OUTSIDE CELL BUILDING—FIRST FLOOR PLAN
The dynamic unit of all human problems is the individual. Modern medical science makes the appraisal of this unit possible through the medium of psychiatric treatment and social service research. An undertaking, however, which is really consciously intent on reclaiming the individual prisoner to the limit of his capacity with a view of preventing future returning to misbehavior, would be hampered in its effect if it were to concern itself solely with the native endowments of the individual prisoner. The source of the prisoner’s particular being, life, is a dynamic process; and every contact the individual makes throughout life not only leaves its impression on him, but shapes his mental attitude toward his environment. Thus, it is obvious that the housing problem, touching as it does every phase of the life of man, is of fundamental importance, for the environment determines, through the influence of the associative imagery of the inmate, a control of his conscious acts and the mechanization of the conscious acts of the prisoner establishes his habits. The manner in which the prisoner has been handled in the past has unquestionably been responsible, if not for the great amount of criminal careers, certainly for the confirming of the individual in his life of crime. The character and kind of prison we have had, in the past, had as its sole aim to achieve mediæval security; a housing condition crude and archaic in conception, which has not helped to relieve and protect society against the spirit of crime, but on the contrary has actually tended to its increase.
Here in New York City the municipality protects the interests of its citizens by the enactment of a structural and sanitary code. Structural safety and physical security and health are provided for all classifications of human activities under the maturely established provisions of that code.
DETENTION BUILDING
Typical floor plan of Detention Building, a basement and four-story outside cell building. This plan shows the arrangement of cells against outside walls, which gives to each inmate direct sunlight and air
A Prison Planner’s Code
Scientifically, psychologically and practically important as is the structural side of this great prison problem, I have yet to see any workmanlike attempt to establish for prison planners a code so carefully developed and yet with an elasticity to adapt it to various localities and climates, to the end that the inhumanity of the present day, 1920, toward prisoners would be for all time impossible.
The tremendous security and help that such a code would provide for the development of state prisons and jails and reformatories is at once apparent.