American History Hit - 200 Years Inside Sing Sing Prison

Episode Date: July 14, 2025

In May 1825, a group of prisoners arrived on the banks of the Hudson, thirty odd miles up river from New York. They began to build what would become their own jail — Sing Sing.Don talks about the history of Sing Sing with Professor Lee Bernstein, historian of the American prison system and author of “America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s”.Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Freddy Chick. The Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Want to explore even more history? Sign up to History Hit, where you will discover history from around the world. From the American Revolution to prehistoric Scotland, there is plenty to discover. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week, exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe to bring the past alive. It's the year 1831. Alexis de Tocqueville, the aristocratic French politician and future author of the classic

Democracy in America, stands on the deck of the Ohio, a steamboat set out from the New York waterfront heading north on the Hudson River. He and a colleague, Gustav de Beaumont, have been dispatched by the French government to submit an investigative report on American prison systems. A few hours upriver, as the vessel steers towards the eastern bank, what De Tocqueville's spies is astonishing. There, seemingly carved from its own quarry, is a massive stone structure. Named for the nearby village, Mount Pleasant Prison is one of the largest penitentiaries in the world, built only a few years prior by men incarcerated within it. It is a prison built by its own

prisoners. Over the next week, the Dockville and Beaumont will study convicts working under uniquely intense conditions. Complete silence, no talking. allowed. If prisoners moved, they did so in groups walking in lockstep. De Tocqueville witnessed harsh routine beatings and observed prisoners isolated in tiny seven-by-three-foot cells, where they took their meals and slept on straw bedding until labor resumed the following day. It was a place of hopelessness, less reform than retribution. And though the prison's name would eventually be changed, it remained one of the roughest places on earth to serve time. Two centuries later, it's still in operation.

Welcome to Sing Sing. Welcome back to American History Hit, the podcast that explores the people, places, and events that make our heritage such a fascinating legacy. We do our best to explain it all here with new episodes twice a week, every week, right here, Mondays and Thursdays. There was a time when being sent up the river, being dispatched to prison, was more than just a metaphor. It referred to a very specific prison today and for a very specific prison today and for a very. about 200 years, located on the banks of the Hudson River, in a village once called Sing Sing, New York, but today called Asin. A name's change will surely discuss in a moment. For two centuries of its existence, Sing Sing Sing Prison has been a place synonymous with cruel and inhumane punishment

housing some of the nation's most notorious criminals, furnished with one of America's first electrified chairs that ended the lives of more than 650 death row inmates, including most controversial the convicted Cold War spies, Ethel, and Julius Rosenberg. But Sing Singh has also served as a testing ground for important reforms and advances in the manner and function of state imprisonment. Because of this long history, Sing Sing has contained within its walls the whole story of human incarceration in America. And today, we discuss much of what happened here with Lee Bernstein, an historian of the American prison system and author of America is the prison, arts and politics in prison in the 1970s, as a

well as greatest menace, organized crime in Cold War America. He is a professor of history at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Welcome Lee Bernstein. Nice to have you. Nice to be here. Fascinating and dark subject, America's prison system. I've lived not too far from Austin, New York for more than 10 years. And only yesterday, out of curiosity, I finally drove down Correctional Facility Road, which takes you right to the entrance of Sing Sing Correctional Facility. Pretty dreary place. This vast enterprise that you'd hardly know is there. I mean, that's so much of the story of the prisons, isn't it? Well, yeah, I mean, the village of Ossining kind of grew up around the prison and has struggled with that relationship for most of that history.

Yeah, let's talk about the location of this. Why they're on the Hudson River? When did it come along? What came before it? Well, it was the third state prison built in New York State. The first was Newgate down in Greenwich Village in New York City. The second was Auburn Correctional Facility out in the Finger Lakes area in central New York. York. That was built just before Sing Sing, and in fact, the warden of Auburn became the first

warden of Sing Sing as well. He chose the location along the banks of the Hudson to replace Newgate. The reason why they chose that is that there's a long outcropping of stone that starts up in Inwood in northern Manhattan and extends all the way up just north of the prison. And they wanted to build a quarry that the prisoners would themselves work at in order to offset the cost to the facility. Interesting. So much of early incarceration was about forced labor, wasn't it? That's exactly right, all the way until the 1890s. So from the 1820s until the 1890s, what one historian called contractual penal servitude, which is really another way of saying slave labor, was the way in which prisons, especially in the north, were operating throughout the 19th century.

