PRISON DISCIPLINE. VOL. XV.—JANUARY, 1860.—NO. 1. ART. I.—NEW GAOL FOR THE CITY OF BALTIMORE. We hear with unfeigned pleasure of any improvement in the construction of city and county gaols. Convinced as we have been for many years, and by testimony from innumerable sources, that in most of them we shall find a fruitful soil for the production and growth of criminal purposes and habits, we can conceive of few objects of municipal oversight which demand earlier or closer attention. What the gaol does to make a bad man worse, the penitentiary cannot easily undo. If a thief or burglar or counterfeiter, while waiting for trial or sentence, serves a few weeks’ or months’ apprenticeship to one or more adepts in those branches in a gaol, he is a very unpromising subject of penitentiary discipline. He is, perhaps, rather braced against any influences which may be employed to change his course of life, and buoyed up with the anticipation of pursuing his criminal projects under more favorable circumstances, and with greater skill and success, upon the termination of his sentence. So deep are our convictions of the immeasurable evils inflicted on the community by bad gaols, that we accept an attempt to improve them, in any respect, as a token of good. If a cell that was dirty yesterday is clean to-day—if the sexes are separated—if, instead of allowing prisoners to herd together day and night, they are separated by night—if for darkness, dampness and a pestilential atmosphere, the light and air have free access—if, in a word, there is some decent respect shown to the species represented in these suspected and perhaps fallen, degraded, and certainly discreditable specimens of it—we take courage. Of course we are prepared to congratulate our fellow-citizens of Baltimore, on the completion of a new and imposing city gaol. And though we could have wished they had adopted the principle of individual separation—which we cannot but regard as indispensable under any system, both as the _duty_ of society and as the _right_ of the offender—still, a well-constructed, wholesome prison, properly governed, does credit to the wisdom and humanity of the public authorities, and will, in the end, prove altogether the most economical. The following description of the gaol, illustrated as it is by the accompanying engravings, will give our readers the means of judging for themselves of the design and character of the new edifice: The jail stands in close proximity to the penitentiary, and comprises a centre building, and north and south wings. There is a block of cells in each of the two wings, 15 cells in length, 2 in width, and 5 stories in height, making 300 cells in the two wings, for the confinement of prisoners.