< Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 10.pdf
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The Green Bag.

the wall, are low iron bunks, fifteen in all, five on each side, about as wide as a ' threequarter' bedstead, in each of which three men sleep (in their clothes) at night. Ex cept an unpainted home-made barber chair, there is no other furniture in the room; no tables and no seats." "The room has neither ventilation, sewer age, nor water supply. When visited at night by Dr. Wines there were crowded into this black hole nearly 150 men, or about one to every ten square feet of floor space. "When they lie down there is not room enough for them upon the floor without those who are next to the bunks thrusting their feet under them. Their bodies carpet the entire floor from wall to wall. When in stormy, or very cold weather, the swing ing wooden shutters outside the windows are closed, there is neither light nor ventila tion in this prison; and in the long summer, when the sun beats with almost tropical fervor upon the corrugated iron roof, the heat must be almost unendurable and the suffering of the prisoners intense. To com plete this picture, it need only be said that the jail is alive with vermin of every de scription. "The inmates spend much of their time in gambling. A man may be sentenced to the jail for gambling, and then may be free to gamble as much as he pleases while under confinement. The principal recreation of the inmates, however, consists in the pro ceedings of the " Kangaroo Court," a selfconstituted body which assumes without authority of law, to govern the prison. The officers in charge recognize a certain utility even in this form of discipline; for the prison is so insecure that were it not for the fear of being shot by the guards, pris oners would escape continually. Only six teen of these guards are employed, and some such voluntary organization as the " Kanga

roo Court " seems necessary to enforce dis cipline within the walls. The government does not even supply these guards with arms and ammunition, but requires them to arm themselves." Dr. Wines has not fully decided who is at fault for the disgraceful conditions at Mus cogee, but believes the fault is at Washington, and not with the local authorities. He has learned that the amounts paid by the gov ernment to contractors for the maintenance of the jail reach a total of $30,687.50 a year, or more than $150 per capita — as much, he says, as it costs to keep a prison properly equipped and managed. He says : — "Not long since, Mr. Ruggles-Brise, the official head of the English prison system, visited this country to learn how we treat our prisoners. What would he have said had he gone to the Indian Territory? There he would have found prisons bearing a close family resemblance to the convict camps maintained by irresponsible lessees in the Southern States, worse than those described by Mr. George Kennan as a disgrace to Russia, and fully as bad as any in Mexico or Cuba. It is an inexpressible mortifica tion to me to write what I have here writ ten, knowing as I do that it will be com mented upon in every journal of penology and criminal jurisprudence throughout the civilized world, including Japan; but with out complete exposure there is no hope of remedial action." Dr. Wines intends to have Congress thoroughly informed on the condition of the Muscogee jail, and to this end photo graphs of the place have been taken. If Congress cannot be induced to take suitable action in the premises, he proposes to begin a popular agitation to reform the present unsatisfactory methods of dealing with Fed eral prisoners, not only in Indian Territory, but elsewhere.

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