Word: prisons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stilettos (see cut). Some narcotics were discovered, a complete hypodermic set, blackened spoons in which "dope" had been cooked, needles and gouges with which inmates without syringes gashed themselves to let the precious drugs into their veins. To the police it looked more like a hop house than a prison...
...dregs of the prison's life were still howling disconsolately among the debris of their possessions when the raiders turned their attention to the prison's hierarchy. Sixty-eight prisoners, the Commissioner found, virtually ran Welfare Island. They cowed their guards through outside political influence. They sold to some 500 inmates the best of vegetables and meats. Star boarders prepared this food in their own cells, and the prison library of more than 1,000 volumes had entirely vanished as cooking fuel. Since the food was looted from the prison commissary, the other 1,200 prisoners virtually starved...
...addition, the ring sold narcotics, provided monied prisoners with clothing filched from newcomers, even had a strong voice in the granting of paroles. Divided between an Irish and an Italian gang, the hierarchy lived soft in two hospital wards, while men who should have been hospitalized-100 drug addicts, more than 100 venereal cases, 13 insane patients and one man suffering with sleeping sickness-roamed at large through the prison spreading demoralization and infection...
...animal lovers. Cleary had a police pup chained to his bed. The dog wore a harness on which was graven the name "Screw Hater" ("screw" = guard). The Irishman also had a cote of 100 pigeons in his dormitory. Rao maintained a flock of 200 more on top of the prison storage house. Also his criminal lackeys had built him a little fenced garden, with flowers, benches and a milch goat. Both Cleary and Rao had passes permitting them to roam the island at will...
...Welfare Island announced than half a dozen agencies preened themselves on having instigated the raid. Among them were the Daily News, the World-Telegram, the New York Foundation, which had paid for an investigation begun two years ago, a grand jury which had recommended an investigation of the prison's "gross mismanagement" last year. Plain, however, was the fact that it took an anti-Tammany administration to dig to the bottom of Welfare Island's cesspool of corruption...