That didn't end until the 1890s. Sing Sing is a Native American term. for that location, right? Right. So syncing was actually a small group of Muncie's that lived right there on the banks of the Hudson there. And they called the place Ashunasang, which is the same name as Assoning, essentially. But Sing Sing refers to the people and Ashunasang referred to the place. Interesting. We'll talk about why they changed the name.

It's a really fascinating part of the story that comes much later. I just want to indicate to people how the proximity of this place, which is very much a presence in life up here. If you get on the train and come up the famous Hudson River line, which is so beautiful along the river there, suddenly you bisect the whole complex of Sing Sing Correctional Facility. And on your left, you will see the white walls of the original prison, which we're talking about, which starts in 1825, I guess.

And on the right, you can't see it behind these huge walls, and you're blasting through on the train. All of on the right is the modern facility, which was built from the, I guess, the 1940s onward. And all of that is around you, but you wouldn't know it. That's what's so interesting is that, as you say, the town has kind of surrounded it and probably by design has kept it out of the public site. For sure. Well, that was, in fact, a big change. So people were punished publicly and visibly prior to the creation of prisons. And part of the idea was that it wasn't

really serving the function anymore of reinforcing state power and of deterring criminality. neither of those. And so by putting it a little bit away from major population areas, the hope was that that voyeuristic piece would be gone and that prisoners would be able to do their time. It begins in the search for what is called a Republican form of punishment, which I guess relates to what you're talking about. There are so many versions of this back in the day. Take me through early American imprisonment and what it was intended to do. So in Philadelphia in the 1790s, they built a penitentiary house at the Walnut Street Jail. That was a Quaker project by and large. So there were both religious and civic arguments in favor of incarceration as opposed to public punishments, like, you know, the stereotypical stocks and all of that and public whippings and hangings.

So when they moved to the Quaker model, that was informed primarily by a view. of personal penitence and transformation. The Republic piece was there were a lot of political philosophers, including many people who are often called just founding fathers, who were trying to think about what a non-monarchical form of punishment might look like at the same time. And so they were thinking more about what we might call the social contract. To what extent are people willing to give up their freedom

to live in a stable and crime-free, environment. And they thought that prisons would be the way that that would happen. So both of those things were part of the mix of the ideas that informed the creation of the first penitentiaries in the 1790s. You can go to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and tour that and you see that very unique and very specific form of incarceration, which is, you know, it's called penitentiary because you're doing penitence. The Quakers had this idea that you could put one person, one criminal in a room with a light over their head, you know, a skylight, and therefore they would have a contact with God and have to answer for their crimes. And then they had a little yard in the

back. And they would pretty much spend the time alone considering the consequences of their actions. And it became rather cruel solitary confinement. Yeah. And work was part of it in the Quaker experiment as well. But work was more about handwork, about idleness being associated with sin, staying busy, perhaps learning a trade that might help you post. What happens in the 1820s is the reform-minded element is gone. And work becomes an end in itself, a way of offsetting the cost of incarceration and returning money to the state treasury. But why that change? I always curious, why did they not see any kind of humanity in this? Well, the Quaker experiment was a failure, is the short story. Why they shift to in that particular direction is the much more complicated

story. But initially, the Quaker experiment was politically volatile, let's say. The idea was is that you can't simply lock people up and expect the light of God to be lit from within, right? There was a lot of naive optimism at best. Plus, obviously, they had no experience with incarceration. And so they really believe that this would work. But the prison walls were permeable both ways. People were coming and going. And it was not a successful experiment. And so the Quaker organizers of these early prisons were forced out within a decade for the most part.

