Up to the advent of Superintendent Riley, there were in Auburn Prison two types of punishment cells: the jail, and the screen cells. The latter are built into the regular cell blocks and are about three and a half feet wide with the same length and height as the regular cells. They have solid doors of sheet iron pierced by a few round holes about the size of a slate pencil. These holes are probably of comparatively recent origin. The doors of similar cells at Sing Sing and Dannemora had no openings except for a small slit at the extreme bottom and top. Ventilation there was none; the occupant breathed as best he could, lay on the damp stone floor and went insane for lack of light and air, within full hearing of the officers--and incidentally of the other prisoners. The use of the screen cells at Auburn was ordered discontinued by Superintendent Riley immediately after he had seen and condemned those at Dannemora. The jail at Auburn is at present the place where all offenders against prison discipline are sent for punishment. Whether the offense is whispering in the shop or a murderous assault upon an inmate or a keeper, the punishment is exactly the same--varying only in length. So far as I can learn, there is no specific term for any offense; so that when a man goes to the jail, he never knows how long he may be kept there. The official view, as I understand it, is that no matter what the cause for which the man is sent to the jail, he had better stay there until "his spirit is broken." The jail is admirably situated for the purpose of performing the operation of breaking a man's spirit; for it has on one side the death chamber, and on the other the prison dynamo with its ceaseless grinding, night and day. It is a vaulted stone dungeon about fifty feet long and twenty wide. It is absolutely bare except for one wooden bench along the north end, a locker where the jail clothes are kept, and eight cells arranged in a row along the east wall and backing on the wall of the death chamber. The eight cells are of solid sheet iron; floor, sides, back and roof. They are studded with rivets, projecting about a quarter of an inch. At the time that Warden Rattigan came into office there was no other floor; the inmates slept on the bare iron--and the rivets! The cells are about four and a half feet wide, eight feet deep and nine feet high. There is a feeble attempt at ventilation--a small hole in the roof of the cell; which hole communicates with an iron pipe. Where the pipe goes is of no consequence for it does not ventilate. Practically there is no air in the cell except what percolates in through the extra heavily grated door.