers of the Illinois State reformatory. During that period, siaee the operation of the parole law, I helped parole 8,000 boys and young men. Every crime inthe catalogue, major and minor, had’been committed by them. Some of the (‘ases seemed utterly hopeless, but the methods and discipline of the new system wrought a marvelous change. We tested the truth of John Locke’s statement, made over three hundred years ago, that heredity counted for one-tenth only in a man. Education, he asserted, took care of the other nine-tenths. By education Locke meant environment, a word which came later into our language. Were the ratio reversed, there never could be any progress for the human race. • —t was permitted during my presidency to visit every reform and industrial' school in the United States, to find out as far as possible the lapses of these boys into crime after their parole and discharge. I visited the greater number of state prisons in the country and corresponded with the wardens of all the others to ascertain how many paroled boys were inmates of these penitentiaries. First, I found that nearly 80 per cent of the boys discharged in the aggregate of all those paroled were “making good.” Second, I found that not 3 per cent were inmates of state prisons. I made a careful estimate of the known wages paid to those paroled and discharged boys and learned that these united amounts were larger than the entire sum paid by the various states for the support of their reformatory institutions. Here is proof enough to convince the most hidebound skeptic of the value of the parole law! I believe in the boy. I have met the lads who have been graduated from their parole period in many cities of the Union. I know of them as occupying influential positions. I have married many of them and seen the happy homes winch they have established.