HABITS OF LIFE.
Four hundred and eighteen of these prisoners professed to be total abstainers from intoxicants, and 540 are classified as intemperate; 3,484 are occasionally intemperate or are moderate drinkers.
Thirty-seven hundred and forty-seven prisoners weighed at the time they were discharged 14,796 pounds more than when they commenced to serve sentence, or an average of three and ninth-tenth pounds increase for each individual. Six hundred and twenty-five women prisoners showed an increase of one and four-fifth pounds per individual.
Superintendent Leslie reports that the new wing is almost completed. It will contain 478 reinforced concrete cells, in four floors of about 120 cells each. At the back of the cells is a five-foot utility corridor, in which all plumbing, waste pipes and foul-air ducts are placed. Five feet in front of the rows of the cells is a steel proof cage, extending the full length of the rows. Between these cages and the outside wall is a corridor which is lighted by large tool proof, obscure wire-glass windows. The building is equipped with the best sanitary appliances. The entire cost will be about $210,000.00, which includes dynamos, engines and power plant of sufficient capacity for another building of similar size. The larger part of the work was done by the prisoners. During this last year the total days’ work performed by the inmates on the new building was 18,821.
But work on the new building is not by any means the sole industrial employment. The total number of days’ work of inmates is reported as 171,952. The industries comprise broom and brush making, carpet weaving, farming operations, wall building and domestic employments.
The revenue from brooms is estimated at $16,935.00; brushes, $2,062.00, carpets, $4,610.00; boarding prisoners, $31,620.00; farm products, $2,677.00.
The farm products of which the greater part was consumed on the premises include 5,865 bushels potatoes, 1,550 bushels wheat, 424 bushels sweet corn, 1,058 bushels green beans, 1,313 bushels tomatoes, 30,025 heads cabbage, 8,000 heads celery, 1,252 pounds butter, 3,039 gallons milk, 200 chickens, 496 dozen eggs. The total number of days’ employment outside the walls was 28,857, and yet but one prisoner made his escape.
Chaplain Imbrie reports that there is a Sabbath service in the prison chapel, at which attendance is voluntary. “But few absent themselves from this service.” They have a choir of their own, with an efficient musical director. During the winter there are frequent entertainments held in the chapel, consisting of lectures, elocution and music. They have a judiciously selected library of 6,000 volumes, and the number of books taken out during the year was 18,167.
They have a total enrollment in the night school of 185, with an average attendance of about 176. This school is maintained largely for the benefit of the illiterates and of those whose education has been extremely limited. The difficulties of presenting statistics of those who are permanently reformed is well illustrated by the following extract from the chaplain’s report: “As the year closes I find myself looking back and counting the meetings and partings with more than four thousand souls, who have come and gone during the past twelve months.... I have known each one for a few weeks or months, then they have gone like the ships that pass in the night.... A few have written kind letters to me after having reached their homes, a few have sent messages, ... some I have met on the streets of the city, and a few have been returned as prisoners to this institution, but the greater number have been absorbed in the great mass of humanity, and I have no further trace of them. The promises made at parting may be broken, the influence of the few weeks spent here may soon be effaced by the environments of the world, the seed sown in the gospel messages may never mature, but yet the effort has been made, and the increase is with the Father.”