AMERICAN PRISONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 65, 8 June 1927, Page 7

AMERICAN PRISONS

UNCOMFORTABLY FULL A NATIONAL PROBLEM Public demand for longer prison terms and fewer probationary sentences has created a serious penal problem in the State of New York, which has all of its prisons filled to capacity at present with the largest criminal population in its history. Two new cell blocks have been begun at Sing Sing, which will provide room for 1,200 convicts, but it will be two years before these are ready. Meantime, space must be found for the housing of new arrivals. When Raymond Kieb, State Commissioner of Correcton, recently took over the supervision of all the New York penal institutions and criminal insane asylums, there were accommodations left for only about 50 more newcomers in the entire prison organisation of the State. These accommodations have since been exhausted. There are seven institutions in the system: Sing Sing. Auburn, Clinton, and Great Meadow prisons, the prison for women, and Matteawan and Dannemora State hospitals. Five years ago, on July 1, 1922, the five State prisons had a total of 4,915 malefactors in their confines. At this writing they report a population of 5,716, or an increase of 16 per cent in the half decade. The Sing Sing total, as reported by Commissioner Kieb for this comparison, was 1,550, while five years ago it was 1,227 inmates. Similarly, the census of Clinton was 1,584, as compared with 1,380. The convict population of Great Meadow was 1,018, as against 829 in the year 1922.