It was found that by placing the small rooms of the Home of Detention and Prison around the court, recessed from the street, most of the dangers of communication between prisoners and the outside could be obviated, and the possibility of introducing drugs and weapons into the building overcome.
The prisoners are to be delivered through a driveway court into the room for arrested persons, taken to their individual temporary detention rooms on the first and second floors, from which an officer conducts them to the complaint room, or in a continuous line of circulation through the prisoners’ waiting room, the court room, the finger print room, and after sentence, to the room for detained persons, from which they are taken by guards of the Detention Home and Prison and after examination put among that group of prisoners which their degree of crime permits or requires.
The public will enter the building through a public vestibule, pass up a large stairway and enter the court room or complaint room through a public lobby on the second floor. The court room is 25 feet high, of ample size, and has abundant light and cross ventilation from the street into an interior light court, which opens at its top into the recessed light court of the Detention Home above.
The entrance to the probation and administrative portions of the Magistrates’ Court is through a special vestibule controlled by the janitor of the building at the southwest corner. Women on probation of the court can report to their probation officer in the second floor without coming in contact with the crowd frequenting the courtrooms and public vestibule. Probation officers are to be located on the floor immediately below the courtroom and will have ready access to the courtroom when their attendance there is required. Reporters are to be given a special room and provided with tables and seats in the court. The judge, the clerk of the court, the assistant clerks and the district attorney are allotted rooms on the fourth floor, which is accessible to all of the lower floors of the building by a special elevator and stairs.
On the fifth floor of the building are placed the administrative offices of the home and prison, the apartments of the superintendent and assistant superintendent and separate facilities for visitors coming to see the home and prison. The visitors cannot at any time pass to the prisoners either weapons or drugs. Double wire screens will at all times separate the prisoners from the visitors.
From the sixth to the fourteenth floor there will be twenty-four rooms on each floor, these being for housing the inmates of the home and prison. Each group of twelve rooms will have a dining and living room, a service pantry, a bathroom and a storage closet for linen and clothing. An open air exercise loggia will connect the two twelve-room groups.
The prison and home rooms will be slightly different, in that the prison rooms will have steel grilled fronts opening onto the corridor, whereas the rooms of the detention home will have regular fireproof doors fitted with a small grilled panel, for the convenience of matrons in overseeing their charges. Each of the small rooms will be provided with a wash basin, a water closet and a bed.
Criminals in War.—Criminals generally turn out to be cowards on the battlefield, according to observations in the cases of 225 men with jail or prison sentences in their record made during the campaign of Italy in Tripoli by Dr. Consiglio, chief of staff surgeons with the Italian army.
Dr. Consiglio says: