pposite of the congregate system.
The prisoners are allowed to have practically no communication with
anyone whomsoever. In some countries this system is made indescribably
cruel. At Santiago in Chili in one part of the prison the inmates are
employed upon useful work under most humane conditions, and yet in
another part of the very same building a most barbarous system exists.
Mr F. B. Ward (quoted in Penological and Preventive Principles)
describes what he saw in 1893:--"In this splendid model institution
there are noisome, slimy cells, where daylight never enters, in which
human beings are literally buried alive. Under the massive arches of
enormously thick walls, where even in the outside rooms perpetual
twilight reigns, are inner cells, two feet wide by six feet long, and
destitute of a single article of furniture. Until recently, those
confined in them were walled in, the bricks being cemented in places
over the living tomb. Now there is a thick iron door, which is securely
nailed up and then fastened all around with huge clamps, exactly as the
vaults are closed in Santiago Cemetery, and over all the great red seal
of the Government is placed--not to be removed until the man is dead, or
his sentence has expired. The tiny grated window is covered by several
thicknesses of closely-woven wire netting, making dense darkness inside,
so that the prisoners cannot tell night from day. There is no
ventilation except through this netting, and no opening whatever to
admit outside air into the tomb. Low down in the iron door, close to the
ground, is a tiny sliding panel a foot long by a few inches wide
arranged like a double drawer, so that food and water may be slipped in
on shallow pans and the refuse removed. Twice in every twenty-four hours
this panel is operated, and if the food remains untouched a given number
of days, it is known to a certainty that the man is dead, and only then
can the door be unsealed, unless his time is up. If the food is not
touched for two or three days no attention is paid to it, for the
prisoner may be shamming; but beyond a certain length of time he cannot
live without eating. Not the faintest sound nor glimmer of light
penetrates those awful walls. In the same clothes he wears on entering,
unwashed, uncombed, without even a blanket or handful of straw to lie
upon he languishes in sickness, lives or dies with no means of making
his condition known to those outside. He may count the lagging hours