New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1876-01-10
TILE PRISONS.

A visitor to one OF our State prisons recently
noticed several convcts lounging about. and
asked why they were not at work. " They've
Struck" was the reply. This little story,
told by our Albany correspondent Ill letter
which we print to-day, gives the clew to all
the extravaganza, mismanagement,' ANA dis
order of our prison system. 1t Is not long
since a convict in Sing Sing was detected III
the manufacture and sale of illicit whisky,
running his still inside the prison premises,
and selling the crooked product to hls fellow
prisoners at dollar bottle. In another State
it has Just been discovered that convicts
have improved their hours of confinement in
coming counterfeit money. A murder in Au-
burn prison led to the astonishing disclosure
that almost every convict was allowed to carry
a knife; and we have Lot forgotten the case
of the distinguished prisoner, recently gone
abroad. who was sent to the penitentiary for
theft and allowed private secretary to help
him take care of his plumber. Consider these
incidents in correction with the fact that
warlens, keepers and other officials to whom
tic .l.....,, 4mvnt &c tho prlsOns II CUim-
mitted, are known to have frequently
conspired to swlnde the State, and it is
10 longer matter of surprise that while the
muneratiye labor the three State prisons re-
turn every year a deficit Of more than half
million of dollars, and that the State cannot
work its own quaIries without loss, even
when the cost OF maintaining the convict Ia
borers is left out of the calculation Contract
ors will not pay the State fair price per
diem for prison hands, because it is impossible
to get out of them anything like fair days
work. The keepers have little control over
the men, and have exhausted their power
when they have induced gang to march
from the cells to the shop without
an open outbreak. Industry is not one of the
virtues of the Sing Sing curriculum. Half the
men therefore are earning miserable plttance
Of thirty or forty cents a day-and going on
strike when they feel cross or tired-whlle the
rest are supported i'll idleness.
The trouble at the bottom of these abuses
of course is the prostitution of the delicate and
difficult task of prison management to partisan
politics. That bad practice, which has been
understood and denounced on all hands for
many years, may perhaps be reformed by the
pending amendment to the State Constitution.
But meanwhile the actual condition of
the prisons demands attention, and now
Illat U1c CdLdl SullS Hlc htll uiiucl way IL ~
here that the investigations of the ref0rmers
should be vigorously prosecuted. The extray-
agant cost OF the present system is the least
of its evils. Half million would not be too
much to spend on our conyicts if it reformed
even a respectable minority of them; but it is
preposterous price to pay for the main
tenance of nurseries of crime. The average
prison is now factory Of fraud, theft, and ruff
fianism. The inmates learn there, in the course
of their idle lives, whatever wickedness they did
not know when they entered. They are taught
to dcspise the law, to look upon its officers as
hypocIites quite as guilty as themselves to
shun honest work, to believe that nearly all
men get their living by swindling or open rob-
berry, and that virtue consists in not getting
caught. We cannot move too soon for the
renovation of these snIholes of iniquity
which are spreading moral malaria throughout
the community; and if Gov. Tilden can sue
ceed in eiiecting true reform here he Will
establish a new and perhaps his strongest
claim to the gratitude in which honest people
already hold him.