Upon my arrival in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, so soon as I had visited the State prison at Charlestown, and the Boston new jail, under the guidance of Hon. Louis Dwight, I was convinced in my own mind that said jail, for the purposes for which it was designed, was decidedly the model prison of the age.
The commissioner was so fortunate as not only to see “the model prison of the age,” but to obtain from the same source “a design of a model prison for the State of Missouri;” and so comprehensive and clear were the conceptions of the commissioner upon the view of these model edifices and plans, that he made up his mind when he “first saw the design,” (and his views remained unchanged after his return,) “that it has no superior either in the United States or in Europe.”
Among the inexplicable mis-statements which we find scattered through the report, we may cite the following:
As has been proven, beyond all successful contradiction, this system (the congregate) is not only more humane, but it is also far less expensive than the separate system.
Nothing is more obvious than that from the very nature of the discipline, the administration of a prison on the separate plan must be the least expensive. The first cost of the structure will probably be greater; but we have supposed it to be conceded on all hands, that a prison on this plan once erected, the expenses of maintaining it were much less than those of a congregate prison with equal accommodations.
While we admit that the first cost of a prison for convict-separation is greater than that of a congregate prison, we must demur to the Rev. Commissioner’s broad assertion on this point:
“I speak not unadvisedly,” he says, “when I assert, that the erection of a prison for associate purposes, is not half so expensive, as the erection of a prison for the separate and solitary confinement of its inmates—all things considered.”
The most zealous opposers of the separate system have not pushed this objection to any such extreme, and to any considerate mind it carries its refutation with it.
As an inducement to proceed on the plan submitted by the commissioner, he assures the executive that “the prison once completed and properly officered, unless in case of some unforeseen accident, will demand of the State treasury nothing more for at least fifty years! And more than that,” he says, “after paying for itself during the first few years of its existence, it will thenceforth yield annually a handsome revenue to the State.”