According to the Kansas City Star, the United States government is
building at Fort Leavenworth a $2,000,000 military prison which is
costing the government only $617,000.
It is building the new prison with convict labor. And when it is
finished about two years from now, it will be the biggest military
prison in this country. With the old buildings, which are to be
remodeled, the completed military prison and accessory buildings will
represent a value of $3,000,000. It will be a model prison as well.
Every improvement that has been incorporated in all the prisons that
have been built hitherto will be found in this one.
Several hundred convicts at the United States military reservation
at Fort Leavenworth are building the new military prison around
themselves. It was two years ago that congress made the initial
appropriation for the new military prison. Practically everything
needed except steel and cement was found within less than a mile of the
building site or the military reservation. So Colonel Slavens began the
monumental work of building a $2,000,000 military prison for $647,000.
He opened a rock quarry, where an excellent grade of building stone
could be obtained. He opened a second quarry where rock for making
lime was abundant, and established lime kilns, and began making forty
barrels of lime a day. A rock crusher was installed. A brick plant
was erected and shale quarries opened for making the 16,000,000 bricks
that are going into the prison buildings. A concrete block plant was
established, where 200 concrete blocks were turned out daily. Sand
for the masonry work is obtained from the Missouri river. Wood for
burning the brick and lime was found in the forest on the reservation,
as well as for scaffolding, and much of the lumber that is being used
in construction. All of these are being operated by prison labor on
various parts of the reservation, while the armed guards look on.
Within the old prison walls iron and wood working machinery has been
put in, as well as tin and electrical working machinery. All of the
iron and steel is being brought to the prison in practically a raw
condition, and the prisoners are working it up into finished product.
To do this it was necessary for the prisoners to master every building
trade.
Long before anything of this work was done the tedious task of teaching
the convicts the mechanical trades began. In fact, it was the idea of
Colonel Slavens that entirely apart from the problem of building the
new military prison, the convicts should be taught trades. So schools
were established, and everything from reading to writing to stenography
and typewriting is taught in classes that meet three times a week.
Expert civilian superintendents were employed to teach the convicts and
act as superintendents of the work in the new prison, and they have
developed some remarkably fine mechanics. Each convict is allowed to
follow his natural bent wherever possible. Electricians, ironworkers,
brick masons, tinners, and a score of other trades have been taught the
men. Two hundred and seventy-five of the prisoners are being worked
on the prison building proper, while an additional 176 are working in
the brick plant, lime plant and quarries. A difficulty is encountered
in the fact that about the time many of the convicts become first-class
workmen their term of service expires. Forty-one per cent. of the
prisoners confined at the military prison are deserters, the maximum
penalty for which in time of peace is imprisonment for two and one-half
years. Many of the others are confined for less serious offenses.
Before any work on the new buildings began, the commandant had to coach
a company of prisoners in the gentle art of housemoving. Forty-one
houses, occupied by civilian employees and guards, covered the site
on which it was desired to build the new prison. These were moved to
a site a quarter of a mile away. Then a fill, in some places a depth
of thirty-five feet, was made, before the new site was ready for the
buildings.
The grounds covered by the old and new buildings comprise an area of
about seventeen acres. A wall of concrete, several feet thick, and in
some cases rising to a height of fifty-five feet, now is practically
completed around this site. A power plant covering half a city block is
about finished. The power plant is connected by tunnel with the main
building under process of construction. An examination of the power
plant gives every evidence of expert construction. It is built of brick
and concrete, with an immense circular brick chimney rising to a height
of over 100 feet. When it is in operation it will be in charge of a
convict engineer.
The main building of the new prison is being constructed on the
radial plan, with the cell, hospital and other wings radiating from a
central building or rotunda. This is for simplicity in control of the
prisoners. By this means eight guards, armed with repeating rifles,
patrolling the “gun walks” of the rotunda and cell wings, will be able
to keep in subjection the 2,100 prisoners that are expected to occupy
the new prison when it is finished. All the necessary utilities for
the maintenance of life will be under one roof when the building is
completed. There will be a hospital, laundry, bakery, refrigerating
plant, amusement hall (used mainly for devotional purposes), and even
the cells will be fitted with individual toilet facilities.
