Placing the cells in the center of the cell block makes it possible to fill the outside wall with windows--in fact, a proportion of light area which came to be established was that the outside wall should be 50 per cent glass. The radiation was placed between the windows, which open like louvres, and with an exhaust fan in the top of the utility corridor it was possible to draw the warm fresh air through the cell to the roof, thereby obtaining very satisfactory results in heating and ventilation.
[Illustration: STAIR HALL, ADMINISTRATION BUILDING]
While a good deal may be said for such a prison from the standpoint of its mechanical heating and ventilation, from the standpoint of the welfare of the prisoner hardly too much can be said against it. The great disadvantages of the cage type of cell are the complete loss of all privacy to the inmate, the inhuman and grotesque appearance which it gives to his confinement, and the difficulty of providing really adequate segregation and classification. Important prisons like the Great Meadow Prison of New York State and the prison at Stillwater, Minn., both of which are renowned for enlightened and efficient administration, have this inside cell arrangement. These prisons, however, were constructed when very little was known of the outside cell construction, and many practical prison men were largely against its adoption.
There is really no place in this country where it is possible to study adequately the outside cell, long advocated by our more progressive penologists, so that the author made a tour of Continental prisons for the sole purpose of discovering wherein lay their advantage and how they should be designed to make them suitable to this country and climate.
In the Continental prison the chief difficulty with the outside cell is found in its ventilation. In England the windows are intentionally made loose fitting so that they cannot lie entirely closed. Where it is possible to close the windows tightly, insufficient ventilation invariably results during cold weather because the great majority of prisoners seem to shun fresh air and invariably keep their windows shut.
[Illustration: VIEW OF MESS HALL FROM CORRIDOR]
Two methods are in use abroad for ventilating the outside cell, but neither is adequate. The English way is to build in the front wall of the cell a panel of special bricks which are made with diagonal or curved openings which will let the air through, but which will not permit the prisoner to see through. This arrangement is intended to ventilate the cell into the central corridor; but the central corridor is usually quite as much in need of ventilation as the cell itself. In the majority of English prisons the cell blocks are four tiers high, the cells being on the outside walls reached by galleries with the central corridor running clear through from main floor to roof. This is always bad, as such interior spaces can only be lighted and ventilated through the roof; and while overhead lighting is always questionable, overhead ventilation is still more so. This condition is made worse as the cell block increases in length, and some of them, as at Pentonville, I think, are 175 feet long. This method of reaching the cells from galleries came about as a means of facilitating supervision, for the guard standing on the main floor has a view of all the inmates as they come out of their cells. As a matter of fact, the top galleries have very little supervision owing to their distance from the guard’s station. Better supervision is had and better discipline maintained when the cell floors run through, for then a guard may always be on the same floor with the prisoner. This arrangement also makes for better classification and greater quiet throughout the cell block.