Sing Sing: An Evolution
I
TWICE within the first six months of the year 1916, the honor system, as conducted at Auburn and Sing Sing prisons in the State of New York under the Mutual Welfare League (an organization composed of the inmates themselves and introduced by Thomas Mott Osborne), proved its strength by a supreme test — the voluntary return of an escaped prisoner, actuated solely by conscientious motives, each man believing that he was coming back to increased punishment. And in each instance the prisoner was one whom the old school of penology, which believes in punishment by retribution, would have declared to be hopelessly incorrigible.
Peter Cullen, 30 years of age, who left Sing Sing on April 20 and returned some three weeks later, had been in durance two thirds of his life, following the prescribed course of the wayward boy of the New York slums, from the correctional institution in childhood through the House of Refuge and the Elmira Reformatory to a State prison, the five-year term he was serving for grand larceny being the second in the same institution. ‘Tough Tony’ Mareno, aged 32, who went away from Sing Sing on January I and came back two days afterward, had pursued a similar course, and at the time of his escape was working out an indeterminate sentence of from twelve and a half to sixteen and a half years for highway robbery, having served more than eight years of his term in three prisons of the State. In the cases of both Cullen and Mareno, there is striking demonstration of Mr. Osborne’s theory that the man without early moral training, who has been driven to crime by environment, is more likely to possess higher and nobler qualities than the prison inmate of education and breeding who has risked punishment for crime for the sake of living in ease and luxury. ‘As between the bank-wrecker and the gunman, for stanchness and loyalty,’ says Mr. Osborne, ‘ give me the gunman every time.’
What aggravated Cullen’s offense in taking French leave of Sing Sing was the fact that he was the League’s sergeant-at-arms, and as such had charge of the discipline of the organization. He was one of Warden Osborne’s most ardent supporters, and he seemed to be no less faithful to Acting Warden Kirchwey. Until the time of his escape, he had been praised in nearly every issue of the Bulletin, the prison paper, for his effective upholding of the honor system. The prison officials have a suspicion that Cullen’s escape may have been encouraged — for private reasons — by some of the other inmates of Sing Sing. A prisoner of the State of New York who earns commutation of sentence by good behavior is compelled, on being sentenced to a second term, to serve out the remainder of his unexpired sentence before beginning the other. The day of Cullen’s departure was that of the real beginning of his second term of five years; he was not unnaturally depressed by that circumstance, and it is believed that his fellow prisoners procured for him means of escape, under the temptation of which he forgot his oath of allegiance to the League. In any event, he took advantage of the privileges of his position as sergeant-atarms to go out under cover of darkness and return to his old companions of the underworld in New York City.
And now the marvel happened. Among his friends of other days Cullen was depressed and gloomy. When they congratulated him on the pleasures of freedom regained, he gave no evidence of gratification. His thoughts were continually on the League he had betrayed, and his conscience allowed him no peace of mind. Unlike Mareno, who during his two days’ absence from Sing Sing fell among former prisoners, —old members of the League who urged his return, — Cullen’s associates knew of the honor system only by repute. More significant than anything else in the story of his evasion is the fact that they did not laugh when the escaped prisoner told them the reasons of his unrest, professional criminals though they were. On the contrary, when he talked of giving himself up, they encouraged the idea.
And so it was that on a Sunday evening in May, when Warden Osborne, who, during his temporary absence from Sing Sing, was living at a hotel in New York City, came through the corridor, he was accosted by a man he had never seen before. The stranger simply said to him, —
‘Is this Warden Osborne? — Pete Cullen is outside in a taxi.’
At the curb before the hotel Cullen begged Mr. Osborne to get into the taxicab with him, and for half an hour the two drove about the streets while the escaped prisoner poured out his remorseful soul to his friend. Of course Mr. Osborne’s sympathetic advice to Cullen was to go back to prison and ‘take his medicine,’ which was exactly what he was prepared to do. When the taxicab returned to the hotel, a friend of Mr. Osborne’s was waiting in his motor to take him to dinner. Mr. Osborne commandeered the motor and sent Cullen to Sing Sing in it, while he and his other friend went to dinner in a cab. A couple of hours later Warden Kirchwey shook hands with Cullen in the office of the prison, and he went down to the cells to begin his five-year term over again, with added punishment for his escape. So ended one of the most significant episodes in penal history.
II
The existence of conditions making possible the events outlined in the story of Cullen’s escape and his return to prison would have been considered as absurd, when the first cell-doors of Sing Sing were opened nearly ninety years ago, as a prediction that in the twentieth century soldiers would fight battles in the air. The annals of Sing Sing are a record of unmitigated horror that began before the foundations were laid; for it was built by convicts from Auburn under the direction of Captain Elam Lynds, the former principal keeper — as the warden was then known — of the older prison. Captain Lynds, with one hundred convicts in irons and a force of armed guards, arrived from Auburn in May, 1825, and built a camp near the site of the proposed structure.
The captain was a type of the old brutal school of penologists. He believed that the reformation of a criminal who had reached the age of 17 years was hopeless. To his mind, a prison was solely a place of punishment; and the whole duty of its officers was performed when they prevented the escape of their prisoners and taught them the lessons of order, obedience, and industry. His own practice, which he enjoined upon his subordinates, was never to overlook the slightest infraction of the prison rules and to visit instant punishment upon all offenders with the cudgel or the whip.
No history of Sing Sing has yet been written, and probably the worst atrocities committed within the prison boundaries will never be recorded; but it may be said without fear of contradiction that not one of the stones in the sombre walls went into place unprofaned by the curses and tears of men driven under the lash to their toil. The construction of Sing Sing was begun in 1825, prisoners being confined in the cells as fast as they were constructed. Eight hundred cells were ready for occupancy in 1829, the prison’s capacity being gradually increased to the present twelve hundred cells. Captain Lynds became principal keeper of the new prison, he and the other keepers with their cudgels knocking down and beating the prisoners at will. A convict who was clubbed into unconsciousness by a keeper was not necessarily immune from further punishment , for as much as a hundred blows with the ‘cat’ might be his portion afterward.
Sing Sing had been chosen as the site for a new prison because of the stone and marble quarries within the boundaries of the State property, and when the cell block was completed the prisoners were set to work in the quarries. Men and oxen were used indiscriminately in transporting the stone and marble blocks from the quarries to the wharves on the river, the practice being to drive from fifty to one hundred men on chains attached to the poles of the carts that carried the heavy blocks, ahead of a team of oxen, keepers applying the whip to human and bovine legs and backs alike at the difficult places in the roadway. Sometimes men alone were driven to the carts, and more than once it happened that the legs of those nearest the front wheels were broken when a sharp turn under a heavy load jolted the cart-pole out of their hands.
The food was so scanty and so bad under Captain Lynds’s administration that the prisoners often suffered the pangs of hunger continuously for weeks; and although outrageous punishment was meted out to those who filched bread, the men ran every risk to obtain a little additional nourishment to their scanty rations. In the winter prisoners sometimes paced their cells all night to keep from freezing. Unruly convicts were manacled in their cells for months at a time.
Captain Lynds was tyrannical and brutal with the subordinate officials of Sing Sing. He even attempted to dictate to the prison inspectors, and objected to their speaking with the prisoners on the ground that this tended to interfere with the discipline. Such was his reputation in the village of Sing Sing that he was threatened with personal violence should he venture into the streets.
It was not until 1843, thirteen years after the prison was first occupied, that steps were taken to temper man’s inhumanity to man in Sing Sing. In July of that year the following rules for the conduct of the institution with regard to prisoners and keepers were promulgated by the State inspectors: —
1. That no person be permitted to strike a convict in any other manner than with a ‘ cat,’ except when necessary for self-defense.
