An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania.

  • Packard, Frederick A. (Frederick Adolphus), 1794-1867.
Date:
1849
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inquiry into the alleged tendency of the separation of convicts, one from the other, to produce disease and derangement / by a citizen of Pennsylvania. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    a separate prison than in any other, we furnish a conclusive argument in its favor. Here then we join issue upon a point of fact. Is a greater amount of disease produced in a separate prison than in a con- gregate prison? Our adversaries affirm it. We deny it. Be- fore adducing our testimony, it will be proper briefly to recite the provisions of law, in conformity with which the separate system in Pennsylvania is established, and in conformity with which it must be administered, or it ceases to represent the idea of separate discipline. We shall confine our attention of course to those provisions which concern the oversight of the convicts, the sanitory precautions and the intercourse which is had with them, as these points only are involved in the present inquiry. Mode of Treatment. I. Each convict is to be kept singly and separately at labor in the cells or work-yards of the prison.* Inspectors'1 Visits and Powers. II. The inspectors are to visit the penitentiary at least twice every week, and h'ave full power to order its affairs as they please, save only that the separate principle shall be maintained inviolate.f Inspectors' Duties. III. In their weekly visits to the several places of confine- ment, the inspectors are peremptorily required, (1,) to speak to each person confined therein apart from any of the resident officers of the prison; (2,) to listen to and ascertain the truth of any complaint of oppression or ill-treatment, and redress it. In these visits they are moreover required to have with them the warden's calender of all the prisoners, and see by actual inspection, whether all the prisoners named in said calender are found in the situation it represents them to be in.J * Act of Assembly April 23,1829, § III. f Ibid- § VIIL ArL L * Ibid. § VIIL Art. 1.