Читать книгу Convict Life at the Minnesota State Prison, Stillwater, Minnesota онлайн

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Administration Office

Between the Gates

Group Showing the Three Grades of Prisoners

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Inmates in the third grade wear black and white striped suits. They are denied tobacco, writing and visiting privileges and their meals are served in their cells, which are located in one portion of the cellhouse. In none of the grades are prisoners required to march with the “lock-step,” and excepting those in the third grade, all are permitted to wear their hair long enough to comb during good behavior. The prisoner, after his bath, is again brought into the cellhouse and the captain has one of the inmate barbers clip his hair and shave him. If the new arrival belongs to the respectable class, wearing a mustache and dressed well he will hardly recognize himself if he should chance to look into a mirror. In a few moments the proud American citizen has been supplanted by the convict. Those who belong to the so-called “criminal” class are not affected upon donning the prison uniform, but it is different with the first offender. If he is a proud, sensitive man the change is great enough to almost wrench his heart strings asunder. Many a new arrival, spending his first night in his cell, with its iron bed, whitewashed walls, scant furnishings, iron floor and the dimensions of the room only five by seven feet, has been known to break down completely. After such an ordeal (not your make-believe imprisonment, where some author has himself locked up for an hour or so to gain local coloring for a novel) one gets a clear idea of what prison life really is and places a higher valuation on the liberty that he so recklessly trampled under foot in his mad rush for riches, position and fame.