By these few examples taken from the religious and civil architecture of early civilization I have endeavored to show that class distinction tends to express itself through the use of different housing levels, the height of each group being directly proportional to the power of its social division, thus giving a concrete expression to the theoretical grades by which the human mind differentiates the social status of the people who comprise any given group.
Application to Wingdale
If we apply this rather pragmatic psychology to the problem of planning a new prison, we find it obvious at the outset that a prison population forms, together with its dependencies, a complete segregated community and therefore presents few phases which have not been successfully solved in the various treatments of community houses in past eras. Bearing in mind both this and the psychological principles which determine the function of any segregated community, it becomes perfectly clear that the old system of plotting an entire prison plan on an absolutely level piece of ground does not agree with either the teachings of history or the psychological principles which determine the site of community housing, and it thus becomes manifest that if we are to plan a prison which will be both a protection and a benefit to society we must select our site and construct our plans with the idea of having different grades of elevation for different degrees of social eminence.
If, remembering this, we summon practical experience to our aid we find that a prison population divides itself naturally into three major divisions, two of which are composed of actual inmates and a third of those in authority over them. The first and largest of these groups is made up of sub-normals and general recalcitrants who of necessity must work, eat, and sleep under constant and direct supervision. These will be confined in strong, well-guarded buildings situated within a walled enclosure and the work which they do will be such as can be efficiently done within the comparatively small space to which they are restricted.
The second group, composed of prisoners who have shown themselves worthy of trust, will be allowed privileges which are denied the first. A concrete expression of these privileges will consist of lodging them in buildings situated on a higher level and with no enclosing walls, thus allowing them to carry on dairying, farming, stone crushing and similar industries.
As the working out of our community idea demands that the governing class occupy a higher site than those they govern, we have planned an adjacent but higher elevation for the offices, dwellings and other buildings necessary for the proper maintenance of a model prison.
In our plan for the new Wingdale Prison we have attempted to express a prison which will meet the scientific and historic precedents which we have at our command, and we fully believe that our plan will exert as beneficial an influence on our prisoners as did the noble monuments on the Acropolis at Athens on the humble people who constructed their mud-brick houses at its base.