Part 5

He then goes to the barber if necessary and has his hair cut. It is not now the custom to crop all prisoners’ heads unless the actual physical condition makes such treatment necessary. After he has been given clean underclothes and a clean prison suit he goes to the warden’s office and is there interviewed by him. The prisoner is told what the rules of the institution are, and his first meeting with the warden is of consequence to both, as it gives the warden an intimate opportunity to regard and to counsel his man, and the prisoner his first intimation of what is expected of him and what his treatment will be. After his interview with the warden the prisoner is placed in cell block 3 to stay during the period of observation, which is usually about two weeks. This is not only for the purpose of finding out what his physical condition may be, and to guard against the development of contagious disease, but also that the prison authorities may make the equally important diagnosis of his mentality, from which is largely determined his future treatment.

OBSERVATION CELL BLOCK

This cell block set apart for the observation period of the inmate adjoins the administration building, and it is easy for the warden to be in frequent touch with the new men. An inmate who is only sentenced for a week or ten days would never leave this cell block, but would serve his sentence and be released from there. Men confined for a longer period, however, would be assigned to whatever classification seemed best after the observation period expires. In the reception building are also included the shower baths, twenty-seven in number, so that all the inmates of each floor may be bathed at one period. Shower baths are frequently put in the basement, about the worst possible place for them at all times, but especially in a prison. At Westchester no quarters of any kind were put in the basement. It was determined at the outset that all requirements should be accommodated above ground, a very wise provision for every prison building. Adjoining the shower room is a store room which would be small under ordinary circumstances, but in this instance there is a large general storehouse which will be maintained independently for the penitentiary and workhouse.

The school building contains four rooms with accommodations for 30 pupils in each school-room.

MESS HALL

The mess hall has been laid out so that the prisoners will sit at the table in the ordinary way, facing one another, with alternate wide aisles for service. Feeding the prisoners in a large mess hall has now been generally adopted in this country, and is infinitely better than the continental system of feeding them in the cell. Man is a gregarious animal, especially when his waywardness has landed him in prison, and the old systems, which aimed at the solitary confinement of the prisoner and tried to reform him by opposing all the things which were natural to him, were as stupid as they were cruel.

Over the mess hall is the auditorium, large enough for all, with two stairways so that the inmates from cell blocks 3 and 4 may be separated from those in cell blocks 1 and 2, and the connecting corridor has been divided by mesh grilles, so that these two general classifications which are very desirable may be maintained.

THE CONNECTING CORRIDOR

The connecting corridor is not only advantageous in permitting all portions of the institution to be reached under cover, but has been very desirable as a place of recreation for the prisoners. It will be noted that it is cross ventilated by windows north and south and that, with its extended southern exposure, it makes a very satisfactory place for recreation and exercise in bad weather when the men cannot work outdoors. A signal advantage, too, arising from this type of plan is that the cell blocks on the second and third stories are lighted on all four sides because of the one story height of the connecting corridor. The cell blocks are not only closed off from the connecting corridor by a glass partition, but at each floor the corridor between the cells is again closed off from the stair hall so as to make the quarters for the men as quiet as possible. The intolerable banging, rattling, and reverberation of the usual steel cell in the huge modern cell block is one of the chief things to be said against it.

It will be noticed that the institution as planned resolves itself into three courts, all of which will be kept in grass and planting and will look as little like the usual prison enclosure as is possible to make them through gardening means.

THREE DOMINANT IDEAS

In designing Westchester the dominant idea was to accomplish three things: first, to create an institution which would look as little like the conventional jail as possible; second, to give each inmate the privacy of a separate compartment; and third, to build a county jail that, without giving much more in appearance and accommodation than the old type, should not exceed it in cost.

With the first idea in mind the bars to the windows were all located on the inside of the sash, instead of on the outside, so that this distinguishing mark of the usual penal institution should be as little evident as possible.

By a special dispensation of the New York State Prison Commission permission was given to place the bars six inches on centers instead of the usual four and one-half inches on centers. The windows were designed so that only three bars were necessary. These are painted light in color, and consequently offer much less obstruction to the light. They are of tool-proof steel, and as the inmates are all short-term men, the desire for escape is not so great as in the longer term prisoner. At the time this idea was developed the author would have hesitated to put long-term men behind prison bars which were so readily accessible to the ingenuity of the accomplished crook, but he would not hesitate to do so now.

In the cells a toilet has been placed where it will be screened as much as possible, and the usual prison seat has been arranged to close down over it and conceal it almost entirely from view. The cell walls have been painted a soft gray, and each cell has a cot, a table and chair, a shelf and hook for the prisoner’s clothes, and a wash-basin. The dining-room has been furnished with very creditable looking tables and chairs, and the floor paved with a bright red tile, and the dull monotony of color usual in a prison building has been avoided throughout the institution.

