Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 66, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 April 1902 — The State Prison Investigation. [ARTICLE]

The State Prison Investigation.

Heretofore, for several years past, it has been believed in this state that our state prison at Michigan City was one of the best and most humanely managed institutions of the kind in the country. But when a week or two ago, Dr. Brose Horne, or, more properly, Blows Horn, made his charges against Deputy Warden Barnard and the prison management in general, it looked for a while as though the institution deserved but little of its good reputation. But the prison has now been fairly and fully investigated, by the non-partisan board of charities, and all of Horne’s blowings have been sifted to the bottom. The result has been the complete refutation of every charge against Mr. Barnard, and the full establishing of the fact that the prison is, as it has been believed to be, a most ex■*< llently and humanely conduct, d institution. The only corrupt conduct in the management shown, is that Dr. Horne himself, has been proven to have unlawfully sold vaccine points to the prieon,andmade-4&rge commiesions upon the same. It has also been shown that he abused and neglected sick prisoners on several occasions, and further, in the very few cases in which unfit meat and other supplies were sent to the hospital wing of the prison, Horne refused to pay any attention to complaints made about it, and was thus really more to blame for that one slight,' and infrequent abuse that has been discovered than any one else. Prison officers and ex-officers, chaplains and ex-chaplains, and all the reputable convicts, have all testified as to the good management of the prison. All that testified the other way, were some of the convicts, and those mainly the insane ones, or the lowest, most desperate and most brutal among the sane ones. k The investigation is likely to have at least one important good result. And that is to wake up the people, and through them the legislature, to the necessity of making some adequate provision for separating the insane convicts, and caring for them better than can be done in the prison.