"With reference to the 4,000 feeble-minded who are confined in hospitals
for insane, prisons and reformatories and almshouses, the state would
actually be the financial gainer by providing for them in custodial
institutions. At the Rome Custodial Asylum 1,230 inmates are humanely
cared for at $2.39 per week. The same class of inmates is being cared
for in the boys' reformatories at $4.66; in the hospitals for insane at
$3.90; in the girls' reformatory at $5.47, and in the almshouse at about
$1.25. If all of these persons were transferred to an institution
conducted on the scale of the Rome Custodial Asylum, they would not only
relieve these other institutions of inmates who do not belong there and
who are a great cause of care and anxiety, but they would make room for
new patients of the proper class, obviating the necessity for
enlargement. The money thus saved would build ample institutions for the
care of these people at a much less per capita cost than that of the
prisons, reformatories and asylums where they are now kept, and the
annual per capita cost of maintenance would be reduced from 20 to 50 per
cent., except in almshouses, where the cost would be increased about $1
per week, but the almshouse inmates compose only a small fraction of the
whole number.
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