THE OUTSIDE CELL

In designing the Westchester County Penitentiary and Workhouse, the second ambition realized by the author was to give each prisoner an outside cell. When the plan was first developed, three years ago, the outside cell was much more a matter of controversy than it is at the present time. The inside cell of the American prison is a type peculiar to this country, and its design is based on the principle that the prisoner is to be retained above every other consideration. Consequently our jails have been designed with what has come to be known as “interior cells,” that is, the cells are placed not against the outside walls, but in the center of the building, back to back, separated by a passageway from three to four feet in width, referred to as a utility corridor, in which all the plumbing and ventilating pipes are placed. The space between the outside of the building and the front of the cells is frequently divided by a steel grille forming two long corridors, the outside corridor being called the guards’ corridor, and the inside corridor, next to the cells, the prisoners’ corridor. The object of this division was to protect the guard from the prisoner, for this system is devised on the theory that every jail building must be constructed on the basis of making it safe for the worst possible criminal which might ever get into it. Indeed, every once in a while a guard is killed by a prisoner; but so every once in a while a man is killed crossing the street, but this does not mean that our streets are unsafe, if reasonable care is observed in traversing them.

LIGHT, HEAT, AND VENTILATION

Placing the cells in the center of the cell block makes it possible to fill the outside wall with windows--in fact, a proportion of light area which came to be established was that the outside wall should be 50 per cent glass. The radiation was placed between the windows, which open like louvres, and with an exhaust fan in the top of the utility corridor it was possible to draw the warm fresh air through the cell to the roof, thereby obtaining very satisfactory results in heating and ventilation.

While a good deal may be said for such a prison from the standpoint of its mechanical heating and ventilation, from the standpoint of the welfare of the prisoner hardly too much can be said against it. The great disadvantages of the cage type of cell are the complete loss of all privacy to the inmate, the inhuman and grotesque appearance which it gives to his confinement, and the difficulty of providing really adequate segregation and classification. Important prisons like the Great Meadow Prison of New York State and the prison at Stillwater, Minn., both of which are renowned for enlightened and efficient administration, have this inside cell arrangement. These prisons, however, were constructed when very little was known of the outside cell construction, and many practical prison men were largely against its adoption.

There is really no place in this country where it is possible to study adequately the outside cell, long advocated by our more progressive penologists, so that the author made a tour of Continental prisons for the sole purpose of discovering wherein lay their advantage and how they should be designed to make them suitable to this country and climate.

CONTINENTAL CONSTRUCTION

In the Continental prison the chief difficulty with the outside cell is found in its ventilation. In England the windows are intentionally made loose fitting so that they cannot lie entirely closed. Where it is possible to close the windows tightly, insufficient ventilation invariably results during cold weather because the great majority of prisoners seem to shun fresh air and invariably keep their windows shut.

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.

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.

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.

VENTILATION BY CELL DOORS

The cell doors operate on an automatic device, with which it is possible to open all the doors at once, or each one individually. The author’s contribution to this device was that they could also be locked five inches open. In this way it is possible in warm weather to ventilate the cell into the central corridor; which in turn is ventilated at each end by accessible windows across its entire width. It is true that the prisoners can look out through the five-inch opening and communicate with one another across the corridor; but if this privilege is abused, the door can be closed separately and the offending inmate may be disciplined without affecting the comfort of the others. In the new cell block at the Eastern Penitentiary at Philadelphia the cells have been equipped with two doors--one of solid wood and the other an iron grating. In warm weather the grating only is used, and if a prisoner becomes unruly or noisy, the wooden door is closed. The upper portions of the doors at Westchester are glazed, as they always should be, because it is necessary for the guard at all times to see if the prisoner is in his cell.

Almost the whole problem of the outside cell lies of course in the window. Our climate is such in summer that it would be almost inhuman to put a man in a cell and shut the door without providing adequate window area. The English cell with its small window opening would be intolerable here. So would those in the Holland and German prisons, where the windows are hinged at the bottom and open at the top. The Westchester windows are steel sash of the usual casement type except that they are pivoted top and bottom 4 inches from the jamb. This enables the window to be readily cleaned on each side. The window opens at right angles to the wall, and the opening is entirely adequate for our weather conditions, the window being two feet wide and four feet high. The adjuster is a commercial type, and will keep the window open at 90 degrees, 45 degrees, and about 15 degrees.

Proposed Plans of the Detroit House of Correction

_By_ ALBERT KAHN, _Architect_

The plan of the new Detroit House of Correction is the result of a careful survey of the most recently designed penological institutions and the assembling of what was considered best about them, adding such features as seemed desirable to the Hoard of Commissioners and its architect.