And becomes Holmesburg. Oh, my gosh. What a dreary place. Holmesburg much later, yes. But here in New York, you end up with the Auburn prison, as you say, famous for creating what's called the Auburn system, which is an enforced silence and labor with whippings. This was a whole way of dealing with this that was contrary, completely contrary to what came before. That's right.

Beatings were actually illegal within Newgate, the first New York State prison, as well as within others that used that Quaker model in Philadelphia, New Jersey. They found ways around that, for example, by having other incarcerated people carry out the beatings and things like that. So they weren't violence-free, but it wasn't a central piece of the system. What emerges in New York is a contract system where work is sold to factory owners who are provided with power, factory buildings, and a labor supply for a cost. In exchange, they also get prison guards, keepers they were called back then to enforce labor, silence, and discipline. So that systemic change in the early 1820s really changes the whole thing and really cements the longevity of incarceration in the United States.

1825, the effort to build Sing Sing Prison begins, and it's headed up by that Auburn Warden, Lunds. They begin this effort to build what is the largest cell block in the world at that time, 476 feet long, 44 feet wide, originally four stories high, a total of 800 cells inside. each one designed to house one man, sometimes two. It's an incredibly harsh place, isn't it, under this particular man? Yes. Well, the cells, the most vivid description I've seen is that they're the size of a coffin. Yeah.

But an average-sized person can't even extend their arms out in those tiny, tiny cells. The beds lift up. It's a wooden palette that people sleep on, and the beds lift up so they have room to sit during the day. They're that small. Linz had a military background. He was a veteran of the War of 1812. He was a captain in the military. And many of the people he hired were also veterans. Many of the people he incarcerated were also veterans, too, as it turns out.

But that military discipline, more so than the old penitentiary model, came to dominate the life there. The marching, the close order, the silence. the beatings, all of it came from that. The desire to subdue people was the central idea and the central source of his power. I can't emphasize enough for what a rejection of anything that came before in terms of any spirituality, any reform notions of reforming these characters. It was a lock them up mentality in boxes. And I'm looking at a picture here that my producer provided of a single bulb, white concrete, you know, whatever, plaster. walls and exactly about an arm's length across. And the only thing that they had, obviously,

pre-electricity was a bucket. Yeah. That bucket would serve as their toilet. It would serve as a table. When you flipped it over, they would empty it every morning into the river. It was as primitive as you can possibly imagine. So this is 1825. Interesting episode. He meets Detoktville, who comes over and is doing his American tour. Talk about that little episode. Well, Detoctville and Beaumont, Gustav de Beaumont were French officials tasked with touring the United States, but especially its prisons on behalf of the French government in order to sort of see if it was adaptable to the French situation. And if so, what it would look like. So they looked at the Philadelphia model, which was less focused around labor and violence. And they looked at the New York model as

well. And, you know, they came away with a pretty clear understanding of what was happening and why. They interviewed Linz. They visited prisons. They wrote a book about it, as well as their more famous work on democracy more generally. And I guess the takeaway was this was just going to basically beat criminality out of these people. Why would you ever want to return to this place, was the philosophy? Well, that was one idea behind it. I mean, Linz himself didn't believe that reform was possible. And he even went so far as to say that if somebody did reform in prison, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to reform on the outside. It just might mean they're clever enough to avoid a beating. And that as soon as that threat is no longer there, they'll go right back. So he

didn't put any faith at all, no pun intended, into the idea of a religious awakening or the goal was simply to subdue people to force them to work on behalf of the state or contractors. How long was Lynn's the warden there? You know, not long. As you might imagine, he was scandalous and he was forced out twice. At one point, he was told to either change his ways in terms of violence. And he said, if you don't like it, you can fire me. And they did. Okay. But then he came back after a period of reform didn't work again. And after he came back, he stayed for a very short time and was again fired in a scandal involving some contracting. His son-in-law became the next warden. He had been the

assistant. So Linz's style of running the prison, that regime that he created lasted, you know, far longer than he did. It lasted well into the late 19th century. And he was only there in the 1820s and briefly again in the 1830s. I so understand a scholarly approach to this because it's such a lens through which to look at a society, isn't it? The whole psychology and sociology really behind how to deal with criminality is but one aspect of society that doesn't get much appreciation. I think the takeaway on lens is he sees these people as subhuman and his mission is to train them like a machine and therefore stop causing trouble in society, period. And that kind of sums up that period beyond that. I mean, this is happening all over the country, I would imagine, right?

