The Chicago House of Correction was established and is maintained by
the City of Chicago in accordance with the provisions of an Act of
the State Legislature, in 1871. It covers sixty (60) acres of ground,
the total valuation of real estate, buildings and equipment being
$1,618,688.00. During the year ending December 31st, 1910, there were
13,083 commitments to the institution. This total includes 1,383 women,
355 boys under 18 years of age and 11,345 men. The daily average
population was 1,631 (a decrease from 1,766 in 1909, and this latter
figure was a decrease from 1,852, which was the daily average during
1908). Persons are committed for violation of state statutes in cases
of misdemeanor, and for violation of city ordinances. In the latter
case the fine imposed is worked out at the rate of fifty cents per day;
however, the maximum term of imprisonment for failure to pay fine is
fixed at six months, and an allowance of three days per month is made
for good conduct if the limit of imprisonment is served. For violation
of the state statutes a fixed sentence is imposed by the Court, the
maximum being one year. For violation of certain sections of the
statutes an additional fine may be imposed, which, if not paid, may be
worked out at the rate of $1.50 per day after sentence has been served.
The law providing for the allowance of three days per month for good
conduct also covers these cases if confinement is for six months or
more.
All inmates over 18 years of age who are not incapacitated from work
by sickness or old age, are furnished with healthful employment; the
principal industries being those that furnish products needed and to
be used by the City. A limited and comparatively small percent of
the inmates are employed in the manufacture of articles placed on
the market in competition with those manufactured by paid labor. For
instance, the city uses a great amount of crushed stone in the repair
and building of streets. This is quarried, crushed and loaded in the
cars on our grounds by inmates at a great saving to the city. They are
also engaged in the manufacture of sewer brick used by the city, the
clay used in this industry being excavated within the walls of the
institution. We also conduct a printing shop where most of the city’s
printing is done.
The laundry work for the Police and Health Departments is done
here at a great advantage to those departments. We manufacture
all clothing, shoes, etc., that the prisoners wear. We make all
permanent improvements to buildings and grounds as well as do the new
construction work. About one-fifth of our inmates are engaged in the
manufacture of chairs, broom and leather goods and these are the only
articles placed on the market.
The actual receipts of the institution during the year 1909 were
$210,591.48; this amount, however, includes $38,287.00 collected as
payment on fines. In addition to the above, it is conservatively
estimated that the earnings of the institution in making permanent
improvements and in new construction work are not less than
$148,873.00. The total expenditures including the purchase of materials
for new construction and of amounts appropriated by the city to
be used at the House of Correction in its management amounted to
$291,053.03.
The per capita cost per diem for feeding inmates during the year
1909 was twelve cents; the cost per diem including all expenditures
was forty-six cents. The cost as stated above is somewhat increased
because of the fact that we maintain as one of the departments of the
institution what is known as the John Worthy School. This is not a
school in name only, but has all the facilities for giving the class
of boys that are sent to us from the Juvenile Court the education and
training they need; and their needs are greater than those ordinarily
sent to the public schools, for most of them have not had the chance
in life to develop physically or morally as boys have who come from
well regulated homes where proper influence prevails, and where they
are encouraged to profit by the educational advantages furnished by
our public schools. You will find there not only the ordinary class
rooms with a competent teacher in charge of each, but manual training
facilities and a well-equipped trade school, an indoor gymnasium, as
well as outdoor play grounds and a swimming pool. We also teach them to
do gardening and in a limited way give them an opportunity to develop
any inclinations they may have to follow an agricultural life.
I desire to call particular attention to a cell house recently built
here for men, in which there are 334 cells, each having an outside
window which can be operated by the occupant of the cell. Each cell
is also equipped with high class plumbing, including wash basin; in
fact, sanitary conditions are as perfect as it seemed possible to make
them. You will find no dark corners in the building or places where
the ventilation is not perfect. The valuation has been conservatively
fixed at $225,000. The actual cost is less than $65,000.00. The
difference between these amounts represents the value of the inmates’
labor and the product of the institution used in its construction. No
mechanical superintendents were employed, our officers acting in the
dual capacity of guards and instructors, the inmates performing all
the labor, even the plumbing, electrical work, and, in fact, all of
the labor required to finish the well-constructed up-to-date building.
