Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New YorkOsborne, Thomas Mott
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Within Prison Walls: being a narrative during a week of voluntary confinement in the state prison at Auburn, New York
Osborne, Thomas Mott
Auburn Prison; Prisoners -- New York (State); Prisons -- New York (State)
To understand fully the Prison System it should be added that this long
iron bar, which forms the third lock and about which so much fuss is made,
only exists in the basement and second tier in the North Wing, and not at
all in the South Wing. There is no discrimination made, by confining the
more dangerous men in the extra-locked cells. But, gravely, every night
and morning, that silly extra bar is lowered and raised for a small
percentage of the prisoners--a ridiculous waste of time and energy.
* * * * *
This evening has been marked by a visit from the Chaplain, who has
returned from Syracuse. He tells me that my experiment has aroused great
interest among the clergymen assembled at a religious conference he has
been attending; that he has had to answer countless questions. He also
tells me that he is returning there again this evening and will telephone
to the gentleman who was proposing to employ his assistant, Dickinson, and
see if work cannot possibly be found for him. I tell the Chaplain of my
letter, and beg him to add assurance of my own belief in the young man's
stability and intention to do right.
Later the Warden comes. He brings me, as usual, a copy of the Auburn
newspaper, so that I must set this down as the third exception that is
made in my case. As a regular newcomer I should not be allowed a
newspaper.
I ask the Warden about last night's disturbance. He has inquired into it,
he says, and found it was only a case of a troublesome fellow, sent up
from Sing Sing recently, who was making some little disturbance in the
gallery. After they admonished him he wouldn't stop, so they had to take
him down to the jail. When the officer entered his cell, he threw his
bucket at the officer and there was a little row. "I'm inclined to think,"
adds the Warden, "that he may be a little bit crazy, and I'm going to look
into it."
"I suppose that is the official version," I remark to the Warden. "Well, I
certainly hope you will look further into it; for, speaking frankly, I
think they are trying to slip one over on you. If my information is
correct, and I believe it is, the case is rather different from what you
have told me; and the treatment given the young fellow was inexcusably
brutal."
I put the matter rather mildly to the Warden, for I don't want him to
think that I am losing my balance and taking everything that is said to me
by all my fellow-prisoners as gospel truth. To believe everything they say
would doubtless be as stupid as to believe nothing.
The Warden and I again discuss the desirability of my working in one of
the other shops during the remaining time here; but after full
consideration we both feel that more is to be gained by staying where I
am. There is only a day and a half left.
"You still feel, then, as if you wanted to try the jail?" asks the Warden.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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