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20,000 Years in Sing Sing
Here is the true, inside story of what happens to criminals in the nation's most famous prison, told for the first time by the nation's most famous warden.
Humor, tradgedy, the death penalty -- all the elements of human interest are here illustrated by countless actual incidents in the lives of the men and women who have been under Warden Lawes' care. Crime story addicts, students of penology, readers who love a story for its own sake and readers who want light shed on one of America's greatest social problems will find in this book fresh, exciting material.
Humor, tradgedy, the death penalty -- all the elements of human interest are here illustrated by countless actual incidents in the lives of the men and women who have been under Warden Lawes' care. Crime story addicts, students of penology, readers who love a story for its own sake and readers who want light shed on one of America's greatest social problems will find in this book fresh, exciting material.
412 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1932
7 people are currently reading
1169 people want to read
About the author
Lewis E. Lawes
12 books3 followersLewis Edward Lawes was a prison warden who stayed at Sing Sing for a record 21 years. He was a proponent of prison reform. He was also a writer and actor, known for Over the Wall (1938), San Quentin (1946) and Invisible Stripes (1939).
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
December 6, 2021
I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in American penal history or the penal history of America, basically anyone who likes the word penal as much as I do. It really was refreshing to see that almost 100 years ago when this book was written there was a warden who thought about the humanity of his charges, who saw prison as only one part of the system and had a service to perform along with the educational, religious, police, public and other institutions. I think even if you hate the word penal, and are not interested in learning about crime and punishment in early 20th century America you can still gain a lot of insight from this book. It is recommended reading for anyone who has to manage people.
January 30, 2012
This was a fantastic reminder that we need to look deeper than the surface. That sometimes, what society teaches us is so is only part of the story. That it's possible to work in the bowels of one of the most "despotic" places on earth and still retain faith in human nature. I can't wait to read more of his work!
August 25, 2013
Dorothy Kilgallen’s book Murder One led me to this book. She referred to it while discussing the not always fair practice of the penal system. Sometimes innocent people land in jail.
This not my usual type of reading. His career began in 1905. For someone who started so long ago, I was surprised at the evolution of the prison system. You would think prison administration would want life to be tougher seeing what they do. But what the guards and staff see is not what the outsiders see and know. Not to mention all the “politics” of the prison administration. He was against capital punishment. Eye opening book for one so dated!
While reading it…I remembered I have 3 distant relatives who are prison guards. In Sing Sing!!
He was warden from 1920 - 1941. He says two inmates shaped his thoughts and polices on penal administration.
Prior to being appointed to Sing Sing, he was head of a prison without walls. The inmates were young and not hardened, multi-offenders. This was a “prison” the inmates were responsible for building.
When he was offered the position at Sing Sing he was reluctant to accept. It was known as a political appointment. Wardens did not last depending on the latest politics. He did accept as long with the agreement he could run the prison without interference.
He apparently made a good deal of reforms and did well. According to Wikipedia a 1932 movie under the same title, starring Spencer Tracy, and again in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson, featuring John Garfield. Invisible Stripes in 1939, with George Raft, was based on his novel of the same name, while Humphrey Bogart starred in You Can't Get Away with Murder in 1939, an adaptation of Chalked Out, a play Lawes co-wrote. I’ll have to track them down.
The toughest reading was the electric chair chapter. And that’s all I will say on that.
This not my usual type of reading. His career began in 1905. For someone who started so long ago, I was surprised at the evolution of the prison system. You would think prison administration would want life to be tougher seeing what they do. But what the guards and staff see is not what the outsiders see and know. Not to mention all the “politics” of the prison administration. He was against capital punishment. Eye opening book for one so dated!
While reading it…I remembered I have 3 distant relatives who are prison guards. In Sing Sing!!
He was warden from 1920 - 1941. He says two inmates shaped his thoughts and polices on penal administration.
Prior to being appointed to Sing Sing, he was head of a prison without walls. The inmates were young and not hardened, multi-offenders. This was a “prison” the inmates were responsible for building.
When he was offered the position at Sing Sing he was reluctant to accept. It was known as a political appointment. Wardens did not last depending on the latest politics. He did accept as long with the agreement he could run the prison without interference.
He apparently made a good deal of reforms and did well. According to Wikipedia a 1932 movie under the same title, starring Spencer Tracy, and again in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson, featuring John Garfield. Invisible Stripes in 1939, with George Raft, was based on his novel of the same name, while Humphrey Bogart starred in You Can't Get Away with Murder in 1939, an adaptation of Chalked Out, a play Lawes co-wrote. I’ll have to track them down.