The center corridor is 260 feet long by 30 feet in width, which we
converted into a dining hall. All the prisoners occupying cells in
the building have their meals served in this space and the tables and
benches used for this purpose are also used for carrying on religious
and educational work among the inmates during the evening or on
Sundays. This is an entirely new innovation in prison management, but
is being carried on with success.
The many advantages of a cell house like this one, built on the plan of
the center corridor, are becoming more and more apparent as they are
put into practical use. The outside window in each cell goes a long way
toward preventing the spread of that dreaded disease, tuberculosis.
Light and airy cells not only mean sanitary conditions, but afford an
opportunity for the inmates to look out through windows and over walls
and witness natural, if not pleasant scenes, which have a tendency to
inspire them with more wholesome thoughts than if their gaze rested
continually upon stone walls and iron bars. The entertainment of
wholesome thoughts is much more apt to be an inspiration to better
citizenship than can be suggested by dismal surroundings.
The experience we have had in this cell house has shown that the
objections raised by some to a style of construction that would permit
the prisoners sitting in cells facing each other across a center
corridor is not justified. We have had no difficulty whatever because
of this. The discipline maintained has been of a higher order than in
the old-style cell houses and has been obtained with comparative ease.
It is the intention of the management of this institution to prevail
upon the city authorities to grant an appropriation for a series of
cell houses built on the center corridor plan to take the place of the
old-style ones.
Society nowadays expects more of the management of penal institutions
than merely to keep its inmates safely. Some inmates may be lacking
only in moral or religious training; with others it may be of the
utmost importance that they receive medical or surgical attention;
and again, educational advantages often prove to be just the needed
inspiration to the unfortunate. Proper physical or mental development
is nowadays acknowledged to be the panacea for the delinquent youth,
and to some extent the adult. The consideration of these facts will
tend to inspire the inmates with at least a wholesome respect for the
law, and I believe that a more helpful discipline can be maintained
among the inmates when they can be satisfied that something is being
done for their benefit and enlightenment. This has been proved to be
true in the handling of the delinquent youth in our modern institutions
who are no longer looked upon as or called criminals, but young men
who can be developed into good citizenship, by first determining their
needs and then finding ways and means of supplying them.
In my opinion what has been done for the youth can also be accomplished
in a large measure with the adult, especially in a corrective
institution such as this. The discipline in a corrective institution
must necessarily be exacting but at the same time it should be
permeated with that degree of kindness that would inspire the prisoner
to his best efforts with the feeling that not only the right but
the beneficial thing is being done for him. The law commits to our
keeping the undisciplined, the unsocialized and the lawless, who have
perhaps never realized the importance of self-control. The discipline
maintained among this class by creating only a fear of punishment will
in most cases fail to bring about results that are beneficial; such
discipline does not prove to be correctional, but on the contrary has
the tendency to encourage the practice of deception, for often they
have no other incentive when violating the rules than to show that they
can avoid detection. It seems to me that discipline to be corrective
should be instructive and educational; instructive to a degree that
would satisfy the prisoner that the law is not revengeful, but that
in restraining him from his liberty it wants to point out to him his
weaknesses and to assist him in overcoming them; and educational to a
degree that would teach him to formulate rules to govern himself so
that he might become a useful member of society. Then he will be more
apt to consider the rules made to govern his conduct while in prison
as really for his good, and he will co-operate with them to such an
extent, at least, that he does not resort to deception. If a prisoner
can be taught the lesson of self-control he is better prepared to
adapt himself to the outside world and to good citizenship. If all
inmates are not susceptible to this form of discipline, a sufficiently
large percent respond, and when the great number of first offenders
in an institution of this kind is considered, it is well worth an
extra effort to maintain a discipline that will appeal to them with
beneficial results to the community.
In my estimation, it is highly important in an institution of this
kind to be prepared to give the best of medical or surgical treatment
to those of the inmates who need it. We have a medical department
well equipped with all the facilities of a first-class hospital. The
regular staff of that department consists of four physicians and two
trained nurses who live on the grounds, besides specialists who visit
the institution at regular intervals. In addition to this we have a
staff of consulting surgeons and physicians, each of whom visit the
department at least once a week. No better attention is given patients
in any hospital than our inmates receive. From fifty to seventy-five
major operations are performed each month by as competent surgeons as
there are in the city. The results obtained in this department have
been most gratifying, and tend to prove that if permanent progress
is to be made in the matter of the management of penal institutions,
much assistance must come from a well regulated medical department,
where the mental condition of the inmates is considered as well as the
physical.