About This Book
Presented at the fifty-first congress of the American Prison Association in 1921, this paper presents the structure of the Westchester County Penitentiary, whose prisoners are employed on the farm the penitentiary rests on. It argues that, instead of being a liability to the county, the prison is an asset, and that, instead of being a place of punishment, it is a training school that returns its wards to society as better men because of their experiences on the farm. Key to this system is that the prisoners are self-governing through a method of classification and rewards that is outlined in detail in this paper.
V. EVERIT MACY was commissioner of public welfare, Westchester County, N.Y.