The toughest reading was the electric chair chapter. And that’s all I will say on that.
September 14, 2013
Dorothy Kilgallen’s book Murder One led me to this book. She referred to it while discussing the not always fair practice of the penal system. Sometimes innocent people land in jail.
This not my usual type of reading. His career began in 1905. For someone who started so long ago, I was surprised at the evolution of the prison system. You would think prison administration would want life to be tougher seeing what they do. But what the guards and staff see is not what the outsiders see and know. Not to mention all the “politics” of the prison administration. He was against capital punishment. Eye opening book for one so dated!
While reading it…I remembered I have 3 distant relatives who are prison guards. In Sing Sing!!
He was warden from 1920 - 1941. He says two inmates shaped his thoughts and polices on penal administration.
Prior to being appointed to Sing Sing, he was head of a prison without walls. The inmates were young and not hardened, multi-offenders. This was a “prison” the inmates were responsible for building.
When he was offered the position at Sing Sing he was reluctant to accept. It was known as a political appointment. Wardens did not last depending on the latest politics. He did accept as long with the agreement he could run the prison without interference.
He apparently made a good deal of reforms and did well. According to Wikipedia a 1932 movie under the same title, starring Spencer Tracy, and again in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson, featuring John Garfield. Invisible Stripes in 1939, with George Raft, was based on his novel of the same name, while Humphrey Bogart starred in You Can't Get Away with Murder in 1939, an adaptation of Chalked Out, a play Lawes co-wrote. I’ll have to track them down.
This not my usual type of reading. His career began in 1905. For someone who started so long ago, I was surprised at the evolution of the prison system. You would think prison administration would want life to be tougher seeing what they do. But what the guards and staff see is not what the outsiders see and know. Not to mention all the “politics” of the prison administration. He was against capital punishment. Eye opening book for one so dated!
While reading it…I remembered I have 3 distant relatives who are prison guards. In Sing Sing!!
He was warden from 1920 - 1941. He says two inmates shaped his thoughts and polices on penal administration.
Prior to being appointed to Sing Sing, he was head of a prison without walls. The inmates were young and not hardened, multi-offenders. This was a “prison” the inmates were responsible for building.
When he was offered the position at Sing Sing he was reluctant to accept. It was known as a political appointment. Wardens did not last depending on the latest politics. He did accept as long with the agreement he could run the prison without interference.
He apparently made a good deal of reforms and did well. According to Wikipedia a 1932 movie under the same title, starring Spencer Tracy, and again in 1940 as Castle on the Hudson, featuring John Garfield. Invisible Stripes in 1939, with George Raft, was based on his novel of the same name, while Humphrey Bogart starred in You Can't Get Away with Murder in 1939, an adaptation of Chalked Out, a play Lawes co-wrote. I’ll have to track them down.
December 21, 2019
Not what I expected or what I'd hoped for, but interesting reading.
What I expected was a combination of history/memoir/sensational exposé. What I hoped for was a mention of a particular death row inmate who made quite a sensation during Lawes' tenure as the warden at Sing Sing. What the book delivered was a plea for massive prison reform and the abolition of the death penalty.
Lawes's is heavy handed at times and every anecdote he tells is a lesson, but he makes his case that prisons are simply not working. He goes further to talk about the inequity of the legal justice system, about who goes to prison and who doesn't. In a way, this does have something to do with the case that I was interested in. In that case, three people were arrested together for committing a single crime for which there was really only circumstantial evidence. Their lawyers got them tried separately. One person was tried immediately and sentenced to death, one was tried later and acquitted, and, after that, the last case was dismissed.
Chapter 11 is even more relevant today than it was then. With minor editing for language and style that are very dated, it really should be reprinted somewhere right now.
What I expected was a combination of history/memoir/sensational exposé. What I hoped for was a mention of a particular death row inmate who made quite a sensation during Lawes' tenure as the warden at Sing Sing. What the book delivered was a plea for massive prison reform and the abolition of the death penalty.
Lawes's is heavy handed at times and every anecdote he tells is a lesson, but he makes his case that prisons are simply not working. He goes further to talk about the inequity of the legal justice system, about who goes to prison and who doesn't. In a way, this does have something to do with the case that I was interested in. In that case, three people were arrested together for committing a single crime for which there was really only circumstantial evidence. Their lawyers got them tried separately. One person was tried immediately and sentenced to death, one was tried later and acquitted, and, after that, the last case was dismissed.
