New York’s New Prison.—Great Meadow Prison is now in operation, the latest and only modern structure among New York’s state prisons. The Brooklyn Citizen describes it thus, in part:
A couple of hours’ ride from Albany northward on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad brings the visitor to the station Comstock—a flag stop for a few trains each way per day. The dozen or so dwelling houses scattered about the beautiful landscape with their outlying barns and stables proclaim a farming community. Eastward, about a quarter of a mile from the railroad depot, one sees a big yellow brick building rising like a Gulliver above a squadron of Lilliputian contractor shanties.
The big building is the Great Meadow Prison cell house, about 600 feet long, 80 feet high and 70 feet wide. Unfinished end walls indicate that the cell house is only half completed and that another wing of equal length, height and width is to be added. The completed part of the building contains 624 cells on four floors. Each cell is about the size of a New York hall room; is equipped with a white enameled closet and a white enameled stationary washstand and running water, while the furnishings consist of a white enameled iron hospital bedstead with felt mattress, felt pillow, white bed linen and cotton blankets. A small lock cabinet and cloth rack complete the equipment. The cells are finished in natural cement; the doors have upright bars from floor to ceiling, the bars being painted with aluminum color—and the color effect of cement gray and the silvery aluminum is rather pleasing. A touch of quiet elegance is even added by the bright nickel plated water spigot and water control push buttons above the toilet stand and wash basin. The cell house walls are 75 per cent. windows and each cell is flooded with light. At night in each cell an electric light, with a shade throwing the light downward, provides splendid illumination for reading, writing, drawing, etc. The cell house has a comprehensive ventilating system, with ventilating ducts connecting each cell.
Opposite the cell house stands the administration building. When the whole prison plant is completed—which will take several years yet—this building will be used exclusively for hospital, school and library purposes. At present the building is used for all the housekeeping departments of the prison, including bathroom, laundry, tailor shop, shoe shop, kitchen, dining room, storeroom, hospital, chapel, library, warden’s office, principal keeper’s office, guards’ quarters and a small dormitory for the kitchen gang. It is a beehive of activity, with its sixty-odd inmate workers, and a poor place for the night guards to do their day-sleeping. The halls and rooms are daily mopped and scrubbed and every nook and corner is kept scrupulously clean by a gang of porters.
The inmates are marched into the dining hall three times a day for their meals, including Sunday. The farm operated in conjunction with the prison and by prisoners (under direction of proper officials) supplies seasonable vegetables, and now and then fresh meat from the farm’s herd of cattle and pigs. This gives an advantage to the steward of the prison in providing a greater variety of food and a more attractive menu at the same per capita expenditure as the other prisons in the State are allowed which are not favored with a farm. The per capita expenditure in all State prisons is limited by legislative appropriation. The fine air, good water, sound sleep in clean beds and clean rooms, the daily exercise at work on the farm and at such other work as is connected with running the prison—all combine to supply a hearty appetite to the inmates. This appetite is met by a table limited by the legislature, as already stated, and is limited also for the men’s own good by hygienic restrictions.
The Prison Farm at Occoquan, Virginia.—An interesting account of the progress of the District of Columbia’s prison farm was recently given by Rev. J. T. Masten, secretary of the Virginia state board of charities and corrections.
The past year’s experience of the prison commissioners of the District of Columbia has made a great impression upon him, as it has on every thoughtful student of criminology. Two years ago Congress wrote in the appropriation bill authority to the prison commissioners of the District to do away with the jail system by placing the prisoners on a farm. The sum of $190,000 was appropriated for the purpose. Under the old system it was costing the commissioners $150,000 to care for the prisoners each year.
The board took the money and bought a farm of eleven hundred acres near Occoquan, in Prince William county, Va.