2. That no assistant keeper shall inflict more than ten blows with the cat, for any one offense.
3. That no convict shall be whipped more than once for the same offense, except by order of the Board.
4. That the principal keeper shall not inflict, or cause to be inflicted, more than 25 blows for one offense.
5. That no punishment shall be inflicted until at least twelve hours after the commission of the offense.
Captain Lynds, who was then principal keeper after having served in Auburn for a time, objected strenuously to this coddling of the criminal. He declared that the milk-and-water sentimentality of the inspectors was almost certain to result in a wholesale jail delivery, since it would be impossible to keep the prisoners under control when it became known among them that their keepers might not use their cudgels. He particularly reprehended the twelve-hour remission of punishment rule. How, he asked, could a prisoner be expected to obey a command, if there were not provision made for its immediate enforcement? The principal keeper was overruled, and the following year he was dismissed from his post.
Picture Captain Lynds with his cudgel, first of Sing Sing’s keepers, at one end of the line, and at the other end Warden Osborne and Professor Kirchwey; and a measure of penological progress is afforded. Indeed, of all the wardens who have come and gone during the long years of the prison’s existence, there are probably no greater contrasts in personality than between the ruffian of 1829 and the philanthropist and the educator of 1915 and 1916.
Very slowly did conditions improve in Sing Sing. There was progress, however, although most of the tales of this particular prison-house have been of inhumanity and cruelty, of murder and murderous assaults, of escapes and attempted escapes, of drunkenness and drug-addiction. In the women’s prison, which was established in 1835, the use of the whip was abolished the following year; but it was not until 1847 that the practice of flogging male prisoners, ‘ except in cases of insurrection, riot and self-defense,’ was abandoned. However, in a memorandum to the Governor of New York in 1870, the Prison Association of the State noted that, although the whip was no longer used after 1847, ‘other and even more cruel methods of inflicting bodily pain were resorted to, and the domination of force was again triumphant.’ It was not until 1869 that the law forbade the infliction of the punishments ‘commonly known as the shower-bath, crucifix, or yoke and buck’ in the prisons of the Empire State.
With the beginning of this century conditions were improved in many respects in the New York prisons. Industrial training had been introduced into Sing Sing, when the manufacture of clothing, shoes, furniture, and so forth, for use in State institutions superseded work in the quarries; but now scholastic training was begun, the students being required to attend school a part of every day in the year with the exception of Sundays. A well-fitting uniform was substituted for the prisoner’s former striped suit, and the lockstep was replaced by the military step. The prisoners’ hair was neatly trimmed with shears, instead of being cut close to the scalp with clippers. Dentists and oculists were brought into the prisons to care for the eyes and teeth of the inmates; crockery replaced the old tin cups and pans; an electric light in each cell superseded the old tallow candle. All forms of corporal punishment were abolished, and — theoretically, at least — infraction of rules in the New York prisons merely consigned the prisoner to solitary confinement until he reached a normal condition of mind and signified his willingness to conform to discipline.
Nevertheless, in 1913, George W. Blake, who was appointed a special commissioner to investigate the prisons of New York, reported: ‘The worst features of the prison management cannot be discussed in any public document, but the subject is of such vital importance to the State that no time should be lost in submitting it to the attention of men competent to present a method of bettering a condition that breeds disease of the mind and body and that should touch the heart of every man with human instincts.’ The almost incredible charge was made in June of that year that Sing Sing officials had conspired with rogues outside the prison to starve the unhappy men in the cells, giving them rotten meat and vegetables in meagre quantities in place of wholesome and plenteous food provided by the State, and pocketing the difference in price. As Mr. Blake said, ‘The average man’s patience may withstand the thought of graft derived from bricks and stone in the dishonest construction of prison buildings; but when it is wrung from the bodies and minds of helpless and suffering human beings it turns him savage and makes him yearn for the blood of the politicians responsible for it.’ (These are the same politicians, by the way, who tried to force Warden Osborne out of office.)
