[The Boston Globe has recently published the following article. Warden Lovell of Windsor seems to be running Sheriff Tracy a close second.]
Wilson S. Lovell, the superintendent of the Vermont State Prison at Windsor, has advanced ideas concerning the management of convicts.
“When I can’t treat them like human beings,” he says, “I’ll give up the job.”
Certainly his prisoners have privileges not generally accorded elsewhere to offenders against the law who are serving sentences.
They are permitted to keep razors and to shave themselves.
If an occupant of the electrically lighted cells doesn’t like the white-wash on the walls, he can replace it with a paint of cheerful red or any other color which does not offend his artistic eye.
Many of the men, who have nearly served out their terms, work about the town under a keeper and on the prison farm. For the work about town they receive approximately 50 cents a day for their own personal use.
The prison cows are driven out to pasture, some distance from the institution, but there is nothing in the garb or manner of the persons who drive them to suggest that they are convicts, but nevertheless they are. They are allowed to go unattended—in a word are trusted—put on honor.
The women inmates, who do all the housework of the prison with the exception of the cooking, which is done by the men, have unprecedented liberties.