VIEW OF MESS HALL FROM CORRIDOR
Two methods are in use abroad for ventilating the outside cell, but neither is adequate. The English way is to build in the front wall of the cell a panel of special bricks which are made with diagonal or curved openings which will let the air through, but which will not permit the prisoner to see through. This arrangement is intended to ventilate the cell into the central corridor; but the central corridor is usually quite as much in need of ventilation as the cell itself. In the majority of English prisons the cell blocks are four tiers high, the cells being on the outside walls reached by galleries with the central corridor running clear through from main floor to roof. This is always bad, as such interior spaces can only be lighted and ventilated through the roof; and while overhead lighting is always questionable, overhead ventilation is still more so. This condition is made worse as the cell block increases in length, and some of them, as at Pentonville, I think, are 175 feet long. This method of reaching the cells from galleries came about as a means of facilitating supervision, for the guard standing on the main floor has a view of all the inmates as they come out of their cells. As a matter of fact, the top galleries have very little supervision owing to their distance from the guard’s station. Better supervision is had and better discipline maintained when the cell floors run through, for then a guard may always be on the same floor with the prisoner. This arrangement also makes for better classification and greater quiet throughout the cell block.
CELL BLOCK CORRIDOR
On the Continent, and in some of the older English prisons, the cells are ventilated by ducts or flues built in the walls, each cell with its separate flue, the registers of which are sometimes controlled by the guard from the corridor, but usually by the prisoner from the cell. The results of this method of ventilation, however, did not seem satisfactory to the author on the chilly February days when he was in Holland and Germany, for without exception he found the cell windows shut, in spite of the prison rules requiring that the prisoner shall always keep his window open.
Apart from this one point of ventilation, to the mind of the most casual visitor there can be no question that there is a great advantage in the privacy afforded by the outside cell. The doors are closed and the discipline and quiet of the prison are perfect. There are no cat calls through the night, nor is there the intolerable argument and vile language which are continually bandied back and forth in many American prisons, and particularly in our miserable county jails. This one thing, the lack of privacy, if there were no other, should condemn the inside cell system for all time. There is nothing in the suggestion frequently made that the outside cell is another name for solitary confinement, except where such a system is intentionally carried out, as formerly was the practice.
TYPICAL CELL
As our modern prisons are administered, the men are fed in a general mess hall and not in the cell, and with the work on the farm and in the shops, and in the freedom which is now permitted in the recreation periods, there is not the slightest reason to feel that the inmate has anything to endure in the outside cell at all comparable to solitary confinement.
In New York State the regulations of the State Commission of Prisons are very precise on one point, and that is that each cell must have a toilet and a wash-basin. At Westchester vertical shafts were constructed between each pair of cells to contain all the plumbing pipes for those fixtures. The basins are designed so that the prisoner may drink from the flow of water, which is from the outside of the bowl rather than the wall side, thereby doing away with the necessity of a cup. The closet is suspended, fastened to the wall and not the floor, and equipped with a vent connected to galvanized pipes and ducts which are controlled by an exhaust fan, there being one fan for each cell block. This is a simple and effective way of providing against the prisoner’s habit of closing his window in the winter. The toilet has been placed behind the wall of the utility duct and is screened in that position. In the usual type of the inside cell block the closet is placed squarely in front of the door, with no screen whatever, and no effort seems to have been made to give it any privacy.