Mr. Pilcher has thrown himself into the undertaking with singular diligence and intelligence, and has entered thoroughly into the spirit of modern scientific treatment and research.
The newest and most original feature of the prison is the Clinic Building, in which the study and classification of the prisoners is to take place, and in which, as well, the general medical and surgical work of the institution will be carried on. It provides for the complete physical and mental examination of every inmate. It contains the hospital wards, dispensary, operating rooms and laboratories and X-ray plant, and indeed, it corresponds on a small scale to the hospital of any community, but differs from this in that it assumes that the whole population of the community may be abnormal, and therefore requires that every member of it shall at some time pass through the clinic for purposes of study and analysis. For this reason, the psychiatric or mental division of the clinic is relatively more accentuated.
It requires courage to attack such a problem as this, an attack that may carry us into troublesome social fields. It seems to be a fact, however, that no other method gives promise of relieving society of any considerable part of this burden of suffering and cost. We must not expect ever to be entirely rid of this burden, just as we shall never be rid of the burden of physical and mental disease; but just as science has diminished and is still diminishing these latter, so we have reason to believe that similar scientific methods, properly applied, will diminish the burden of anti-social behavior, and help us to approach the irreducible minimum, a minimum which must probably always exist in a human world like ours, but a minimum from which we are at present still very far.
Psychiatric Classification in Prison
By Lewis F. Pilcher, New York State Architect
(Reprinted by permission from the American Architect of January 28, 1920)
Commercial efficiency is determined by the use of the by-products of manufacture. Prisoners are by-products of society.
The modern enterprise that used to discard as waste the by-products of its plant now aims to reduce its overhead and better its system by returning to the community in usable form that which in past times had been considered as lost and unavailable material. Is it not true that the criminal has been for the most part considered in the past as an irreclaimable waste of society, his progress toward a better life inhibited by being held in the strait-jacket of strictly materialistic institutional management and maintenance? As in the case of manufacturing concerns so in the modern penal system, its success will be determined by the economic use, and measured, not by the development of model prisoners enchained securely behind bastioned walls, but by returning to society decent citizens.
In the past the achievement of positive human results has been seemingly impossible to obtain. The chief reason for this failure was due to the inevitable clash between institutional and political interests that always arose and rendered abortive the many attempts that have been made to treat successfully the complex questions of crime and punishment.