Одноэтажная Америка / Little Golden America

A photograph would give the best idea of an American prison, but to our regret we were not allowed to take photographs inside Sing Sing. A prison building consists of six stories of narrow cabins, like those aboard ship, standing side by side and provided with vertical lion-cage grates. Through the length of every story stretch these metal galleries, connected with each other by metal stairways. It resembles least of all a place to live in, even a prison. The utilitarianism of the construction invests it with the appearance of a factory.

The resemblance to some kind of mechanism is reinforced by the fact that all this is enclosed in a brick box, the walls of which are almost entirely occupied with windows. It is through these that daylight (and to a small extent sunlight) enters the cells, because the cells themselves have no windows.

In every such cell there is a bed, a table, and a waste can topped with a lacquered cover. On a nail hang radio earphones. There are two or three books on the table.

Several photographs are on the walls— beautiful girls or baseball players or God’s angels, depending upon the inclinations of the prisoner.

In the three new buildings each prisoner is lodged in a separate cell.

This is an improved prison, Americanized to the limit, and comfortable, if one may apply such an honest, good word to a prison. It is light, and the air is comparatively good.

“In the new buildings,” said our escort, “are lodged eighteen hundred men.

The remaining five hundred are in the old building, constructed a hundred years ago. Let’s go there.”

That was indeed a real Constantinople prison of the era of the sultans.

It was impossible to stand to one’s full height in these cells. When you sat down on the bed your knees touched the wall opposite. The two cots were one above the other. It was dark, damp, and frightful. Here were no shining waste cans, no soothing pictures of angels.

Something of our reaction was evidently reflected in our faces, for the assistant warden hastened to distract us.

“When they send you to me,” he said, “I’ll place you in the new buildings. I’ll even find you a cell with a view of the Hudson. We have such cells for especially deserving prisoners.”

He added quite seriously:

“I hear that in your country the penitentiary system has as its object the correction of the criminal and his return to the ranks of society.