SING SING.

Shannon News, 20 May 1924, Page 4

SING SING.

IIEMAJiING lAFE S MISFITS. PROBLEMS THAT ARE. BEING OVERCOME. On the hill overlooking the Hudson back of the old site of Sing kins Prison, there are four large brick buildings which had almost reached fitness for occupancy when the State was winding up its last fiscal year at the end of June. One of the four is the new medical building, where it is intended to niftke. extended psychiatric studies. It will not be a single -experiment, such as' is frequently made in institutions,, but a systematic study of an offender s mentality. According to Warden Lewis H. Lawes, a scientific study in detail is to be made of every criminal received, in order that the may be done, first litting’him into the prison’s system of factory production, and second, in helping to shape him for regeneration, and eventual emergence into the world as a. nian re-made and equipped for life. The work also will have a bearing on the distribution of prisoners who are sent to other institutions, declares the New York “Times.” Sing Sing now receives many more criminals than It keeps, and alter examination passes them on to other special institutions as mental and physical conditions may warrant.

Mentality tests are now made as a part; of the routine of reception. With the occupation of the new medical building there will be a possibiliy for the extension of this wofk. Of the four floors in the building one has been designed especially for the phycliiatry department. The mental problem at Sing Sing is bound up with two other important phases of the care of inmates. One of these is medical and surgical treatment, the other is educational, which means in part getting grown men to sit at school-room desks, write on blackboards and learn to spell cat.

In round numbers there is a population of 1200 inmates at Sing Sing. They,have the attendance of eminent surgeons from New York, men of note who serve as a consulting staff and go gratuitously as occasion may demand to operate in the prison hospital.

For ten years Dr Amos C. Squire has contributed the use of radium from his personal supply, in the treatment of cancer among the inmates. SORTING OUT MISFITS.

The new building, with one floor for the psychiatric department, has another for the medical department, and a third for the surgical department. There is still another door to be'devoted to dental and optical work. The X-ray equipment also will be on this floor.

•“The men of low intellect, are easy to gauge,” says Warden Dawes. "It jg the borderline eases that present problems. They have to be welded into the reclamation work—given a

place in the prison , organisation, which wc try to make as .much as possible like normal society outside of prisons. The mental examinations arc of great value in determining the capabilities of a man, an important point if you make an individual study of each case."

■Major Liuvcs lias no doctrinaire belief in intelligence quotients and so forth. His attitude is pragmatic .Ho believes that if a prisoner feigns stupidity and makes a lower mark tt an lie should, in an intelligence examination, the truth can be determined by observation.

The old phrenology gave scant thought to such matters. Major Lawes sees the prison problem, not as a matter of punishment, but of reclamation, and Sing Sing to-day is conducted with a view to training men in trades and the routine of earning a living under present day machine-production conditions. -

Mental capacity and aptitude are considered in setting men to work, .New. men are put on at hard labour, such as handling coal. They go through a preliminary period intended tq try them out and also impress on them that the • easier conditions which follow do not inherently belong to them, but are given as privileges. The assignment to this shop, or that —the shoe shop, the sheet metal, lhe_ brush plant, and so forth —is made by the superintendent of prison industries, the prison doctor, and the principal keeper.

Every morning at 9 there is sick call, and those who want attention report at the clinic. Adjoining it is the pharmacy. The men pass like an assembling line in an automobile factory, presenting their prescriptions at d window, and receiving medicine and supplies, which for the most part are made in the pharmacy itself. Time was when the supplies were bought by contract;. When the new system was adopted, two cart-loads of pills, winners in bidding competitions, were dumped into the river. There is no hint of the 20th century drug store’s diversity in the appearance of the pharmacy. It is a place of rows of bottles and drawers of medicaments looking like the apothecary’s of our grandfathers’ days.

It is near the clinic that each man receives a mental test on the morning after his arrival. This follows a preliminary examination, and is followed in turn by a complete physical examination; including teeth, vision, and hearing.