I mean, there's two things. First of all, you know, you're absolutely right. Prison is never just about prison. It's about a lot of other things going on at the time. The dehumanization is a really interesting point that observation that you're making. I think that you have to remember what American society, and particularly New York society in this case looked like at the time. So he gets into one argument with Livingston, who was a legal theory. and, you know, Sion of one of the wealthiest families in New York, where Livingston sort of said this kind of brutality will not bring about change. And Linz responds to him by saying, well, if they were high-born like you, it wouldn't be necessary. But because these people are

immigrants or African-American or dull, these types of people will only respond to threats of violence. So it wasn't that he believed that all people deserve this treatment or all offenders deserve this treatment, but he wanted to argue that the people who end up in a place like Sing Sing, that's the only thing that these less human people will respond to. And that's a legacy that continues, I would say, until the 19-teens or 20s. But what begins changing is that they begin to assess people and assign them to different kinds of facilities based on their assessments of their reformability over time. I guess I should have asked that. How many prisons are we talking about in New York in 1825? Well, in 1825, Sing Sing was the second. Newgate was closed when Sing

opened. It was technically the third. By the 1840s, another prison has created Clinton, which is also still open. Clinton Correctional, it's often called Danamora. And And the goal there was to create a self-sustaining prison built around mining and steel production. And we've got local jails, county jails. All of that is also happening at the same time. But that's what's evolving is this local, county, state, and then federal system, which eventually is what we have today. The federal system emerges not until the mid-20th century, really, when they were contracting out before that, either with county jails or with state prisons. So let's talk about life inside this prison during the 19th century specifically.

Sing Sing is a place of, I'm quoting, contractual penal servitude. What does that mean exactly? Yeah. I mean, the easiest and clearest comparison is slavery. Oh, right. There was a gradual emancipation system in New York State that ends right around the time Sing Sing opens in the mid-1820s. And they adapt forms of forced labor from.

slavery in the prisons. But it's adapted to more industrial settings. First, through quarries, mining marble that would be initially used for the construction of the prison itself, later for public buildings, the first New York State Capitol, major churches in New York City, university buildings, things like that. Very permanent looking buildings using that marble. As that marble declined in its quality. They began using it for road beds and railroad beds and things like that. But they needed to find a new source of income. And they began to contract with shoemakers and stove makers and silk weavers and a whole range of different manufacturers to open up their factories right in the prison. So people were working in teams, in silence, in force,

by violence to beat certain daily quotas. They could be beaten for anything from burning a shirt by accident that they were supposed to be ironing to winking. If they got some sweat in their eye and they winked or blinked, that might be read by a prison guard as a secret signal and they would be beaten for that. So there were a whole range. Most of the beatings were about work, refusal to work or obey orders. And long days, obviously, 10 hours of total silence, right? This is the Auburn system we're talking about. Yes. The silence piece is

crucial, of course, but prisoners were very adept at adapting in the face of that. So they developed a whole secret language to communicate with one another. They could plan escapes in total silence, and escapes were relatively frequent back then

before prison walls existed, for example. They were able to communicate. And that, I think, can be unappreciated. The ways in which people can adapt to even the most brutal conditions in order to forge some sort of hope and opportunity. It really is the stereotypical view of a prisoner in the striped uniform, walking in lockstep. I guess there were chains involved and so forth that they had to move them around. Obviously, not so much when they were chopping at rock.

