The age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1897-1902, 1899-05-06
GOVERNMENT has
QUITE A PROBLEM
Treatment of Federal Prisoners
Worrying Attorney General.
NEW PRISON TO BE BUILT
At Atlanta, Which Will Be the Largest
and Most Complete Building of
Its Kind in the World
Will Be Model
NEW PRISON TO BE BUILT

UOrnCy-R6nerdl mas quite piODlelAA "
solve in the matter of the treatment of the
federal prisoners. This government has
had no special policy in the treatment of
its prisoners beyond making them as COM
Portable as possible in their confinement.
But now that new prison is to be built,
one larger and on a more extensive scale
than any now owned by the government,
the department of justice desires to settle
upon some regular system of treating the
men imprisoned.
Attorney General Griggs has only recent
ly returned from Atlanta, where he went
to choose site for the location of the
new prison authorized by congress. He has
surveyed all the ground offered and intends
to make a selection soon after he returns
to the city next week. He wants to make
the prison to be built at Atlanta the best
equipped home of it's kind in the world and
leave it as model for the building of all
other prisons in the country.
The law authorizing the erection of the
prison is so worded as to leave the rules
and regulations to be adopted entirely with
the encouragement. AS all the plans in
detail and otherwise have to be approved
by him. the whole system, it might be said,
is under his direction. The first important
question for the attorney-general to decide
is whether or not the individual treatment
of prisoners is to be adopted.
Question Puzzling One
This question has racked the brains of
some of the greatest men in Europe
Psychologists, philosophers and novelsts
such as Wilkie Collins and Dickens have
all treated of the individual system and
most of the writer's who have made study
of the human mind in solitary confinement
the fact that theorists have been almost
unanimous in their condemnation of the
individual system, the treatment is the
most popular one by nearly all the govern
ments of Europe. German and French
people, in particular, are advocates of the
individual treatment and it is still con-
tinued to great degree in England, in
spite of the zeal with which Collins and
Dickens attacked it and the popular feeling
they aroused against the system.
The question is now being discussed in
all its phases in the department of justice.
Every argument pro and con is being heard.
1t is said that the attorney general favors
the individual treatment which, he says,
does not necessarily mean the solitary con-
fnement, especially If the cells are built
around a rotunda. While the prisoners are
unable to see each other they can see the
waydens at intervals through cracks They
are unable to communicate to each other
in any way, however.
Among those who most bitterly oppose the
plan ofindividual treatment is Major Frank
L. Strong, special agent of the department
of justice, and who has special Jurisdiction
over the federal prison matters.
Major Strong is one of the best posted
men on prison matters in the employ of
the government He has Travelled over all
Europe and studied the systems most en-
ployed there. He said that he believes
that it would be very bad move for the
government to follow those of France and
Germany In the matter Of treating its
prisoners
81 have made thorough inspections of the
prisons using the individual treatment, and
l find nothing to endorse in 1t. Cherry
Hill prison in the eastern district of Penn
sylvana is the only institution in the
country which adopts the individual treat
ment. l am convinced that individual
treatment is nothing less than the system
of solitary confinement which is the most
cruel tortue known to man. The poor
wretch who is burned at the stake is bet
ter off than the man who is confined abso-
lutely alone At Cherry Hill those who
are so confined experience all the horrors
of the prisoners In Sing Sing when all
work was taken away from them. Mans
mind must be occupied if in no other way
than counting pebbles.
The Cherry Hill Prison
"In the prison at Cherry Hill the cells
are located in a series of galleries which
radiate from a central rotunda. The war;
dens from their positions In the latter place
are able to maintain watch over all the
passages. From each cell small yard
extends backward, sometimes being cover
ed with glass; the idea being that each
inmate shall have an opportunity to get
the air and sunlight. High walls divide
these walls and make communication i'm
possible.
There is no general workshop in which
he aDnnlOV Themselves hut
instead of this each convict has a knitting
machine of some kind on which he can
learn to make gloves, socks and other ar
ticles. There is gymnasium into which
the prisoners are supposed to be taken
once a day. When they are brought out
each man is carefully masked so that it is
possible for two brothers to be confined
side by side for years without knowing
each other. The men have fearful and
almost insane dread of being left without
work even for a minute in their cells.
Each inmate lives an absolutely solitary
life without conversation or intercourse of
any kind with his neighbors. The warden
is supposed to exercise a special supervfs-
ion over each prisoner and apply such re-
formatry rules as the individual may re-
qure But this puts 1t into his power to
make life uncomfortable to prisoner whom
he may dislike.
"When Charles Dickens was in this
country he paid Cherry Hill visit and
condemned in his American Notes. the
system obtaining there He declares 1t to
be torture and tells a long story about
German prisoner he found there who was
almost tortured to death. The old warden
of the Cherry Hill prison is great ad-
vocate of the system and declares that the
German referred to by Dickens afterwards
returned to live his life out in the Penn
sylvania prison.
President viii Fish
AS soon as President Mckinley can find
time he is going to do a-rtte fishing, a
pastlme of which he used to be very fond.
This he told Senator Lindsay the other day
when the latter presented him with a
Frankfort fishing reel. These reels are
made by Mr.. Milan, an old Kentuckian
in Frankfort, and a neighbor and friend Of
the senator The Kentuckian was a great
fisher, and first began to make reels for
his own use. He gave several of them
away, and from these started one of the
biggest businesses of the kind in this coun-
try. Mr.. Milan has presented reels to