CORRELATION OF DIVISIONS

Foremost in the general scheme is the proper correlation of the various divisions, for administration, the admission, care, and education of prisoners; the workshops and recreation courts. With all, the idea of preserving the prisoner’s self-respect as far as possible and impressing him with the idea that while he must receive deserved punishment, every chance of rehabilitation is offered him.

A study of the plans will reveal the fact that the center wing houses, the administration offices, the receiving rooms for prisoners, the social service offices, and all departments general to the institution, such as visitors’ rooms, commissary rooms, main dining-room, kitchen, main auditorium, chapel, hospital wards, educational rooms, and library. Thus located, they are close to the administrative center and make for easy supervision.

TEN CELL BLOCKS

On both sides of the central wing are placed the cell blocks, connected by a corridor wide enough to serve as recreation space. By this arrangement privacy is assured the prisoners and freedom from the gaze of visitors to the more public departments of the institution. Ten cell blocks, five on each side, and each three stories high, afford opportunity for the segregation of prisoners, which is so essential. General baths and barber-shops are placed in the center of each group. The cell blocks in the main are of the outside type, though for the most hardened prisoners and for punishment some inside cells are provided. The floors, however, are entirely separated, the regulation cell block being avoided.

The prisoners enter by a private drive, and through one of the exterior courts, into the receiving room, which is adjacent to the social service offices and close to the administrative offices.

The kitchen and main dining-room occupy the extreme south end of the center wing, and the latter is accessible to the prisoners without traversing the more public corridors. Directly above the dining-room is placed the auditorium, with a stage, all equally accessible to the prisoners. Opposite the auditorium is the chapel. The second floor of the administration building is given over to the hospital, dispensary, etc.; the third floor to classrooms and library; also quarters for guards.

A MODERN FACTORY

The Industrial Building forms the south group. It is planned along the line of modern factory construction, with concrete floors and ample daylight. It is arranged for progressive woodworking, the raw material being received at one point, passing through the machines to the other end of the plant, then up to the second floor, and back to the shipping-room adjoining the receiving-room. Dry kilns of the most approved type and proper trackage for railway shipment are provided; also a garage for trucks and a machine shop.

The power and heating plant is located on the center axis north of the Industrial Building. The general laundry adjoins the heating plant. On the second floor of this building the gymnasium is placed. This building divides the open space into two courts for the recreation of the two classes of prisoners. Each court is adequate, in size for baseball and other games. The ground occupied rises considerably to the north, whereby opportunity is offered to keep the recreation courts fully 12 feet below the first floor level, and for a full basement, which affords ample and well-lighted space for the Commissary Department, tailor shop, shoe shop, and other shops and store-rooms of all kinds.

PRISON WALLS OBVIATED

As will be noted, save for a short connecting wall, the buildings themselves form the enclosure of the courts, whereby forbidding walls are obviated.

The buildings throughout will be fireproof constructed, in the main of reinforced concrete, and faced on the exterior with tapestry brick. Spanish tile will be used for the roof of the center building. Such trimmings as occur will be of Bedford limestone. The exterior is treated in the character of Lombard brick architecture, which style lends itself particularly well to the problem. All ostentation has been avoided and architectural effect has been sought in the general grouping and proportions rather than in the ornamentation; nevertheless, the psychology of attractive buildings has not been overlooked.

Particular attention will be paid to the proper setting of the buildings and to the planting of trees and shrubs about them. Placed a considerable distance back from the main road, and partially concealed by trees and the undulating land, a certain degree of privacy desired by the Board will be secured.

The aim of the Board and its architect throughout has been to produce a group of buildings economical in construction and maintenance, though attractive and sanitary, and easy of supervision, while assuring the prisoners privacy and comfort. Through proper surroundings it is hoped to strengthen their manhood.

Reception Cottage at the Hawthorne School (for Delinquent Boys)

Maintained by the Board of Jewish Guardians at Hawthorne, New York

_By_ HASTINGS H. HART

The Receiving Cottage of the Hawthorne School is an admirable example of a dormitory cottage for boys. We present herewith a photograph of the exterior, together with the first-and second-story plans.

The hall on the first floor terminates at one end of the house in the living-room, and at the other end in the dining-room, economizing space. The living-room has windows on three sides, and has an attractive fireplace. The dining-room at the opposite end of the cottage has also windows on three sides. The kitchen is so arranged as to give cross ventilation, both east and west and north and south, in hot weather. The first floor has also a small sewing room, with suitable storage.

On the second floor there are two dormitories, each containing 10 beds. Each dormitory is connected with shower bath, toilet, and locker room, so arranged that the day clothing of the boys is locked up at night. The second floor contains a commodious room for the matron, with bath and a room for a monitor.