VIII
The prison authorities are not supposed to abuse, vilify or use blasphemous language towards the prisoners; it is forbidden under penalty of the law.
Of course, as far as the convict is concerned, such a law or rule is a dead letter. Should a prisoner protest to the warden against vilification or profanity, he would only be laughed at; and should he insist on making his complaint to the prison commissioner, his letter would never be sent, and his persecution would begin at once.
The other day a quarrel broke out between two prisoners. A keeper tried to stop it by hitting one of the offenders with his stick, and at the same time calling him an unmentionable name. The convict retaliated with a punch on the jaw that floored the keeper.
The convict was punished with two days in the "cooler," but the offending keeper was not reprimanded by the warden. And when the man came out of the "cooler," the doctor found him suffering from an inflammation of the eyes which kept him in the hospital for two months.
When he asked for writing materials he was told that the punishment meted out to him automatically eliminated all the privileges of a convict; and he was not permitted to write home or to receive visitors for two months. The electric light in his cell was cut off and he was not allowed to read books or magazines, newspapers being always barred.
In the beginning of my stay in prison the use of profane language was, to put it mildly, quite prevalent; but it became rare soon after the election of Mayor Gaynor. Even their sticks were taken away from the keepers for a while. And it was discovered that discipline did not suffer in the least from the lack either of foul language or the stick.