Sing Sing prison is physically a disgrace to civilization. The cells are about seven feet long, three feet and three inches wide, and six feet and six inches high, providing 147⅞ cubic feet of air space, as against 400 cubic feet required in the municipal lodging houses of the City of New York; so that when two men were in a cell together, as frequently occurred, they had less than a quarter of the amount of air to breathe that science declares to be essential to health. There is absolutely no plumbing in the cell-house, no toilet provisions. In each cell was a bucket which served for all the prisoner’s needs; and, as these buckets were emptied only once in twenty-four hours, the stench that emanated from them may be imagined. The small amount of drinking water given to the prisoners was contained in a smaller bucket, which stood in the cell for hours at a time. As both the buckets were uncovered, the drinking water soon became contaminated. The inmates of Sing Sing were aroused every morning at 6.30, and by 7.30, their cells cleaned and their buckets emptied, were in the mess-hall, where a scanty breakfast awaited them. At eight o’clock they were in the various workshops. At noon dinner was served in the big mess-hall, and half an hour later the men were back in the shops. They worked until a quarter past three, when they were given a few minutes exercise, and sent to their cells carrying their suppers — a cup of tea and a piece of bread.
That was the week-day routine. Sunday, until the summer of 1913, was a day of torture. The men were allowed out of their cells for breakfast, and then they were permitted to attend divine service, provided they felt like thanking God that there was only one Sunday in the week. All the inmates of the prison were then — at eleven o’clock in the morning — back in their cells with their rations for the rest of the day, no dinner being provided for them on Sunday, since that would interfere with the keepers’ day of rest. When Monday happened to be a holiday, the men were kept in their cells from four o’clock Saturday afternoon until 6.30 o’clock Tuesday morning — a total of more than sixty hours, with the exception of the time necessary to eat breakfast on Sunday and attend religious services, and the time for one meal on Monday. The same conditions existed when a holiday fell on Saturday or Sunday and was celebrated on Monday.
These terrible Sundays and holidays were responsible for the demand in Sing Sing for liquor and drugs, and the traffic in this contraband involved thousands of dollars annually. If it is considered strange that this traffic was not restrained, let the fact be considered that some eighty or ninety smallsalaried keepers were going in and out of the prison daily, many of whom were putting in the bank money made by the sale of drink and drugs to habit-ridden inmates, who would undergo torture rather than inform on the agents who brought them the wherewithal to deaden temporarily their sufferings. It was the coalition between disreputable keepers and the more depraved of the prisoners that was accountable for the crimes of violence that were of constant occurrence in Sing Sing. During one week in November, 1913, two inmates who were suspected, and only suspected, of being informers with regard to the drug traffic were murderously beaten in one of the prison corridors by other prisoners whose identity it was impossible to prove. Of course both of these assaults were witnessed by keepers, none of whom would admit having seen an overt act committed.
III
These same conditions existed in Sing Sing when, one year later, in December, 1914, Thomas Mott Osborne began to make penological history there. In two hours of his first Sunday as warden, Mr. Osborne did more to advance the cause of prison reform than had been accomplished before in all the years that man has been sequestrating his lawless brother from society. Then, for the first time in prison history, the inmates of a big and overcrowded penal institution were assembled in the chapel, and the guards ordered from the room. And, wonderful to relate, the prisoners did not turn and rend the warden or themselves! Indeed, a more orderly group of men could not have been found that Sunday afternoon in any church in all Christendom. (The men came in two divisions of about seven hundred each, the chapel not being large enough to seat them all at once.) And less than two years before, the warden of Sing Sing had felt it necessary to put a loaded pistol into his pocket when he went into the prison yard! Only a year and a half before, the prisoners in Sing Sing had mutinied and set fire to the shops. It may be remarked incidentally that—again for the first time in the history of Sing Sing — not one infraction of the prison rules was reported for the twenty-four hours ending on the Monday morning following the assemblage of the inmates in the chapel without their guards.
