The prison authorities are not supposed to abuse, vilify or use
blasphemous language towards the prisoners; it is forbidden under
penalty of the law.
Of course, as far as the convict is concerned, such a law or rule is a
dead letter. Should a prisoner protest to the warden against
vilification or profanity, he would only be laughed at; and should he
insist on making his complaint to the prison commissioner, his letter
would never be sent, and his persecution would begin at once.
The other day a quarrel broke out between two prisoners. A keeper tried
to stop it by hitting one of the offenders with his stick, and at the
same time calling him an unmentionable name. The convict retaliated with
a punch on the jaw that floored the keeper.
The convict was punished with two days in the "cooler," but the
offending keeper was not reprimanded by the warden. And when the man
came out of the "cooler," the doctor found him suffering from an
inflammation of the eyes which kept him in the hospital for two months.
When he asked for writing materials he was told that the punishment
meted out to him automatically eliminated all the privileges of a
convict; and he was not permitted to write home or to receive visitors
for two months. The electric light in his cell was cut off and he was
not allowed to read books or magazines, newspapers being always barred.
In the beginning of my stay in prison the use of profane language was,
to put it mildly, quite prevalent; but it became rare soon after the
election of Mayor Gaynor. Even their sticks were taken away from the
keepers for a while. And it was discovered that discipline did not
suffer in the least from the lack either of foul language or the stick.