But this was the whole mentality of this system was to create this sort of cheap labor force or free labor force. I guess. And it was very successful. And it went on, I guess it has its impact on the 13th Amendment, doesn't it? I mean, that's why they make that accommodation in the Constitution. Exactly. There were some real fears that the hands would be tied of the criminal justice system, that they wouldn't be able to extract forced labor out of people if it was a complete ban. Because that, I mean, while today we cringe at that idea, in that time, it was part of the system. You have this forced labor and they're going to learn their lesson as a result. The state is going to going to benefit from this process. Right. And so in the south, what emerges is a system of gang

labor, as well as some industrial labor like the North, that allows for the building of infrastructure after the Civil War. Road crews, the railroads, mining, farming, public buildings, lots of road repair as well. Gang labor contracted out. So it's not exactly modeled on the North, but it echoes the use of this captive labor force for the purpose of economic and state development after the Civil War. And we talk about it as if it's the past. This is very much a part of the present day system in some regards, not so much the cruel and inhuman punishments of flogging with cat anine tails and waterboarding these guys, all that kind of stuff. But the whole idea of the state benefiting from the system that it has created still exists today. Well, it's

interesting. I mean, yes, at this point, a lot of that is the raw material are the people themselves in the sense that you take people from one jurisdiction and move them into another jurisdiction and create jobs there simply by their presence. So their economic benefit is not as producers, as manufacturers as they were in the 19th century, but the people themselves are, if I could use this word, commodified in order to create jobs and opportunities. say with people from downstate, the New York City metropolitan area, being moved to other parts of the state, or as we've seen with the recent ICE people from New York and New England being sent down to Louisiana and Texas to private prisons down there. So they're not making money for the state, but they are generating

jobs and economic activity through their presence, if that makes sense. Yes. What about women? I mean, we're talking about primarily men here. There was, of course, a women's prison, and this was part of Sing Sing as well? Yeah. So in Auburn, for example, there was a top floor where women were kept separate from men, usually a small number, two or three at a time, you know, maybe 20 at most. There was a scandal involving sexual assault and pregnancies and things like that. And so they created a women's prison on the grounds of Sing Sing, a Greek revival structure, again, disproportionately African-American and foreign-born, often probably probably, property crimes and morals crimes, which was a little bit different than the men who were there almost entirely for property crimes.

The women were also working, typically not in fact in the contract system. Women were working on behalf of the prison itself, creating those famous striped uniform, serving as laundresses, creating the tools that would be used by the men out in the prison yard. That move towards more specialized prisons based on gender would then later grow into other kinds of specialized prisons based on reformability, based on whether you were considered mentally ill or not. Juvenile detention facilities emerged in the late 1800s as well. So they become much more specialized over time. But the first example of that in the mid-1800s is the women's prison at Sync. Yeah, we're talking about 1839 here.

I mean, I just want to remind listeners, this is one of the extraordinary things about Sing Sing. They go back almost the length of the country, you know, in terms of this institution has paralleled the growth of America itself. And therefore, it's an incredible canvas upon which to see American life evolve in some ways or not evolve. Yeah, I mean, how many Jacksonian era institutions are still functional in the United States right now? That prison, we're talking about Mount Pleasant Female Prison, was run by a notable warden named Eliza Farnham. She was a reformer. I mean, this was already starting to happen that people were kind of getting a clue that this all needed to change. And they would close this prison in 1877, correct?

Yes, correct. So Farnham is really an interesting figure for sure. So she believed in reform. And she also believed that violence would not necessarily result in, that kind of change. And what I mean by reform is she believed phrenology. It's a really kind of new age quasi-scientific idea that says that different human beings have different faculties and that those faculties can be read on the human body, especially on the skull. And that once you are aware of your faculties, you can improve them or you can change them in various ways. And so Farnham,

as many people were in the mid-19th century, it was a big believer in phrenology. And so she brought in phrenologists to do studies on the women and some men and herself, for that matter, at the prison. And she introduced cut flowers into the workrooms, and she brought in poets and writers to read to the prisoners while they were working. So that was more her idea. It wasn't sort of religious reform like we saw with the Quakers. And in fact, she got into the, to some really famous fights with the chaplain at prison. And that was part of her firing was that she was undermined by the prison chaplain of all people during that period who saw her phrenology as a threat to the kinds of reform he wanted to see happen. I think Sing Sing is such a symbol of New York itself, you know, and people's assumptions about the place and its reputation, certainly in the earlier part of the 20th century in my book.

