The wider resort to agricultural and manual labor as an educative and
reformative force for young and old alike in our correctional
institutions was urged at the Colorado Conference of Charities and
Correction. Coupled with this was a plea for employment in the open and
for training in useful pursuits. The institutions of Denver, it was
declared, need more land that these things may be done.
Thomas J. Tynan, warden of the state prison, recommended that the state
conduct a scientific farm and that it pay prisoners what their labor
produces. It is the opinion of Warden Tynan that economic conditions
affect the size of prison populations. For several years past there has
been a steady decrease, he said, in the number of inmates in his
penitentiary; this he ascribed to a general increase in prosperity. Men
who commit daring crimes, requiring courage, make the quickest and most
permanent reforms, he thinks, because they have the character to adhere
to newly made resolutions. From the fact that there are now only nine
women in the Colorado state prison and that the average heretofore has
been twenty-six, Warden Tynan argues a decrease in crime among women in
his state.