“We demand the enactment of a law providing for bi-partisan control of penal and charitable institutions, and for the abolition of contract convict labor; and we denounce the board of prison commissioners in hiring out the children under their charge at the reform school for the benefit of whose morals and education that institution was originally established.”
Plans for a New Sing Sing.—That there is no need for the proposed new Harlem prison in Wingdale and that the present Sing Sing prison, New York, should be improved and retained is the opinion of Joseph F. Scott, superintendent of State Prisons. Plans tentatively mapped out will save the State at least $2,000,000. By expending $1,000,000 for improvements in Sing Sing, including the construction of a new cell block to accommodate 1,500 prisoners, and employing convict labor on the proposed improvements. Mr. Scott believes the institution can be used to as good advantage as the proposed new Harlem prison. Sing Sing is more accessible to New York city and at least $40,000 to $50,000 would be saved annually in the cost of the transportation of prisoners and freight, it is said.
“Outside of the cell block at Sing Sing the present prison plant is all right,” Mr. Scott is reported to have said, “and with a new cell block at Sing Sing and the 600 cell-capacity at the Great Meadows prison completed to its contemplated 1,200-cell capacity, the State would have a capacity of 1,200 cells each at Auburn, Dannemora, Great Meadows and Sing Sing, or for 4,800 convicts, and the present prison population is 4,500. So far the State has expended $400,000 at Bear Mountain and Wingdale in the attempt to get a new prison, and to complete the Wingdale project would cost $3,000,000 more.
“There are many features about the Wingdale site which make it too costly and unsuitable for a prison. Transportation of convicts and supplies would cost $50,000 a year more than at Sing Sing, and it would cost $250,000 more than anticipated for a water supply and sewerage and grading. A portion of the Wingdale site is swampy, also.”
New York Lockups.—There are now in the state of New York, according to the Commission on Prisons of New York, about 500 police stations and town and village lockups. During the past two years practically every one of them has been visited by an inspector from this department. The commission has been endeavoring to remedy some of the recognized evils quite prevalent in their management, and to insist upon more adequate provision for housing police prisoners and for more sanitary conditions in these local jails.
It has been insisting that there should be a more complete segregation of women from men than that now provided in some cases. Another evil which has received attention and criticism has been the common practice of commingling police prisoners with tramps or lodgers and the failure to segregate boys and adults.
Prisoners held in these lockups have been arrested simply on suspicion and have not had any hearing, and are entitled to decent and humane treatment. With many of them are common drunks, others are of a more reputable class and should not be locked up in crowded unsanitary quarters with tramps and hoboes of the worst kind. The commission has been insisting that these evils be minimized, and that if localities desire to have a lodging place for tramps it should be entirely separate from the quarters where prisoners are confined who are charged with offenses but who will be later allowed opportunity for defense before a court.
Through the persistent efforts of the commission great improvements have been made in these respects in very many of the towns, villages and smaller cities of the state, and the commission believes in its duty to prosecute this work still further until the evils heretofore arising from the improper housing and unwise coming of these various classes of people shall be eliminated.