You know, the way that was just a tough, tough town and all kinds of, you know, wrong-headed things were going on in this city in those days. And Sing Sing was part of that story. Of course, the electric chair comes into play at this point. Sing-Sing is synonymous with the electric chair. It wasn't invented for that place, but it certainly was most notorious there. It was called Old Sparky. Let's talk about how that played such a role in the reputation that Sing-Sing had. All begins in 1891, right?

Yeah. The electric chair was first used in Auburn, New York, at the Auburn prison. And shortly thereafter, they began using it at Sing Sing. And as you said before, over 600 people were executed there between the 1890s and 1960s. They still continue to execute people at Auburn and at Clinton, the other prison I mentioned earlier. But the vast majority of people were executed at Sing Sing throughout that period. What was the theory of the electric chair as opposed to hanging? A couple of things.

One of through line in the history of prison is the idea that you're going to change things in order to make them more humane. And what you end up with is electric chairs in this particular case. So Sing Sing had been innovative, if that's the right word, in the creation of new ways of harming people ever since it opened. Executions were most typically done through hanging, not in public anymore, behind the walls of a prison, but visible. Visible to the other prisoners, visible to visitors. And every botched execution would be publicized.

It sounds ridiculous, but what they were looking for was a more humane, painless way to kill people. Sure. And electricity was a big new thing and innovations and all that sort of stuff. And so why not apply that to this dark part of our society? And they could have executed people using intravenous drugs, but doctors were not willing to do that at the time. And it was an accepted way, publicly accepted way of dealing with hardcore criminals for sure. So there wasn't that kind of controversy or pushback, at least generally speaking. Well, it's interesting. You know, Lewis Laws, who is a famous reformer there and was responsible for many executions during his time there, you know, was a pretty prominent opponent of capital punishment. For many reasons that would be familiar to us today, especially that you were more likely to be executed if you were poor than if you were rich, for example. So there were opponents back then, but in general, public opinion accepted the use of, you were. executions for violent crime, for sure. And the point I was trying to make was that they were looking for a systemic way of doing this, a method that could be used more efficiently and less controversial, I guess, because hangings did have a lot of things go wrong in them, you know, obviously. So they go so far as to create a death house at Sing Sing, built in 1920, and therefore they begin executions in this place.

And it really goes on. I mean, it's 600 people, there's a lot of people executed right to. the abolishment of the death penalty in 1972. I mean, we're talking about our lifetimes here. It's second only to Virginia in the use of executions throughout that period. Yep. When did that famous picture come out of Ruth Snyder that a journalist snuck? Yeah, I don't remember the exact year of that, but there were these predictable accidents where people were burning. And they were fairly frequent when women were executed or smaller people juveniles, for example, there was more likely to have a botched execution, which means people either not dying as quickly as others or people literally bursting into flames. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about this system that they thought was more humane. To our mind, it's the worst. You know, it's a horrible idea. Well, this is the point that we referred to earlier, the town of Sing Sing and the controversy rising up because of the common. use of the electric chair and people owes to it. This becomes an issue for the town itself and they end up changing the name of the town so that it's not the same name as the place where they're using the electric chairs. It's that specific, isn't it? Yes, it is. And the town of Ossining has had a complicated relationship with the prison. As I said, it was a relatively small village in the 18

teens before the prison came. And so the town rose up around the prison, up on the hill. overlooking the river. And as Westchester became less rural, more of a commuter community, that relationship with the prison became less visible to most people and also more problematic to local boosters. I think that's changing again now. There's been a lot of relationships between people trying to tell that history of the prison and as a potential with lots of support from the community. But the change of name was very effective. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people out, you know, in other worlds. Understanding that Sing Sing Prison is in Asin.

