Sing Sing

Sing Sing Correctional Facility

Location	Ossining (town), New York
Status	Active
Security class	Maximum
Opened	1826 (Completed in 1828)
Managed by	New York State Department of Correctional Services
Director	Wardens Elam Lynda (1825–1830) Robert Wiltse (1830–1834) David L. Seymour (1834–1843) William H. Peck (1843–1845) Hiram P. Rowell (1845–1848) Chauncey Smith (1848–1849) Edward L. Potter (January, 1849) Alfred R. Booth (July, 1849) Munson J. Lockwood (1850–1855) C. A. Batterman (1855–1856) William Beardsley (1856–1862) Gaylord B. Hubbell (1862-1864) Thomas E. Sutton (1864-1865) Stephen H. Johnson (1865–1868) David P. Forrest (1868–1869) Henry C. Nelson (1869–1870) E. M. Russell (1870–1872) Henry C. Nelson (1872–1873) Gaylord B. Hubbell (1873–1874) James Williamson (September 1874) Alfred Walker (October 1874) George R. Youngs (1876–1877) Charles Davis (February 1877) B. S. W. Clark (March 1877) Charles Davis (1877–1880) Augustus A. Brush (1880–1891) W.R. Brown (1891–1893) Charles F. Durston (1893–1894) Omar V. Sage (1894-1899) Addison Johnson (1899–1907) Jesse D. Frost (1907–1911) John S. Kennedy (1911–1913) James Connaughton* (June 1913) James M. Clancy (1913–1914) Thomas McCormick (June 1914) George Weed* (October 1914) Thomas M. Osborne (1914–1915) George W. Kirchwey (1915) Thomas M. Osborne (July 1916) Calvin Derrick (October 1916) William H. Moyer (1916–1919) Edward V. Brophy (April 1919) Daniel J. Grant* (1919–1920) Lewis E. Lawes (1920–1941) Robert J. Kirby (1941–1944) William F. Snyder (1944–1950) Wilfred L. Denno (1950–1967) John T. Deegan (1967–1969) James L. Casscles (1969–1972) Theodore Schubin (1972–1975) Joseph Higgins* (July 1975) Harold Butler (October 1975) William G. Gard (1975–1977) Walter Fogg* (August 1977) Stephen Dalsheim (1977–1980) Wilson E.J. Walters (1980–1983) James E. Sullivan (1983–1988) John P. Keane (1988–1997) Charles Greiner (1997–2000) Brian S. Fischer (2000–2007) Louis Marshall (2007-) * = Acting

State Prison at Sing Sing, New York, an 1855 engraving

The prison and workshops c.1863-1885

Sing Sing Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison of the New York State Department of Correctional Services in the Town of Ossining, New York. It is located approximately 30 miles (50 km) north of New York City along the banks of the Hudson River. Ossining's original name, "Sing Sing", came from the Native American Sinck Sinck (Sint Sinck) tribe from whom the land was purchased in 1685.

Sing Sing houses approximately 1,700 prisoners. There are plans to convert the original 1825 cell block into a museum.

History

Early years

Sing Sing is the third of three prisons that were built along the Hudson River. The first prison was built in 1797 in Greenwich Village and a second one in 1816 called Auburn State Prison.

In 1824, the New York Legislature gave Elam Lynds the task of constructing a new, more modern prison. Lynds was the warden of Auburn Prison and a former Army captain. He spent months researching possible locations for the prison, considering Staten Island, The Bronx, and Silver Mine Farm, an area in the town of Mount Pleasant, located on the banks of the Hudson River.

He also visited New Hampshire, where a prison was successfully constructed by inmate labor, using stone that was available on-site. For this reason, by May, Lynds had finally decided on Mount Pleasant, located near a small village in Westchester County with the unlikely name of Sing Sing. This appellation was derived from the Native American words "Sinck Sinck" which translates to "stone upon stone". The legislature appropriated $20,100 to purchase the 130-acre (0.53 km²) site, and the project received the official stamp of approval. Lynds hand-selected 100 inmates from his own private stock for transfer and had them transported by barge along the Erie Canal to freighters down the Hudson River. On their arrival on May 14, the site was "without a place to receive them or a wall to enclose them"; "temporary barracks, a cook house, carpenter and blacksmith’s shops" were rushed to completion.

When it was opened in 1826, Sing Sing was considered a model prison, because it turned a profit for the state, and by October 1828 was finally completed. Lynds employed the Auburn system, which imposed absolute silence on the prisoners; the system was enforced by whipping and other brutal punishments.

20th century

Thomas Mott Osborne's tenure as warden of Sing Sing prison was brief but dramatic. Osborne arrived in 1914 with a reputation as a radical prison reformer. His report of a week-long incognito stay inside New York's Auburn Prison indicted traditional prison administration in merciless detail.

Warden T. M. Osborne

Prisoners who had bribed officers and intimidated other inmates lost their privileges under Osborne's regime. One of them conspired with powerful political allies to destroy Osborne's reputation, even succeeding in getting him indicted for a variety of crimes and maladministration. After Osborne triumphed in court, his return to Sing Sing was a cause for wild celebration by the inmates.

Another notable warden was Lewis Lawes. He was offered the position of warden in 1919, accepted in January 1920, and remained for 20 years as Sing Sing's warden. While warden, Lawes brought about reforms and turned what was described as an "old hellhole" into a modern prison with sports teams, educational programs, new methods of discipline and more. Several new buildings were also constructed during the years Lawes was warden. Lawes retired in 1941 after 21 years as warden and died six years later. In 1943, the old cellblock was finally closed and the metal bars and doors were donated to the war effort. In 1989, the institution was accredited for the first time by the American Correctional Association, which established a set of national standards by which every correctional facility should be judged.