Warden Osborne had got together the prisoners of Sing Sing — who were already familiar with the principles of the Mutual Welfare League introduced by him in Auburn, of which they subsequently became members — to consider a revision of the prison rules, and he at once approved fifteen almost revolutionary changes suggested, at his request, by the men themselves. The most important of these changes was one whereby the prisoners asked that in cases of minor breaches of the rules, they be allowed to discipline themselves without initial intervention of warden or keepers. To this Mr. Osborne replied that he was fully in sympathy with the suggestion, and that he would carry the idea further and allow the prisoners to decide all breaches of discipline, with appeal, where the justice of a decision was disputed, to the warden’s court — which is composed of the warden himself, the principal keeper, and the prison physician. The roar of delighted applause that greeted this announcement was an augury of the successful operation of the new order.
Other prison rules that had been in existence for years were swept away by Warden Osborne with the observation that he could not understand why they had ever been made. These included restrictions on letter-writing, on the purchase of stamps, on the receiving of money for the purchase of luxuries like tobacco.
Another rule which Mr. Osborne declared should never have been promulgated, and which he promptly abolished, forbade the receipt by prisoners of shoes and sweaters from friends and relatives outside of the prison. The request that the men be allowed to see visitors on Sundays and holidays, which had not been permitted up to the advent of the new warden, was granted by Mr. Osborne with the comment that Sundays and holidays were the very days that the friends of the prisoners were best able to call upon them. Requests were granted that the men be allowed to keep their daily papers in their cells until they had finished reading them, instead of being compelled to give them up each evening, and that lights be allowed in cells and dormitories until 10 o’clock, instead of being put out at 9.30.
In its annual report, dated March 31, 1916, the State Prison Commission of New York summarizes the changed conditions in Sing Sing thus: —
‘Under the wardenship of Thomas Mott Osborne, a greater measure of responsibility for conditions within the prison has been delegated to the inmates. Discipline in the institution has been left largely to the officers of the Mutual Welfare League. Prisoners march to and from the mess-hall and shops under their own officers, and the question of punishment for infraction of rules has been determined by a court composed of inmates, the accused having the right of appeal to a higher court, composed of the warden and other prison officials. Ball games, tennis matches and other athletic sports, a swimming-pool, moving-picture shows, lectures, and other entertainments have been provided for the recreation of the prisoners.
’Two inmates have been permitted to marry, under the new régime, and one or more were allowed to leave the institution to attend the funerals of relatives.
‘A wage rate as a standard for work done has been established, and a bank started with token money. A store has been stocked with provisions, wearing apparel, tobacco, etc., where the inmates are permitted to trade.’
IV
Mr. Osborne considers the most important result of his first year’s work in Sing Sing to be the changed spiritual attitude of the men, which alters their whole relation to society upon their release.
’The failure of the previous prison systems has come fundamentally from attacking the problem from the wrong point of view,’ he says. ‘The first effort toward a prison system was the socalled Philadelphia system, which followed the abolition of capital punishment in Pennsylvania in 1794. This was the solitary system, each man in a separate cell, without work, with no books but the Bible, and never seeing any one save his jailer and occasionally the chaplain. This was upon the supposed theory that the cause of his being in prison was a mental one, and that the way for him to learn to think straight was to reflect upon his sins, when with the aid of the Bible his mind would regain a normal condition. When it was found that the Philadelphia system led to insanity and suicide, it was abandoned in the other states, although solitary confinement still persisted in Pennsylvania for many years.
’The next step in prison reform was the so-called Auburn system, which approached the problem from the physical side. Men were shut in solitary cells at night, but there was congregate work by day, and absolute silence at all times. The idea underlying this system was that men should be forced to act right, when by force of inertia, after a sufficient length of thne, they would reach a condition in which they could be trusted to go out into the world and act right there. Results have shown, however, that two thirds of the men in state prisons are recidivists. So far from learning righteousness by the attempt to close all doors to wrongdoing, men left prison under this system in a state of such wrath against society that they were determined to “ get even” at all hazards. The new system, under which the authorities trust, not the individual prisoner, but the entire community of prisoners, allowing the community to handle the cases of discipline, produces a responsibility on the part of every sensible man.