There will be a total of 2,182 cells in the five cell wings radiating
from the new building. There are now 909 cells, containing 932
prisoners. As soon as the new prison is completed there are enough
prisoners waiting in the guard houses of the various military posts
throughout the country to fill all of the 2,182 cells, and they will be
sent to Fort Leavenworth.
The government manifests no anxiety to give out details touching its
business, but the information is vouchsafed that on the lime that is
going into the new building, a saving of 80 per cent. on each barrel is
effected, and that in the case of brick, it is costing the government
60 per cent. less to make it than it would cost to purchase it in the
open market. This, with the saving in labor, gives an idea of how
the government is able to erect $2,000,000 worth of buildings on an
appropriation of $647,000.
The government has no intention whatever of going into the open market
in competition with outside labor. It will manufacture nothing at the
military prison at Fort Leavenworth, which is not used in the conduct
of the prison itself. In pursuance of this policy in the past, it has
built with prison labor six miles of terminal railroad at the fort, and
has constructed and is maintaining many miles of rock road.
There are only two other military prisons in the United States. One
is a provisional prison on Governor’s Island, and the other a small
prison at Alcatraz, Cal., about one-fourth the size of the present Fort
Leavenworth prison. The government has not announced whether it will
abandon these.
When the new prison is finished about $50,000 will be spent in
remodeling the old buildings, some of which are very ancient. One was
built in 1877 and another in 1830, but they are still in a fair state
of preservation. They were originally built for a quartermaster’s depot.
* * * * *
_New York’s New Prison._--Great Meadow Prison is now in operation, the
latest and only modern structure among New York’s state prisons. The
Brooklyn Citizen describes it thus, in part:
A couple of hours’ ride from Albany northward on the Delaware and
Hudson Railroad brings the visitor to the station Comstock--a flag stop
for a few trains each way per day. The dozen or so dwelling houses
scattered about the beautiful landscape with their outlying barns and
stables proclaim a farming community. Eastward, about a quarter of a
mile from the railroad depot, one sees a big yellow brick building
rising like a Gulliver above a squadron of Lilliputian contractor
shanties.
The big building is the Great Meadow Prison cell house, about 600 feet
long, 80 feet high and 70 feet wide. Unfinished end walls indicate
that the cell house is only half completed and that another wing of
equal length, height and width is to be added. The completed part of
the building contains 624 cells on four floors. Each cell is about the
size of a New York hall room; is equipped with a white enameled closet
and a white enameled stationary washstand and running water, while the
furnishings consist of a white enameled iron hospital bedstead with
felt mattress, felt pillow, white bed linen and cotton blankets. A
small lock cabinet and cloth rack complete the equipment. The cells
are finished in natural cement; the doors have upright bars from floor
to ceiling, the bars being painted with aluminum color--and the color
effect of cement gray and the silvery aluminum is rather pleasing. A
touch of quiet elegance is even added by the bright nickel plated water
spigot and water control push buttons above the toilet stand and wash
basin. The cell house walls are 75 per cent. windows and each cell is
flooded with light. At night in each cell an electric light, with a
shade throwing the light downward, provides splendid illumination for
reading, writing, drawing, etc. The cell house has a comprehensive
ventilating system, with ventilating ducts connecting each cell.
Opposite the cell house stands the administration building. When
the whole prison plant is completed--which will take several years
yet--this building will be used exclusively for hospital, school
and library purposes. At present the building is used for all the
housekeeping departments of the prison, including bathroom, laundry,
tailor shop, shoe shop, kitchen, dining room, storeroom, hospital,
chapel, library, warden’s office, principal keeper’s office, guards’
quarters and a small dormitory for the kitchen gang. It is a beehive of
activity, with its sixty-odd inmate workers, and a poor place for the
night guards to do their day-sleeping. The halls and rooms are daily
mopped and scrubbed and every nook and corner is kept scrupulously
clean by a gang of porters.
