Out of Purgatory

On the high bluffs overlooking the Missouri River, golfers in Bermuda shorts and T shirts queue up to play an intricate, 18-hole miniature course. Near by, tables buzz with games of checkers and pinochle. From handball courts comes the hollow thunk of ball against board. The country-club atmosphere is deceptive--and was planned that way as part of a wall-to-wall overhaul that in two years has transformed the Missouri State Penitentiary at Jefferson City from what a visitor once termed a "loathsome stone purgatory" into one of the nation's model prisons.

For most of its 132 years, the Missouri poky resembled a Dickensian choky. Though custody was lax for the favored few who hid money or political pull, most inmates lived in nightmarish squalor. At one time the prison held close to twice as many as it was supposed to, with many 12-ft. by 9-ft. cubicles sleeping seven or more. Maggots and rats infested the food-handling areas. Gambling, homosexuality and use of drugs were rife, and as a result of their stay in "Jeff City," many convicts were more intractable when they left prison than when they went in.

Knives & Forks. A series of bloody riots in 1954 left seven convicts dead, injured scores of others, and cost $10 million in damage to buildings and equipment--but did little to awaken the state government. In 1964, after 16 months of internal warfare among rival convict factions had killed seven men and hospitalized 205 others, the then Governor, John Dalton, sent in investigators to determine what had gone wrong. Nearly everything had. One day after a legislative committee issued a scathing report on conditions in the penitentiary, the warden shot himself. The state director of corrections left soon after, to be succeeded by Fred Wilkinson, 59, former deputy director of the federal Bureau of Prisons and the first professional penologist ever to run the sprawling (seven institutions, 3,476 inmates) Missouri system.

Wilkinson and his new warden, Harold Swenson, 58, a longtime associate in the federal system, quickly established a new climate. Knives and forks --hitherto forbidden as potentially dangerous weapons--joined spoons on the dining tables; fresh fruit appeared on the breakfast menu; shower rooms were placed at the end of each cell-block tier so that convicts could bathe daily instead of twice a week. Cheap transistor radios were put on sale. For the first time, maximum-security prisoners were allowed outdoors for recreation and supplied with pillows and mattresses instead of back-breaking straw ticks.

Stern Side. A burned-out cell block, still standing a decade after the riots, was replaced by a prisoner-built recreation building that has become the home of the Versatiles, an eight-man convict combo that performs at schools and other state institutions. Most important, the prison population has been reduced by 20%. Yet a truly professional administration also has its stern side. Guards, who had often snoozed in overstuffed chairs in the watchtowers, were now perched on high aluminum chairs and provided with M-l carbines and sawed-off 12-gauge shotguns in place of puny .22-cal. rifles. Many of the old-timers--moonlighting farmers, bellhops and taxi drivers--were replaced with younger, more competent men.

The real purpose of a prison, in Wilkinson's view, is not to keep prisoners happy--or even to keep them in--but to rehabilitate them. Everyone who can works at Missouri, and training and educational programs are being given top priority. Despite the reduced population, more inmates (710) are enrolled in rehabilitation programs now than ever before. The idea, of course, is to teach prisoners useful occupations, in the hope that most will never again see the inside of "Jeff City."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.