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Re: Disposal of Prison Inmate Files



May I share a personal story regarding an inmate file that for me speaks
against the practice of sampling such records? That practice takes no
account of the fact that records deal with people.

My great-grandfather, a German immigrant who could apparently speak very
little English, died in the Kansas State Penitentiary in 1900 in his early
60s. He had been sentenced in 1891 to a term of 15 years for raping his
daughter. I had located the standard court records that gave the bare facts
of the case in the county courthouse. But I found a prison inmate file on
him in the Kansas State Historical Society that put a human face on the man.
The documents in that file indicated that he had indeed committed the crime,
according to a petition from his lawyer for a pardon. He had gotten drunk at
a "German picnic." The pastor of his church had apparently advised him to
plead guilty, making him think that if he did so, he would be pardoned or
given probation. Such was not the case. The file also contained several
petitions from townspeople asking the governor to pardon him because of his
age and health. His wife had died in childbirth and there were minor
children. The last of those petitions included the name of the daughter he
had violated, the county sheriff, the mayor of the town and the prosecuting
attorney. There were also letters in his behalf from the state senator and
state representative from his home county. And there was a letter he had
written himself indicating his regret over what he had done and noting that
he had been a model prisoner. He was even a trustee, allowed to go into town
by himself to pick up the mail for the prison. For reasons I have not
discovered, probably political, no pardon was issued, and he died a couple
of years later.

A records sampling program undoubtedly would have destroyed this file. A
strong human interest story would have been lost.

Marvin


==========================
Marvin A. Huggins
Associate Director
Concordia Historical Institute
801 DeMun Avenue
Saint Louis, MO 63105
314-505-7921
email: mhuggins@chi.lcms.org
web: http://chi.lcms.org/



-----Original Message-----
From: Alan Virta [mailto:avirta@BOISESTATE.EDU]
Sent: Friday, 28 July, 2000 03:54 PM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: Disposal of Prison Inmate Files


The thread on prison inmate files seemed to die out a couple of weeks ago,
but I have been away from the office and still wanted to add a note despite
the late date.
My repository (Boise State University Library in Boise, Idaho) does not have
prison inmate files, but I am familiar several research projects involving
such files from the Idaho State Penitentiary that are part of the Idaho
State Archives at the Idaho State Historical Society.  At least through the
1950s, they have kept all of the inmate files.  And what a treasure trove it
is.  Genealogists and local historians use them.   I know of three uses by
researchers doing social history investigations.  One was investigating the
incarcerations for Prostitution to write a history of prostitution in Boise;
another looked at all the cases of imprisonment for Abortion (either as the
woman or abortion provider) to write a masters thesis; and another examined
the files of all men imprisoned for the "infamous crime against nature"
(sodomy)  up through the 1950s to see if they were consenting adults being
prosecuted or child molesters. They also shed light on the social history of
minority groups, whose histories were not recorded in the written history
books of the 19th and early 20th centuries.   All these avenues of research
could not have been accomplished here in Idaho had the files been sampled
and most of them destroyed.   The great mass of prison records, especially
in states and countries larger than Idaho must be daunting; but fortunately
the full set of inmate files are preserved here.  (In theory,
theinvestigators in the above cases could have consulted court records, but
they are decentralized in the 44 county courthouses, and preservation of old
records varies widely from county to conty.  Were it not for the centralized
inmante files in the state archives, the research would have been virtually
impossible. )

Alan Virta, Head of Special Collections
Boise State University, Albertsons Library (Boise, Idaho)

>>> Matthew.Hockey@DIA.GOVT.NZ 07/13/00 17:49 PM >>>
I am an appraisal archivist at the National Archives of New Zealand, and I
am currently developing a disposal schedule for prison inmate files.  I
would be very interested to know how other archives are dealing with these
files - in particular, whether sampling is used to select files for
retention, and if so what kind of sampling plan is followed.

If there are any current schedules covering prison inmate files, I would be
interested to see these, as well as any appraisal reports which would
explain the reasons for the sampling method used.

Please e-mail me at Matthew.Hockey@dia.govt.nz
<mailto:Matthew.Hockey@dia.govt.nz>.  Alternatively, you can write to me at
National Archives, PO Box 12 050, Wellington, New Zealand.

Thanks!

Matthew Hockey
National Archives of New Zealand
PO Box 12 050
Wellington
Ph 64 4 499 5595
Fax 64 4 495 6210
Web: http://www.archives.govt.nz

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