The New York Tombs Inside and Out! / Scenes and Reminiscences Coming Down to the Present. A Story Stranger Than Fiction, with an Historic Account of America's Most Famous Prison.

by John Josiah Munro

Prison Classification

The proper classification of the inmates of our prisons is a most important part of their treatment, looking to their reformation. This is something that has been sadly neglected in the past by nearly all of our prisons and reformatories. Elmira Reformatory is the exception, as it comes the nearest to the proper classification of prisoners of any institution in the country. It is nothing less than a crime to allow novices to associate with hardened offenders, either in shops or yards, where they can freely converse together. Such an association soon changes the first offender into a real criminal who goes forth when his time is finished with his brain all aflame to commit crime.