21st century

Today Sing Sing houses more than 2,000 inmates, with about 1,000 people working there and 5,000 visitors per day. The original 1825 cellblock is no longer used and in 2002 plans were announced to turn this into a museum.

The electric chair at the Sing Sing prison

A cell in the older facility

Executions

Three inmates under federal death sentences were executed at Sing Sing. On June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were electrocuted for espionage. On August 12, 1952, Gerhard A. Puff was electrocuted for murder. The last prisoner to be executed in the electric chair was on August 15, 1963 for Eddie Lee Mays who was convicted of murder. In 1972 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was unconstitutional as such the chair was shut off. Altogether, 614 men and women were executed at Sing Sing. The electric chair was later moved to Greenhaven Prison in working condition but was never used again.

Theater and arts program

In 1996, Katherine Vockins founded Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) at Sing Sing. RTA works in collaboration with theater professionals to provide prisoners with a curriculum of year-round theater-related workshops. The RTA program has put on a number of plays at Sing Sing open to prisoners and community guests. The program has shown that the use of dramatic techniques leads to significant improvements in the cognitive behavior of the program's participants inside prison and a reduction in recidivism once paroled. The impact of RTA on social and institutional behavior was formally evaluated by John Jay College for Criminal Justice, in collaboration with the NYS Department of Corrections. Led by Dr. Lorraine Moller, Professor of Speech and Drama at John Jay, The study found that RTA had a positive impact on prisoners who participated in the program, showing that "the longer the inmate was in the program, the fewer violations he committed.". The RTA program currently operates at 5 other New York state prisons.

Museum

Plans to turn part of Sing Sing into a museum go back to 2005, when local officials sought to turn the old power house into the museum, linked by a tunnel to a retired cell block, at a cost of $5.0 Million. In 2007, the village of Ossining applied for $12.5 Million in Federal money for the project, expected then to cost $14 Million. The proposed museum will display the Sing Sing story unfolded over time.

Contribution to American English vernacular

The use of the expression "up the river" to mean "in prison" derives from the practice of sentencing people convicted in New York City to serve their prison terms in Sing Sing, which is literally "up the Hudson River" from the city. Its use dates from 1891.

In popular culture

• Gangster movies helped make the prison a legend far beyond New York; they included "The Big House", "Castle on the Hudson", and "20,000 Years in Sing Sing", the latter based on a book by Lewis Lawes.
• In the 1941 film Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane shouts repeated threats at political boss Jim Gettys to send him to Sing Sing while Gettys is leaving an apartment, after ruining Kane's chances of a political career.
• In the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly Golightly regularly visits Sally Tomato at Sing Sing.
• In the 1990 film King of New York, the main character, Frank White, is released from Sing Sing prison at the start of the film.
• In the 1999 film Analyze This, Mob boss Paul Vitti is jailed at Sing Sing at the end of the movie.
• In the 2005 film Constantine, the electric chair John Constantine uses is from Sing Sing.
• In the 2005 musical film The Producers, Bialystock and Bloom are sent to Sing Sing to serve their sentence, and are pardoned due to their work in the theatre program.
• In the graphic novel Watchmen, after being framed for the murder of one of his former archnemeses, the character Rorschach is sent to Sing Sing for several days until escaping with the aid of fellow vigilantes Silk Spectre and Nite Owl.

See also

• Ossining, New York

References

Notes

Further reading

• Barnes, Harry Elmer. The Repression of Crime, Studies in Historical Penology. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.
• Blumenthal, Ralph. Miracle at Sing Sing: How One Man Transformed the Lives of America's Most Dangerous Prisoners. (2005)
• Brian, Denis. Sing Sing: The Inside Story of a Notorious Prison. (2005)
• Brockway, Zebulon Reed. Fifty Years of Prison Service. Montclair, NJ: Patterson Smith.
• Christianson, Scott. Condemned: Inside the Sing Sing Death House. (2000)
• Conover, Ted. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (2000) ISBN 0-375-50177-0
• Gado, Mark. Death Row Women. (2008) ISBN 978-0-275-99361-0
• Goeway, David. Crash Out: The True Tale of a Hell's Kitchen Kid and the Bloodiest Escape in Sing Sing History. (2005)
• Lawes, Lewis E.. Twenty Thousand Years in Sing Sing. New York: Ray Long & Richard H. Smith, Inc., 1932.
• Lawes, Lewis E.. Life and Death in Sing Sing. Garden City, NY: Garden City Publishing Co., 1928
• Morris, James McGrath. The Rose Man of Sing Sing: A True Tale of Life, Murder, and Redemption in the Age of Yellow Journalism.(2003)
• Papa, Anthony. 15 to Life: How I Painted My Way To Freedom (2004) ISBN 1932595066
• Pereira, Al Bermudez. Sing Sing State Prison, One Day, One Lifetime (2006) ISBN 978-0805972900
• Pereira, Al Bermudez. Ruins of a Society and the Honorable (2009) ISBN 978-0578043432
• Weinstein, Lewis M. A Good Conviction. (2007) ISBN 1595941622 (fiction)

External links

• Facility Listing - New York State Department of Correctional Services
• "All about Sing Sing Prison" by Mark Gado from The Crime Library
• New York Corrections History Society
• Town of Ossining, NY - Town History
• "The History of Sing Sing Prison" Half Moon Press, May 2000 issue
• Rehabilitation Through the Arts homepage