It's very different sounding. And so it worked. People in, you know, I live maybe 35, 40 minutes away. People often ask me when I tell them about my research, they'll often ask, well, where is Sing Sing prison? Whereas if the town was still called Sing Sing, my guess is I'd not get that many questions like that. Right. Exactly. The most famous execution there, of course, is Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were killed in June, 1953.

They were the convicted Cold War spies, a story unto themselves, but it was the most notorious electric chair event, certainly at Sing Sing, if not the country. You know what I mean, it was a major story that stands on itself, but just let it sink in. No pun intended, that this is like a really fundamental piece of American lore of that time. It figures prominently in the news in all respects, and that's rare for most prisons. It's the proximity to New York and the crime of New York that makes it famous, isn't it? Well, New York, yes, and its history and its prominence on the river. I think that one of the things that's interesting about Sing Sing is that almost from the beginning, it was in the public eye. But when we get to the 20th century with the rise of new media, especially radio and Hollywood cinema,

Sing Sing becomes a kind of stand-in for prisons more generally. It becomes ready for Hollywood. It's where the movies are shot. It becomes wrapped up with a kind of cultural relevance and salience that not a lot of prisons in the United States ever really had. Right, only Alcatraz. Alcatraz, and maybe in the 1960s and 70s, you have Soledad and San Quentin, you have Attica. You know, there's a number of prisons in the United States that have that level, but syncing in a lot of ways was the first.

When did things finally begin to improve? Was that tied specifically to certain wardens? I mean, were there personnel coming in saying the time is now to change this? Most importantly, there was a shift in penology during what we call the Gilded Asian Progressive era, the period between the 1890s and World War I. And at that point, you saw reformers come in. The first one was a guy named Thomas Mot Osborne, who was from Auburn, New York. When he became the state director of corrections, he had himself appointed to the board of inspectors, rather. He had himself incarcerated in Auburn to learn more about it.

He wrote about his experience and then was appointed warden of Sing Sing, where he instituted a form of prisoner-run democracy, essentially. and he was followed after a few years by a man named Lewis Laws, who became probably the most important warden in the country. He was appointed by Governor Smith and then was associated with reformers like Franklin Roosevelt later. And he expanded something called the Mutual Welfare League, where a prisoner had democracy. They also had their own courts within the prison that the prisoners ran.

He had a development deal with Hollywood and some of his books. were turned into movies. He had a syndicated radio show nationally. And so he's the best known reformer in the country at that time. He was able to withstand all of the naysayers who sort of said, you're being too soft. He was able to use the new media of the time to make the case. And he did it pretty successfully right up until World War II. Yeah, he writes a book, 20,000 years in Sing Sing, which was made into a movie with Betty Davis. The Betty Davis. and Spencer Tracy, it's definitely worth seeing even to this day. Of course, it doesn't make everything better.

I mean, the prison system remains a harsh thing to go through, and New York is front and center in that dilemma. I mean, we know about the Attica for sure back in the 70s, but there was also a prison revolt in 1983 at Sing Sing. Yes. So prisons were sort of shifting around and looking for a new identity in the 20th century to justify their ongoing existence.

If contractual penal servitude was no longer going to be the centerpiece, which was made on constitutional by a change in the New York Constitution in the 1890s, they needed to come up with something new. And the reformers of the early 20th century provided one answer to that question. And after World War II, prisons continue to work with a reform-minded idea, but the reforms didn't work back then either. not that they weren't preferable to what was happening before, but they weren't serving the needs. Prisons continued to grow. In the 1960s and 70s, there was a shift towards the use of much longer sentences for crimes that would not have resulted in long sentences prior to that,

especially through the emerging war on drugs. Nelson Rockefeller, who had the drug laws named after him, the Rockefeller drug laws, instituted much, longer sentences for possession and use of a range of illegal drugs. And so that resulted in a very rapid increase in the size of the New York State prison population. And syncing what became a sort of pass-through prison is where people would go to be incarcerated while waiting for a cell to open up in other prisons around the country. And so that meant most of the prisoners did not have access to programming, did not have access to clothing and warm bedding yet, because it was