‘ The privileges given are in return for the proper assumption of responsibility. No privilege is an end in itself, but only a means to an end, that end being the increase of this feeling of responsibility, thus producing the frame of mind in which a man may return to society and “go straight.” Other evidence of improved conditions in Sing Sing is found in the fact that for more than four weeks the last year there was not a single case of discipline or punishment in the prison. As warden, I have found it necessary to inflict punishment on but three occasions. The drug and liquor traffic has been eliminated, with consequent improvement in the health of the inmates. The efforts of the authorities under the old system to prevent the sale and use of drugs and liquors in Sing Sing was in vain. It was not until the men themselves determined to stamp out the evil that the thing was done. ‘There is great mental improvement among the inmates of the prison, ambition among them to learn and to help others to learn, stimulated by the night school numbering more than five hundred pupils, conducted entirely by prisoners. Sing Sing is becoming a place of education instead of a mere den of caged animals. Then there has been immense improvement in the physical well-being of the men, not only because of the cessation of the use of drugs and liquors, but by reason of the exercise the recreation hours afford — in summer swimming, baseball, handball, and bowling. The result is that the men are leaving prison not only much better in appearance, but with their muscles in better condition to begin work. These are some of the important results the new system has brought about.’
The changing of human liabilities into human assets being the chief end of the new penology, Mr. Osborne has accomplished in Sing Sing an invaluable service, even had it been effected at an expense to the State. In reality, he has brought about these results with economic gain to the State. The gross sales of the products of Sing Sing in the fiscal year of 1913-14 amounted to $318,733.59, and in 1914—15 to $354,327.89, showing an increase under the Osborne régime of $35,594.30, or about 11 per cent. The value of the goods manufactured there in 1913 14 was $282,093.83, while in 1914-15 it was $342,816.39 —an increase under the Osborne régime of $60,722.56, or about 21 per cent. The profit from Sing Sing industries in 1913—14 was $40,833.69, and in 1914-15, $82,084.21 — an increase under the Osborne régime of about 100 per cent. The percentage of profit on the production of 1913-14 was 14 per cent; under the Osborne régime in 1914-15 it was 24 per cent. The percapita cost of officers’ salaries at Sing Sing for the last fiscal year was far less than at any other of the three State prisons. At Great Meadow, with an average daily population of 712, the per-capita cost of officers’ salaries was $94.14; at Clinton, with an average daily population of 1447, it was $88.35, and at Auburn, with an average daily population of 1429, it was $88.53. At Sing Sing, with an average daily population of 1616, the same per-capita cost was only $80.65.
One of the most striking results of the operation of the machinery of the Mutual Welfare League in Sing Sing has been its beneficial result upon prison discipline. In previous years fights among prisoners and attacks by prisoners upon their keepers were of so frequent occurrence that no record of them was kept, save in the event that a wound was severe enough to be treated in the prison hospital. Measuring the prevalence of fighting by the number of wounds treated by the prison physicians, the discipline under Warden Osborne has been better by 64 per cent than during the two fiscal years previous to his administration, which in their turn were the best two years in this respect in the history of Sing Sing. During 1912-13, with an average of 1442 inmates, there were 383 wounds treated, and in 1913-14, with an average of 1466 inmates, 363 wounds—an average for the entire period of 1454 inmates and 373 wounds. During the fiscal year of 1914-15, under the Osborne régime, the number of inmates of Sing Sing averaged 1616, and to keep pace with the two previous years the number of wounds should have been 414. The actual number of wounds was 155! This comparison is scarcely fair to the Osborne administration either, for under the old system the men often concealed their injuries rather than be punished for fighting, which the surveillance of the Mutual Welfare League renders impossible under the new régime. Previous to the existence of the league many of the wounds received by prisoners were the results of assaults upon their keepers. During the Osborne régime there has been but one assault by a prisoner upon a keeper, and in this instance the keeper refused to make a complaint because he believed the prisoner to have been deranged.
