THE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTION

KATHARINE BEMENT DAVIS

Commissioner of the Department of Correction

History

N various forms the functions of a department of correction

have been exercised since the earliest settlement of Manhattan Island. Sutton, in his history of The Tombs, points out that jails, penitentiaries, bridewells and houses of correction existed in New York a century and a half before the state, and were organized and reorganized in the most ancient charters. The first building used for a jail in the city of New York was built in 1642. The first house of correction, called a bridewell, in 1734, and the penitentiary, located first at Bellevue, date as far back as 1816. The Tombs, so called from its resemblance to an ancient Egyptian tomb, was ready for occupancy in 1838. The necessity for separatting juvenile offenders from hardened criminals was recognized and the House of Refuge was the outcome. This was opened in 1825, and in 1851 was transferred to its present site on Randall's Island.

I have not been able to trace in detail the succession of officials who, under various names, have controlled the correctional institutions of the city, but as far back as 1841 there was a commissioner of the almshouse who had charge of both charitable and correctional institutions. Early in 1849, the New York state legislature passed an act establishing a board of governors to have charge of the correctional and charitable institutions of the city. They were ten in number and were known as the governors of the almshouse. In the same year the workhouse was established by an act of the legislature. The report issued by the board of governors of the workhouse appeared in 1850, and covered the activities of the preceding year. This board controlled such diverse institutions as the almshouse, Bellevue Hospital, hospitals on Blackwell's Island, the city prison, children at nurse, the colored home, the colored orphan asylum, the lunatic asylum, the penitentiary, the penitentiary hospital, Randall's Island and the workhouse. They also had charge of the department of outdoor poor. They appointed the heads of each institution, but these heads

appointed their own subordinates and were responsible for their good conduct.

At this time, the penitentiary received those committed from the courts for the more serious offenses. The workhouse was originally designed to meet the need of compelling to work those able-bodied persons who were seeking refuge as vagrants in the almshouse, and the first inmates of the workhouse were received not directly from the courts but by transfer from the almshouse.

In reading the reports of the board of governors for the early years, one might almost be reading from reports written at the present time. In discussing both penitentiary and workhouse, there is complaint of overcrowding of the institutions, of lack of classification, of the danger of putting together hardened criminals and first offenders, of the greater difficulty in controlling and reforming women, of the need of supplying a greater amount of labor, and an interesting discussion of the desirability of payment of wages to those employed in productive labor. As far back as 1850, the experiment was tried in the workhouse of paying for labor in accordance with a sliding scale ranging from thirty-seven and a half cents to sixty cents per day. In 1851 the rate schedule was reduced fifteen cents per diem in order to discourage repeaters. Apparently the experiment did not work out satisfactorily. It is noted that men who have accumulated through industry a sum of money are apt to go out and squander it and then seek re-commitment in order to replenish their purses. After a few years, the experiment was apparently given up, for in later reports no mention is made of payment to prisoners.

I have not been able to find complete files of the annual reports, but for the ten years preceding the Civil War there is frequent mention of the fight made by correctional officials against venereal disease, particularly among women. What amounts to a recommendation for an indeterminate sentence in the case of those so afflicted is put forward, but I cannot find that it was ever acted on. The charge is made in this connection that women of the street commit themselves to get cured of a venereal disease, and that when cured their companions in guilt apply for writs of habeas corpus. In 1851, 359 women were discharged in this way. For several successive years, the abuses of the writ of habeas

corpus are cited in the reports. In 1853, Dr. Sanger was appointed physician to the hospital on Blackwell's Island, and it is interesting that his history of prostitution is, so far as I know, the first history on this subject in the English language.

Apparently contract labor in both workhouse and penitentiary was in vogue in the later fifties. In 1861, the workhouse report mentions the fact that two contracts in the workhouse, one for hoop skirts and the other for military caps, bring in great revenues-the total receipts for contracts for the year amounting to $8,542.92!

In 1860, the New York state legislature passed an act creating in the city and county of New York the department of charities and correction and abolishing the board of governors of the almshouse. Four commissioners were appointed for terms of five years. The reports of the commissioners during the Civil War are brief. The attention of the citizens was naturally directed to the great conflict and interest in matters of crime diminished. The great falling off of the number of inmates in all the correctional institutions is noted, but reports state that the number of women committed increased. During the latter years of the Civil War, men who violated laws were frequently given the option of commitment to penal institutions or enlistment, and many of them chose the latter. I have the word of a distinguished citizen of New York, who at the age of nineteen was an army officer, to the effect that the men of this class who lived and served for at least a year became a most efficient fighting force.

In the reports of 1864 and 1865 quite severe criticism is made of the system of prison discipline. The penitentiary is called a "school of vice," and penitentiary methods are termed "unwise and inefficient treatment." In 1866 an appeal to the public is made to deal with causes rather than with effects and attention is called to the defective education of the children of the city, and the growth of the dependent and delinquent classes. In 1870 the local government of New York city was reorganized and the number of commissioners of charities and correction was changed from four to five, but in 1875 the number of commissioners had been reduced to three.

During the period between 1870 and 1896, at which latter date the department of correction was separated from the department

of charities, many improvements were made in the various institutions: district prisons were rebuilt and added to; the shops were increased in number; the overflow from workhouse and penitentiary was taken care of on Hart's Island and later on Riker's Island; classification was carried out to the extent of establishing a reformatory school in 1902 for the workhouse boys under twentyone years of age; salaries were increased, and a greater number of women were employed to look after the women prisoners; added cell accommodations were built at the penitentiary. But with

all these improvements, there is still the complaint of overcrowding, lack of industrial employment, and ineffective results. Back in the sixties, grand-jury investigations reported adversely on the crowded conditions, particularly in the city prison. On the completion of the new city prison at Center and Franklin streets in 1903, it was supposed that provision was made for some time to come for the group of prisoners quartered here, but this belief was ill-founded. In a very few years, the complaint of overcrowding begins again. With the adoption of the constitution of 1894 contract work, which had given occupation and furnished a source of revenue to the city, was abolished. The "state use" system was introduced and the labor of prisoners in the city institutions had to be employed in the manufacture of articles which could be utilized in other institutions or in municipal departments or in construction work for the city.

I can find no printed reports for the department of correction for the period between 1893 and 1902. In 1902 the department of correction was under one commissioner. In 1905 the state legislature passed an act providing for the sale of land of Kings County penitentiary and the removal of the inmates to a penitentiary to be established at Riker's Island under the jurisdiction of the department of correction. This plan was never carried out in its entirety. An appropriation of $2,000,000 was made for a penitentiary that was to cost $4,000,000 when completed. Plans for a great congregate building were prepared at a cost of $80,000. They were never executed and the appropriation was afterward rescinded. The penitentiary prisoners from Kings County were removed to the Blackwell's Island penitentiary without a suitable increase in accommodations. In 1905 the New York city reforma