Lewis Edward Lawes

• Lewis Edward Lawes
• Born: September 13, 1883
• Died: April 23, 1947

Prison reformer and penologist, was born in Elmira, New York, the son of Sarah (Abbott) Lawes and Harry Lewis Lawes, a guard in the New York State Reformatory in Elmira.

At fifteen, Lewis Lawes—big, and rawboned—tried to enlist in the army for the Spanish-American War. Rejected because of his youth, he returned to the Elmira Free Academy to complete his formal education. In 1901 he succeeded in enlisting in the army and served for three years in the Philippines.

Back home, Lawes decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and take a job as a guard in the reformatory. He passed the examinations, but instead of going to work at the Elmira Reformatory was appointed guard at Clinton Prison at Dannemora, New York. To both prisoners and guards, Clinton was known as “the Siberia of America,” and when Lawes arrived there on a dismal, rainy day, the grim prospect discouraged him so much that he was tempted to return home. Since there was no train available, he decided to have a look around. He stayed at Clinton for six months, was transferred to Auburn for six months more, and in 1906 was sent as a guard to Elmira. He remained at Elmira for eight years—with a brief period of leave in 1912 during which he studied sociology at the New York School of Social Work—and rose to become chief guard and chief record clerk. His ability to handle various nettlesome problems attracted considerable favorable attention.

In 1914 Lawes was appointed chief overseer at the New York City Reformatory on Hart’s Island, and the next year was named superintendent. Administration of the institution had vexed the authorities and the situation provided Lawes with his first opportunity to test his theories of penal correction, which reflected early twentieth-century progressive era attitudes on prisons as rehabilitation centers. He moved the reformatory to larger quarters at New Hampton in Orange County, where his work in handling the young inmates—they built their own prison without walls under his direction—brought him to the notice of Governor Alfred E. Smith of New York, then serving his first term. In 1919 Smith named Lawes to head Sing Sing Prison, at Ossining, on the Hudson River—one of the state’s most troublesome institutions. At first, Lawes was reluctant to become warden of Sing Sing: he knew that the job had defeated virtually every one who had served there, including Thomas Mott Osborne, also a prison reformer.

But on New Year’s Day, 1920, Lewis E. Lawes made his first speech to the inmates at Sing Sing, quoting an old joke—”The easiest way to get out of Sing Sing is to go in as warden”—and his audience laughed. This was his first step in winning the cooperation of the men in his care. Now he tackled his job as warden with the determination to improve morale without diluting discipline. He presented himself “not as an instrument of punishment but as a firm, frank friend in need.” He was prepared to “stretch humanitarianism to the limits of the law with a stiff punch always in reserve.”

Running Sing Sing was a large task. The warden had charge of a population of 1,300 to 2,500, several large factories, a hospital, a theater, a library, and a guard force of 100 men. Lawes’s first step was to eliminate class distinctions among prisoners. Inmates were forbidden to wear silk shirts and fancy neckties; all convicts were compelled to dress alike in prison-made clothing. The convicts were graded according to conduct and newly arrived inmates were assigned to hard labor for ten days in the “rookie squad” before receiving their regular assignments.

During his twenty-one years at Sing Sing, Lawes had in his care some 36,750 prisoners. There were only two violent attempts at escape and only two successful escapes, neither of them violent. Lawes stressed athletics, entertainment, and education. Although some privileges were curtailed, concessions to inmates were made in other ways. On several occasions, to raise funds for worthy purposes, the inmates were permitted to give theatrical performances open to the public.

As a practical penologist, Lawes led in transforming Sing Sing (later renamed the Ossining Correctional Facility) from a place devoted to punishment to one concerned primarily with rehabilitation. And though he was obliged by virtue of his position to direct the electrocution of 299 men and four women, he was bitterly opposed to capital punishment. He pointed out repeatedly that not more than a small fraction of the many thousands of persons accused of murder ever reached the death chamber.

Lawes was honorary president of the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment, president of the Wardens’ Association of America in 1922, and head of the American Prison Association in 1923. In 1926 he was a delegate to an international prison congress in England. Two years later he attended a similar conference in Prague and in 1935 one in Berlin.

In 1905 Lawes married Kathryn Irene Stanley of Elmira; they had three daughters. Kathryn Lawes died in 1937, and two years later he married Elise Chisholm of Jackson, Mississippi.

Lewis Lawes died at sixty-three, a little more than a week after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage, and was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Tarrytown, New York.

The best-known prison warden in the country in the 1920s and 1930s, Lewis Lawes argued strongly for attempts to rehabilitate convicts, not simply to confine and punish them. A practicing reformer, he showed that it was possible to manage a large penitentiary by applying humanitarian principles. And he was equally true to his progressive era heritage in opposing capital punishment.

Lewis E. Lawes was the author of several books and many articles; he was also heard frequently on the radio. His books include Man’s Judgment of Death (1924); Life and Death in Sing Sing (1928); 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), an autobiography that was a great commercial success and later made into a motion picture; Cell 202, Sing Sing (1935); Invisible Stripes (1938), a book about the parole system; Meet the Murderer (1940); and Stone and Steel (1941). In 1935 he edited a magazine, Prison Life Stories, and collaborated with Jonathan Finn on a prison play, Chalked Out. Lawes gave the dramatist John Wexley the title for his 1930 play The Last Mile. See also Current Biography, October 1941; the Dictionary of American Biography, supplement 4(1974). An obituary appeared in The New York Times, April 24, 1947.