The general betterment of conditions at Sing Sing under Mr. Osborne’s rule, as indicated by the comparative number of men driven insane by prison environment during the last four years, is also remarkable. In 1912, with a prison population of 1488, it was necessary to transfer 32 prisoners who had become insane to the Dannemora State Hospital; in 1913, with a prison population of 1,442, 48 men were sent to Dannemora, and in 1914, with the prison population 1,466, the number of men removed to Dannemora was 27. Last year, with the biggest prison population in the history of Sing Sing, it was necessary to transfer only 19 men to the State Hospital. There have been but three escapes from Sing Sing under the Osborne régime, exclusive of that of Tony Mareno, who returned voluntarily, up to the present writing. There were four the year before. There were ten escapes in 1913, six in 1912, four again in 1911, 17 in 1910, and 19 in 1909. The degree of Warden Osborne’s control over the men in his confidence is demonstrated by the fact that on the night of one of the escapes during his administration he sent 15 prisoners out into the darkness to search for the fugitive, all of whom returned to the prison of their own accord, six of them being away most of the next day.
One of the warden’s most daring experiments tending to prove a sense of honor among the men of the prisons occurred in the spring of 1915. The delegates of the Welfare League had held an election in the prison court-room, and the count was not finished until after one o’clock in the morning. The warden then invited the fifty-four delegates into his house, sent for his cook and butler, both also convicts, and served sandwiches and coffee. The warden’s house, which has no bars on windows or doors, is outside the prison walls; there was no guard within a hundred feet of it. The New York Central railroad tracks are just under the windows on one side, and the public highway on the other. After their repast the fifty-six prisoners, whose sentences ranged from a few years to life, went quietly to their cells.
A comprehensive illustration of Warden Osborne’s method in dealing with the men of the prisons was afforded during his second month at Sing Sing, when he practically dismissed the guards from the workshops: that is, he directed them merely to patrol through the buildings instead of standing over the workers. Mr. Osborne introduced the new system in the most unruly shop first. Gathering the two hundred and fifty workers in the knitting-shop about him, he said,—
‘ Boys, I understand that you are the worst-behaved bunch in the whole prison—and I’m going to put a stop to it!’
The men stared at him uneasily.
‘I’m going to dismiss your guards,’ the warden continued, ’and you’ll have to choose your own delegates, from among yourselves, to preserve order.’
The men in the knitting-shops have been among the best-behaved and most industrious in the prison ever since.
To carry out all Mr. Osborne’s ideas for prison reform, it will be necessary to demolish the present cell-block at Sing Sing, establish a receiving station on that site, and build a new prison on the farm-colony plan — a project to which the Governor of New York has virtually committed himself. The Osborne idea is the division of the prisoners on this farm into three grades — the first grade to live in cottages outside the prison enclosure, the second to live in dormitories within the walls, and the third — the temporary incorrigibles —* to be confined in cells. A man, on entering the prison, will beassigned to the second grade, and it will depend on himself whether he is elevated to the first or degraded to the third. Under Mr. Osborne’s plan the first-grade prisoners will supervise the second grade, and the second grade the third, the second and third grades being composed of the delinquents of the first and second respectively. He believes that this supervision of one grade by another will be of invaluable service in teaching the men why the criminal is a menace to society. Mr. Osborne is working to bring about the payment of full wages to inmates of State prisons, allowing them to pay their own maintenance while in durance, the surplus going to the support of their families, or to be banked until their terms expire in the event that they have no dependents. He would establish a free library, a branch of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and a large hall for entertainments and social gatherings in the prison.
What bearing upon public morals, by the way, has a desire on the part of the powers of evil to serve the powers of good, as manifested in the declaration of the underworld denizen to the Mutual Welfare Leaguers in search of Tony Mareno, that ‘there is not a crook in the whole United States who would not be glad of the chance to do a good turn for Thomas Mott Osborne’? The more one reflects upon the potentialities of such a condition, the more signicant does it become.