Read against the Fourth annual report of the inspectors of State prisons (1852) which is also included in the digital archive, this letter records many of the central conflicts between the New York Prison Association and the Inspectors of State Prisons. At the center of their debate was the constitutional amendment of 1846 which made the inspector a state-wide elected position. In this letter, the Prison Association explains why this change inaugurated a period of partisan and fickle prison governance. They also argue at length that the inspectors had become too beholden to wardens for their access to prisons, making them impotent to intervene in management and oversee proper financial transactions. These mid-century debates between the independently-operating Prison Association and publicly-elected Inspectors of State Prisons reveal important lessons about the divisions of power and interest in prison management.
Cite As:
Enos Thompson Throop. Papers, #1157. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.
The content in the 19th Century Prison Reform Collection is believed to be in the public domain by virtue of its age, and is presented by Cornell University Library under the Guidelines for Using Text, Images, Audio, and Video from Cornell University Library Collections [http://hdl.handle.net/1813.001/CULCopyright]. This collection was digitized by Cornell University Library in 2017 from print materials held in the Rare and Manuscript Collections, with funding from a Digital Collections in Arts and Sciences Grant to Katherine Thorsteinson. For more information about these volumes, please contact the Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.
