THE Prison Association of New York was organized on the evening of the 6th of December, 1844. The objects of this Association, as set forth in its constitution, are: 1. A humane attention to persons arrested and held for examination or tried, including inquiry into the circumstances of their arrest, and the crimes charged against them; securing to the friendless an impartial trial and protection from the depredations of unprincipled persons, whether professional sharpers or fellow prisoners. 2. Encouragement and aid to discharged convicts in their efforts to reform and earn an honest living. This is done by assisting them to situations, providing them tools, and otherwise counseling and helping them to business. 3. To study the question of prison discipline generally, the government of State, county, and city prisons to obtain statistics of crime, disseminate information on this subject, to evolve the true principles of science, and impress a more reformatory character on our penitentiary system. The Association was duly incorporated, with large power for the examination of all prisons and jails in the State, during the second year of its operations, and required to report annually to the Legislature. A female department was organized the first year (The Isaac T. Hopper Home), which soon became an independent society, abundant in labor and rich in results. Its history and workings are elsewhere traced in this work.

During the twenty-five years of its operations closing with 1869, the Association visited in the prisons of detention of New York and Brooklyn, 93,560 poor and friendless persons, many of whom were counseled and assisted as their cases required.

The officers of the society carefully examined 25,290 complaints; and at their instance 6,14 complaints were withdrawn, as being of a trivial character, or founded on mistake, prejudice, or passion. During the same period, 7,922 persons were discharged by the Courts on the recommendation of these officers as young, innocent, penitent, or having offended under mitigating circumstances, making a total of 133,922 cases, to which relief in some form had been extended. During the same period 18,307 discharged convicts had been aided with board, clothing, tools, railroad tickets, or money; 4,139 of the same class ad been provided with permanent situations, swelling the number to 156,368.

But the principal work of the Association has been intellectual. It has again and again examined every' prison, penitentiary, and jail throughout the State (numbering about one hundred in all), and those of the surrounding States, and of the Canadas, pointing out faithfully in its annual reports the defective constructure of these establishments, the incompetency or barbarity of keepers, the chief defects of our prison system, and has sought industriously to educate public sentiment and influence the Legislature toward a more humane, rational, and reformatory system of prison administration. The Association has conducted a valuable correspondence with enlightened men of the Old World, who have made this subject a matter of special study, thus bringing together the researches and experiments of all countries. It has collected volumes of statistics which no student can afford to do without. It informs us that the sixty-eight county jails of New York State cost annually about a quarter of a million of dollars for their maintenance, of which sum not five hundred dollars are expended with any view to meeting the religious wants of the prisoners. None are supplied with libraries or facilities of instruction, and scarcely any have Bibles, though the statute specially enjoins it.