That there is “something rotten in Denmark” in connection with the treatment of prisoners confined in North Carolina state prison is evident despite the vigorous denials of Superintendent George R. Pou and Warden Busbee and the investigation which the legislature is to make should be thorough.
Several times recently prisoners and ex-prisoners who have spent more or less time within those gray walls have let it be known that they were brutally treated, the latest of these being Otto Woods, who was sent up from Guilford county for the murder of a man at Greensboro.
Woods tells a story of horrors which equals tales of the old Spanish Inquisition, declaring that he has been ??, starved, placed in solitary confinement, and that every effort is being made to “break” him. He pleads with the people of the state to secure a ?? for himself and the other inmates of the state prison.
It is true that men and women are placed in the penitentiary to expiate their crimes. They are placed there to protect society and as a warning to others, but it is apparent that the warning does but little good, to some at least.
But these men and women are not thrown into prison to be beat, starved and literally killed by a heartless warden and brutal guards. This is an age of enlightenment, an age of civilization and there should be a change in the methods of treating the inmates of our penal institutions.
There is entirely too much brutality practiced by men with a little authority and power, not only in the state prison but in prison camps all over the state.
We trust that the legislators will go into this matter thoroughly and rid the prison system of this present stench which stinks to the high heavens.
From the editorial page of the Goldsboro News, Sunday, Aug. 17, 1924, R.F. Beasley, editor.
newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn/sn93064755/1924-08-17/ed-1/seq-2/#words=AUGUST+17%2C+1924
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