considered a pass-through while waiting. Even mail and visitors were much more limited in Sing Sing than other prisons because of that. But because it was so overcrowded, the length of stay while waiting permanent placement continued to extend. And the correctional officers in Sink Singh kind of acknowledged that this was an unprecedented situation and created a little more leeway around rules. And also it meant that there were lots of newly hired guards as well. When guards came in who were sticklers for the details and wanted just compliance with authority, that created a lot of tension at the prison. And there was no real way to deal with it. In the years after Attica, there was a required liaison, prisoner liaison, but they never actually did anything

with the complaints. They just took them down. It was a very frustrating situation. In 1983, a spontaneous uprising resulted in the guards on one particular block to be held hostage. Right. 17 of them, yeah. Exactly. Throughout that prison period. And so that takeover was peacefully resolved, but it resulted in the construction of new prisons throughout New York State. Well, that's so much the modern era that we're in now where the prison system is so subcontracted now to private industry. It's also much vaster. I mean, you mentioned the war on drugs. Of course, under the Clinton administration, there's an enormous inconstration movement that happens because of three strikes and so forth. And the population just grows and grows and grows. And I've referred to it

many times through this interview, the idea of labor, it's not necessarily, you know, forced and beaten labor now, but it's still there as a massive system. You can look at San Quentin. My God, I did that story for a TV show one time and went to the island above it and looked down on, it's a humongous complex. And most of that complex are workhouses and places where they're making products very cheaply and license plates and so forth. But nonetheless, those prisoners are being paid a very little amount of money. And so it's all sort of the system still working. I don't know how much of that happens at Sing Sing, but it's still part and parcel of the whole business. Well, Sing has many, many programs in it today. Everything from GED programs to Arts and Corrections programs,

to Hudson Link, which runs programs that can lead to a bachelor's degree. So there's a lot going on in there. So it's difficult to characterize it. Private prisons haven't been a major part of the story in New York State. It's a major story within federal corrections, especially detention. So people who aren't charged with a crime, but may be awaiting deportation. You see a lot of private prisons around that. Don't you think it's incredible that we could be having this conversation a hundred years from now and still be talking about Sing Sing. I don't think it's going anywhere, is it? There have been. multiple attempts to close Sing Sing Prison, going all the way back to the 19th century,

but especially in the early 20th century, they were going to move it across the river over to where Bear Mountain State Park is today. And as recently as the 1970s, there was something called Project Jericho, where they wanted to bring those walls a tumble and down. And that was mostly spearheaded by Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development people who eyed that awesome real estate right on the backs of the Hudson River for a mixed-use development project. So the future of Sing Sing, itself, you know, may or may not continue as the prison population declines. That might be one that they close. But prisons themselves, I'm sure the next generation of prison reformers seeking a new reason to keep them open is already being trained. So it does

seem like detention and detainment is... Ain't going anywhere. It doesn't look that way, although there is a very sizable and vibrant movement to search for alternatives to prison that would support the safety and security of the community without causing so much harm. I'd be remiss not to mention the very well-known Oscar-nominated film recently called Sing Sing. You know, the pun is that they are working in an arts organization that people I know

are parts of running. It is a big, big part of that. community and worthy of what they're trying to do. But I think the future of it, in my opinion, is the tunnel boring machine. They're going to put them right underground, you know, and all that real estate is going to get used, and the prisoners are going to be out of sight, out of mind, like they always have been. That could be. Fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us. Professor Lee Bernstein is an historian of the American prison system, and author of American is the prison, arts and politics in prison in the 1970s, as well as I've mentioned, the greatest menace,

organized crime in Cold War America. Boy, I'd love to talk to you about that. He is a professor of history at New Paltz State University of New York. Thank you so much, Lee, and nice to meet you. You as well. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to this episode of American History Hit. As you've made it this far, why not like and follow us wherever you get your podcasts? American History Hit, a podcast from History Hit.