The inmates are marched into the dining hall three times a day for
their meals, including Sunday. The farm operated in conjunction with
the prison and by prisoners (under direction of proper officials)
supplies seasonable vegetables, and now and then fresh meat from
the farm’s herd of cattle and pigs. This gives an advantage to the
steward of the prison in providing a greater variety of food and a
more attractive menu at the same per capita expenditure as the other
prisons in the State are allowed which are not favored with a farm. The
per capita expenditure in all State prisons is limited by legislative
appropriation. The fine air, good water, sound sleep in clean beds and
clean rooms, the daily exercise at work on the farm and at such other
work as is connected with running the prison--all combine to supply a
hearty appetite to the inmates. This appetite is met by a table limited
by the legislature, as already stated, and is limited also for the
men’s own good by hygienic restrictions.
* * * * *
_The Prison Farm at Occoquan, Virginia._--An interesting account of
the progress of the District of Columbia’s prison farm was recently
given by Rev. J. T. Masten, secretary of the Virginia state board of
charities and corrections.
The past year’s experience of the prison commissioners of the District
of Columbia has made a great impression upon him, as it has on every
thoughtful student of criminology. Two years ago Congress wrote in
the appropriation bill authority to the prison commissioners of the
District to do away with the jail system by placing the prisoners on a
farm. The sum of $190,000 was appropriated for the purpose. Under the
old system it was costing the commissioners $150,000 to care for the
prisoners each year.
The board took the money and bought a farm of eleven hundred acres near
Occoquan, in Prince William county, Va.
They took the male prisoners to the farm and used them exclusively
in the clearing of the land and preparing it for cultivation and in
the erection of the necessary buildings, one-story frame buildings
erected by the prisoners. To illustrate the economy of the work the
administration building, which is 30 by 175 feet, cost in actual money
two hundred dollars, the prisoners doing the work, sawing the lumber
from the timber on the property.
The work proved a splendid moral and physical tonic to the men. The
prison motto was made, “Reformation, not vindictive punishment.”
At first one guard had charge of six prisoners. Now one man has charge
of twenty prisoners and directs them in their work.
The prisoners do not wear chains and are not bound at night. There are
no bars at the windows and two men take care of 225 male prisoners at
night and one woman cares for sixty female prisoners.
During the first year there passed through the prison farm three
thousand men. There were but sixty attempts to escape--just two per
cent. Twenty of these attempts were successful, or less than one per
cent. of the total number of men confined.
The punishment for the unruly is solitary confinement on a diet of
bread and water and this form of discipline has only been found
necessary for an average of five cases each month, with an average
prison population of 550 men, or less than one per cent. From July 1
to September 8 there had been but four women punished. This shows that
the methods in use, the farm work and country quiet, and the ennobling
influence of honest toil in the open, have accomplished wonders in the
handling of the prisoners.
Then the farm method of handling prisoners is splendid economy. It is
estimated that to complete the rock-crushing and brick-manufacturing
plant, to finish grading the grounds and building the roads and the
erection of additional barns and other outbuildings and to pay the
ordinary expenses of the prison for the year the cost will be $120,000,
which is thirty thousand dollars less than it cost the District to
support the prisoners during the last year under the old jail system.
Within three years, the superintendent, Mr. Whittaker, estimates that
the farm will be self-supporting, and it may be reasonably expected,
the superintendent thinks, that the farm will clear from twenty to
thirty thousand dollars a year after paying all the expenses of
maintaining the prisoners.
It is found that the new system has caused a decrease in prison
population. Many of the prisoners reform, while the class which has
no liking for honest toil and has heretofore taken a season in the
district jail in search of rest and refreshment which they could not
otherwise obtain are fighting shy of the district police courts. It
seems now that, at the present rate of decrease, the population of the
prison-farm the second year will be some nineteen hundred less than
during the first year.
The superintendent, Mr. Whittaker, endeavors to impress upon the men
that it is better in every way to work as free men and earn wages than
to be sent to the farm and be compelled to work without wages. Three of
the best and most useful employees of the farm are men who were once
confined thereon as prisoners.
The products of the work on the farm will not be used in competition
with those of the public. Such products will be used in connection with
the support of other public institutions or in the construction of
public roads.