The fourth floor contains a complete operating department with two operating rooms, one for major and the other for minor operations, each having separate sterilization facilities, together with preparation, etherizing and recovery rooms, while the remainder of the floor is given up to rooms for the male nurses and a convalescent solarium.
A Training School for Nurses
In addition to using the building as a clinical hospital for the housing of psychiatric and medical requirements of the prison, it is also planned to use it as a school for the education of male nurses, as it is found that efficiency in prison nursing is directly proportional to the nurse’s understanding of the relation of scientific, medical and psychiatric knowledge to the peculiar problems of a prison community.
The entire Sing Sing project includes kitchens, dining rooms, library, school, vocational shops, recreation hall, roads, walks, a modern sewage plant, a power house to heat and light the many buildings and to operate the industrial plants, and a church for the development of religious and community ideals.
In addition to the proper placing and co-ordination of the structures and their component parts, and the abolishment of unsanitary conditions in the interiors, by the architectural treatment of buildings and site, a great step forward has been taken in the creating of a proper and fitting atmosphere and environment. The old idea of the ugly, heavy barred and broken walls, which produced the dismal, forsaken, isolated and jail-like appearance of former prisons, has been discarded. In their places will be many-windowed, substantial brick structures, extending from the river to the plateau in the rear of the elevated site, in dignified and well-proportioned stages.
The causes which formerly created in prisoners the feeling of being entombed, useless and hopeless exiles have been done away with. It is our hope that ideals of respectability, industry, efficiency and co-operation will arise from these new prison conditions and make strong, beneficial and lasting impressions on the mind of each prisoner.
It is only by such utilization of the experiences in allied fields and their thoughtful application to prison conditions that progress may be hoped for in solving this important human problem.