page_title: Roy Best (prison warden)
section_title: Wardenship
hierarchical_section_title: Roy Best (prison warden) / Wardenship
caption_attribution_description: English: Roy Best's office memorabilia, on display at the Colorado Prison Museum.
context_page_description: Roy Best was an American prison warden, film actor, and political candidate for Governor of Colorado. He is best remembered for his wardenship of the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility, an infamous prison in Cañon City, Colorado, and for playing himself in Canon City, the 1948 film noir crime film.
context_section_description: Governor Adams appointed Roy as Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility Warden in 1932, when Roy was coincidentally thirty-two years of age. This made Best the youngest warden in the history of the state and federal prison systems at that time. 
  Best wasted no time earning his reputation as “the most notorious” warden in Colorado history. A strict disciplinarian, Best pioneered the use of painful and degrading punishments inside and outside prison walls. Among these was the “Old Gray Mare,” a wooden sawhorse on which inmates were bent-over, tied-down, and “flogged with a leather strap.” Although Warden Best used the “Mare” as a means of punishment and deterrence, the device would later play a central role in the controversy that led to his removal.
  
  Homosexual prisoners also were unspared. Early in Best's tenure, male prisoners caught in amorous liaisons “were forced to wear dresses and push a wheelbarrow filled with rocks as their punishment.” A 1935 photograph documents the practice. 
  But Best also pioneered modern rehabilitative penological practices. He opened ranches, workshops, gardens, and other facilities to keep inmates busy, provide them with skills to earn a living upon release, and reduce the prison's operating costs. Best also separated female prisoners from dangerous males, implemented a dental care program, and took young and developmentally-disabled inmates under his wing.
  
  Roy Best's defenders preferred to focus on these rehabilitative efforts. “Many were led to believe that [Best] was unduly harsh and inhumane,” wrote The Steamboat Pilot upon his death, “[b]ut for those who knew him…he was an efficient operator of an institution that was difficult to handle.”
caption: Roy Best's office memorabilia, including a banner from the “Canon City” premiere, on display at the Colorado Prison Museum.
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