In an interview in the New York Sun, O. F. Lewis, general secretary of
the prison association of New York, said recently:
“The principal prison needs of this State are a separate cell for each
prisoner in State prisons, employment for eight hours a day for all
able-bodied men in State prisons, the marketing of all prison-made
products in this State to the State and its political subdivisions,
such as counties and cities; the introduction and development of
industries in our county penitentiaries and jails; the centralization
of administration of our penitentiaries and jails under a proper
department of the State; the abolition of idleness and filth in many of
our jails; the development of the women’s farm and the farm colony for
vagrants and tramps; the creation of a separate institution or separate
wings of an existing institution for feeble-minded criminals, not the
insane criminals--and other things too numerous to mention.
“They had just such a jail situation in England thirty years ago, when
the State took over all the local prisons, that correspond to our
county jails. To-day all these institutions are under the management
of the prison commissioners of England, a body that no one would think
of accusing of the least bit of graft, and the institutions are run
with regard to the rights of the prisoner and the welfare of society.
That is our great need--that the state should manage the correctional
institutions within its borders through boards of managers, at least in
part.”