In designing the Westchester County Penitentiary and Workhouse, the
second ambition realized by the author was to give each prisoner an
outside cell. When the plan was first developed, three years ago,
the outside cell was much more a matter of controversy than it is at
the present time. The inside cell of the American prison is a type
peculiar to this country, and its design is based on the principle
that the prisoner is to be retained above every other consideration.
Consequently our jails have been designed with what has come to be
known as “interior cells,” that is, the cells are placed not against
the outside walls, but in the center of the building, back to back,
separated by a passageway from three to four feet in width, referred to
as a utility corridor, in which all the plumbing and ventilating pipes
are placed. The space between the outside of the building and the front
of the cells is frequently divided by a steel grille forming two long
corridors, the outside corridor being called the guards’ corridor, and
the inside corridor, next to the cells, the prisoners’ corridor. The
object of this division was to protect the guard from the prisoner,
for this system is devised on the theory that every jail building must
be constructed on the basis of making it safe for the worst possible
criminal which might ever get into it. Indeed, every once in a while a
guard is killed by a prisoner; but so every once in a while a man is
killed crossing the street, but this does not mean that our streets are
unsafe, if reasonable care is observed in traversing them.