Chapter 11 is even more relevant today than it was then. With minor editing for language and style that are very dated, it really should be reprinted somewhere right now.
December 31, 2007
I think this is the best book out there that discusses US governement penal policies. It's amazing to see how our prison system has developed and deteriorated in the years before and since this book was written. Lawes brought about so many incredible reforms in his time, it is a shame that this book is not more widely read by officials today.
November 6, 2019
Reading this book, it is impossible not to wonder at the leaps and stalls of human progress.
Shortly before Warden Lawes took over Sing Sing, we made huge advances in penology. As a society, we ended (or at least limited) use of the lash, silent prisons, bread-and-water diets, and other horrible conditions that would leave prisoners broken, physically and mentally, long before their exit. These changes seemed to take place over the span of a handful of decades.
While Warden Lawes was optimistic about the future, his progressive ideals are still far off, and in some ways our prisons are worse than they were in the 1930s. Lawes talks about the pointlessness and irreversibility of the death penalty; the lack of vocational training to support rehabilitation; the need to provide children with good education and home life so they don't become criminals in the first place. He talks about guard/prisoner interactions, parole, and the economics of leaving prison in a way that could apply equally to a bootlegger of the '30s as to any of the women from Orange is the New Black.
Lawes sometimes made remarks that made me think he would be horrified by modern prisons. He considered multiple men in a room to be barbaric. He was concerned with the effects of prison labor on union jobs, in a way that made clear he would find for-profit prisons abhorrent.
While all of this is interesting, I couldn't stand the "storytelling" style of the book. Every other page began as some anecdote about a supposed prisoner, then unspooled into a broader point about prison administration. Only a few of the stories were very memorable. This style, however, resulted in slow and stilted chapters.
Shortly before Warden Lawes took over Sing Sing, we made huge advances in penology. As a society, we ended (or at least limited) use of the lash, silent prisons, bread-and-water diets, and other horrible conditions that would leave prisoners broken, physically and mentally, long before their exit. These changes seemed to take place over the span of a handful of decades.
While Warden Lawes was optimistic about the future, his progressive ideals are still far off, and in some ways our prisons are worse than they were in the 1930s. Lawes talks about the pointlessness and irreversibility of the death penalty; the lack of vocational training to support rehabilitation; the need to provide children with good education and home life so they don't become criminals in the first place. He talks about guard/prisoner interactions, parole, and the economics of leaving prison in a way that could apply equally to a bootlegger of the '30s as to any of the women from Orange is the New Black.
Lawes sometimes made remarks that made me think he would be horrified by modern prisons. He considered multiple men in a room to be barbaric. He was concerned with the effects of prison labor on union jobs, in a way that made clear he would find for-profit prisons abhorrent.
While all of this is interesting, I couldn't stand the "storytelling" style of the book. Every other page began as some anecdote about a supposed prisoner, then unspooled into a broader point about prison administration. Only a few of the stories were very memorable. This style, however, resulted in slow and stilted chapters.
February 8, 2019
Someone somewhere suggested this was a good read a couple of years ago... I finally got around to it (thank you to the library system that found a 45yo reprint of an almost 90yo book!)
It was very interesting and had some amusing bits as he tried to explain the public aspect of prison systems.
It got me thinking about the whole system... And this book is close enough to 100 years old, it shouldn't seem that relevant, but I'm not sure the basics would really have changed. We want criminals punished, but we want them to be 'better' when they are released, so what's the balance between 'you were bad, sit in a dark now and think about that', and keeping the prisoners active, skilled and social enough to encourage better (and able) attitude, options and choices when they are released.
There were a couple of examples in here of more experienced criminals getting off because they know how to work the system, even if that means dumping a relative 'accidental criminal' (a first timer who they groomed to take the fall really) in the deep end to pull it off. It covers the issues with mandatory sentencing and the death penalty.
I'd be interested in reading a modern look on all this if anyone know of one?
0219
It was very interesting and had some amusing bits as he tried to explain the public aspect of prison systems.
It got me thinking about the whole system... And this book is close enough to 100 years old, it shouldn't seem that relevant, but I'm not sure the basics would really have changed. We want criminals punished, but we want them to be 'better' when they are released, so what's the balance between 'you were bad, sit in a dark now and think about that', and keeping the prisoners active, skilled and social enough to encourage better (and able) attitude, options and choices when they are released.
