Stampede

Conductors and brakemen on the New York Central Railroad are accustomed to seeing sullen, malignant customers riding up the Hudson River in the cars, their wrists manacled to the wrists of impassive burlies who usually sit on the aisle side of the seat. Just before the trains reach Ossining station there is a platform at the base of gray rock bastions which tower above the track. Here the trains stop and the burlies yank their reluctant companions to their feet, shove them shuffling ahead to the end of the car and down the steps. The train pulls out through a short tunnel as the burlies usher their charges off the platform into Sing Sing, New York's famed state penitentiary.

Ordinarily about 40 or 50 convicts go "up the river" every day. But last week New York Central employees noticed a sudden burst of activity. Between 90 and 110 crooks per day were getting off at Sing Sing, and the strange part of it was, all of them seemed cheerful, anxious to reach their destination. It seemed almost like a stampede for incarceration--and that is what it was.

New York was about to change its prison code. Convicts entering Sing Sing on and after July 1 were to be subject to new, stricter parole and commutation rules. In the detention cells of many counties, yeggs and firebugs, stickers and rodmen, auto thieves, foot-pads, forgers and dips were clamoring to plead guilty, waive their defenses, and be let into the big "pen" with all despatch. By the end of the week Sing Sing was crammed like a seaside hotel, its accommodations for 1,540 guests overflowing with 1,561 and more to come. About 1,800, in all, were expected.

Publication of the new rules caused the unconvicted public to marvel at "compensations" allowed by the old code. Hereafter, prisoners receiving indeterminate sentences ("five to ten" or "ten to fifteen" years) must serve the minimum term named. (Before, if sentenced for "five to ten years," a prisoner might get out in three years and nine months by earning, for "satisfactory work" and good behavior, three months' "compensation" in each of his first four years.)

Time spent in jail waiting for sentence cannot now be deducted from terms of a year or less. (Before, a prisoner sentenced to one year in prison after having spent three months waiting for sentence, could get out, with his compensation, in six months.)

The "compensation" to be earned by prisoners committed for their second offense is reduced to two months per annum. (Thus, a second offender sentenced to ten years flat cannot get out before eight years, four months. Before, he might be free in about six years.) Prisoners sentenced as habitual criminals must now stay in jail for the length of their natural lives, unless released by clemency of the Governor.