There were a couple of examples in here of more experienced criminals getting off because they know how to work the system, even if that means dumping a relative 'accidental criminal' (a first timer who they groomed to take the fall really) in the deep end to pull it off. It covers the issues with mandatory sentencing and the death penalty.
I'd be interested in reading a modern look on all this if anyone know of one?
0219
February 9, 2019
This book is interesting and informative for the most part. Of course, as it's told from the warden's perspective, it doesn't really give any indication of what's it's like to live in a cage. Particularly in light of the fact that during his tenure, there was mandatory sentencing (no time off for good behavior), it would seem there'd be some serious depression, some breakdowns. Did any prisoners have trouble learning to make shoes, etc. Not much real detail in the section on the prisoner's day. Although, maybe prison is just so monotonous it's difficult to make that interesting.
Lawes' tone is very serious and even-handed, even when he talks about prisoners murdering each other and the executions in the electric chair. He'd like things to be different, and he instigates some changes. He does have some opinions about criminals and the cause of crime, but he still seems mystified about human behavior. So am I.
I consider it a serious flaw that this book does not have an index.
Lawes' tone is very serious and even-handed, even when he talks about prisoners murdering each other and the executions in the electric chair. He'd like things to be different, and he instigates some changes. He does have some opinions about criminals and the cause of crime, but he still seems mystified about human behavior. So am I.
I consider it a serious flaw that this book does not have an index.
August 4, 2019
Read for personal historical research. I found this work of immense interest and its contents inspiring. Having worked in various California prisons, adult and youth (including Folsom and CMF, Vacaville) in the 1980's & early into the 2000s, and continuing after moving to Norway - being involved with rehab, youth offenders and day-labor criminals, I was pleased to find this work available through numerous literary resources.
Warden Lawes was an insightful man and the book is well worth the read, though I wish he could have written it commencing from 'Day 1' when his enthusiasm would have emerged rather than what feels a bit like a tone of despair; more of a diatribe laced with overviews of his prison experiences.
The general public in the US has little idea what prison is like - to work there, be incarcerated behind the razor-wire, or what the average inmate is actually like.
Number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, this work is also a good resource for the researcher and enthusiast.
Dorothy Kilgallen’s book 'Murder One' also led me to this book.
Warden Lawes was an insightful man and the book is well worth the read, though I wish he could have written it commencing from 'Day 1' when his enthusiasm would have emerged rather than what feels a bit like a tone of despair; more of a diatribe laced with overviews of his prison experiences.
The general public in the US has little idea what prison is like - to work there, be incarcerated behind the razor-wire, or what the average inmate is actually like.
Number rating relates to the book's contribution to my needs.
Overall, this work is also a good resource for the researcher and enthusiast.
Dorothy Kilgallen’s book 'Murder One' also led me to this book.
Read
September 17, 2020It is hard to believe that this book was published in 1932, because all the issues are still unresolved. Although I immensely enjoyed details of specific cases, and author's wisdom, divagations about capital punishment and social attitudes were important (perhaps a little dry though).
It's an awesome read.
It's an awesome read.
March 17, 2019
Ein ehemaliger Gefängnisdirektor von Singsing beschreibt anhand unzähliger Beispiele und Einzelschicksale, warum er eine (zu damaligen Verhältnissen, Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts) sehr progressive Haltung zum Gefängnissystem.
January 20, 2017
It took quite a while to track this book down. Very popular in the 1930s, and made into a pre-code film, it's hard to come by in 2017, but fully worth the effort. Many of the views of the author - the warden of Sing Sing - are very relevant today, including the dehumanizing of inmates ("it is only when circumstances strike home that we become keenly aware of the necessity of invoking the rule of individuality in dealing with offenders), and the radical expansion of the numbers of prisons and prisoners. He speaks compellingly of the failure of prison culture to rehabilitate, of how the wealthy generally avoid prison terms (like Wall Street Bankers - sound familiar?), and how to fix the US prison system. Unfortunately his recommendations were largely ignored, and the tome is now forgotten.
February 8, 2013
This was a very good book. It provided an interesting look at the American prison system in the late 1800's and the early 1900's. The author was a Warden in Sing Sing for a number of years in the early 1900's. He saw the function of a prison as a place where the convict should be given the opportunity and encouragement to relearn how to function in society. He also believed that justice was not always meted out equally and called for reformation of the prison system. He believed that prisoners should be paid for their work and in return they should pay for the services they received while in prison.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews