Funds were allocated for the construction of a temporary prison, which opened in 1839. It was constructed of tamarack logs.
(These and other painted Illustrations are
from murals painted within the original stone prison by residents of the
artist’s colony which now occupies one of the structures)
The wooden structure was intended to house prisoners while
their labor was being used to construct a more secure and permanent facility
from stone quarried from the area and barged down the Grand River, which ran
near the site. Indeed, a party of 12
inmates escaped from the wooden structure during its brief existence. Widely known as The Jackson Gang, the
escapees preyed on residents of the community for years.
+Connecting+Cell+Block+to+Guard+Tower+in+Original+Jackson+Prison.JPG)
(Imagine the tunnels without the recently added infrastructure renovations)
While the cells were bleak, they were plush compared to The Hole—the disciplinary cell into
which problematic prisoners were placed.
Shut off by solid steel doors with a slot through which meals were
delivered, inmates in The Hole lived in permanent darkness. They were told to do their sanitary business
using a trough which ran around the perimeter of the cell. Under the regime of one of the early
superintendents, new inmates were greeted with an initial 14 day stay in The
Hole to impress upon them the importance of abiding by the discipline imposed
upon them. That discipline included the Code of
Silence. Any prisoner caught speaking
aloud to—to another prisoner, to a guard (unless the guard initiated the conversation),
or even to himself—could find himself in The Hole.
(The mural illustrates a watermelon festival held in the prison)
The 5-story tower in the illustration housed the areas where
lawyers were permitted to meet with their inmate clients, as well as the
primitive medical facility available to inmate, and a separate area later used
to conduct classes for cooperative inmates who hoped to pursue a more
productive career upon release. The
warden and his family lived on the third and fourth floors. Guards and other prison staff resided outside
the walls.
While the state’s handful of women prisoners were originally housed in the Jackson facility, it was clear that imprisoning men and women in the same facility wasn’t going to turn out well. The women inmates were moved to a separate facility elsewhere in Michigan in 1859. All but one. Serving a life sentence, she (who, in all likelihood didn’t remotely resemble the muralist’s rendering of her) remained at the Jackson Prison until the warden persuaded the Governor to commute her sentence at the age of 80 so she could spend her remaining years living with her daughter outside the walls. But during most of her incarceration, she did the cooking and housekeeping for the warden and his family and babysat the children on the rare occasions that he and his wife had a social commitment outside the walls. Apparently, nobody bothered to determine the crime that had earned her that life sentence—poisoning three of her own children.
Disclaimer: Doubts have been raised about the authenticity of the muralist's
depiction of the prison's last woman prisoner.
depiction of the prison's last woman prisoner.
Trusted and athletic prisoners were sometimes permitted to participate in these events, and a prison baseball team was even formed. (Guards accompanied the team to away games.)
From the start, the prison was intended to be self-sufficient. A farm was established within the walls. Over time, additional industries were created and factories constructed within the walls. Bricks, soap, clothing, brooms, and brushes were made for sale in the wider world, as were gravestones and monuments. In 1918, prisoners began manufacturing license plates for horseless carriages that were becoming increasingly popular in Michigan.
All of that manufacturing required transportation to the
market, and largely because of the prison industries the city of Jackson came
to have six different railroad lines leading into it. A separate spur permitted trains entry
through the wall, and even into some of the prison buildings. Buildings and the surrounding walls were
retrofitted,
(Above: Train portal through the outer walls;
Below: Train portal into a prison factory which
has been rehabbed to house artists' studios)
Below: Train portal into a prison factory which
has been rehabbed to house artists' studios)
Through a state agent, inmates were also contracted by local farmers and
industrialists as cheap labor. Prison
labor was originally priced at 33½
cents per day (not per hour), with 28½ cents of that wage going to the state to
cover the prison’s cost in housing and feeding him. The remaining 5 cents was set aside to
establish a grubstake for the prisoner upon his release. Working under contracts that typically
lasted five years, the prison built rent-free shops for manufacturers to
use. Prisoners working outside the
walls were shackled during their walk to and from the prison and were under the
supervision of armed prison guards while at work.
One of the most prominent employers of Jackson prisoners was
the Austin, Tomlinson & Webster Manufacturing Co., which began making farm
wagons in 1842. The company’s Jackson
Wagons achieved national prominence for their durability and reliability. At the company’s peak, it was producing over
6,000 wagons annually, ranging from small ones designed to be pulled by a goat
to huge ones requiring teams of oxen. They
proved to be the top-selling wagon among settlers heading west for the Gold
Rush. Perhaps their most famous customer
was P. T. Barnum, who contracted with them to build a wagon big and strong
enough to transport Jumbo (the elephant who allegedly was 10’ tall and weighed 6½ tons) in circus parades after his
arthritic knees could no longer handle the walking.
But not all of the prisoners were happy campers. After a disgruntled prisoner set a fire in 1852 that destroyed several of the company’s buildings, the company and other contractors began paying inmate workers bonuses which served as an incentive (AKA bribe) to perform more reliably. The practice ensured smooth operation for 15 years until a state investigation barred the bonus practice as not punishing prisoners sufficiently. Within a month of the ban, “accidental” fires caused over $100,000 of damage to contractors’ workshops.
Moving to the New Prison
While additions were periodically added to the prison to
accommodate its growing population, it became clear over time that a new
facility would be needed. In 1924,
construction began (by contractors this time, not prison laborers) of a modern
prison (i.e., incorporating electricity, plumbing, and heating) on a patch of
nearly 3,500 acres in nearby Blackman Township.
34 foot walls enclosed an area of 57 acres containing 16 free-standing
cell blocks collectively comprising 5,742 10’ x 6’ cells. While the cell blocks were windowless, the
cells within each block were arranged on 5 levels surrounding a central dining
area on the first floor. Walls between
cells were solid, but the front and back walls of each cell were barred. Jail maintenance staff could access each
cell’s plumbing and electrical circuits from a hallway that ran between the
back of the cell and the cell block wall.
Starting in 1926, inmates of the old facility were slowly
migrated over to the new one. Since the
structures were only three miles apart, groups of prisoners were shackled
together and marched to the new prison by guards.
The prisoners were undoubtedly pleased
(well, as pleased as an involuntary guest of the Michigan Department of
Corrections is likely to become) to be housed in better accommodations, but
controversy arose when the warden announced plans to destroy the canaries that
had provided alerts to dangerous gases in the old prison. The long-term prisoners had grown attached to
the birds and complained that there was no need to destroy the innocent
creatures. The warden finally relented
and agreed to free the canaries once the original prison had closed. Ironically, prison management had fed the
birds better than it had the inmates.
The birds had subsisted on high quality Hartz Mountain songbird feed—a
blend of various seeds. Once the birds
had been released, it became obvious that one of the sources of seeds in the
blend had been the Cannabis plant.
Undigested seeds passed through the gut of the freed canaries resulted
in the Jackson area having an exceptionally luxuriant population of wild
marijuana.
By 1934, all the prisoners had been moved. After the cells had been torn out of one
cellblock, a hardwood floor was installed and the building was repurposed as a
National Guard armory. Unique electric chandeliers were created from the huge
wheels on the carriages that moved Civil War cannons. Eventually, a dedicated armory was built, and
the original facility was once again vacant.
Eventually, someone figured out what to do with the site. More than
$8 million has been raised from foundations, donors, tax credits, a federal
home loan, and community development block grants to convert an abandoned
cellblock and one of the dormant factories within the 25-foot wall to art
studios, a gallery, and 62 one, two-, and three-bedroom apartments, many featuring
18-foot ceilings. Occupancy is limited
to working artists, and the mixture of dancers, painters, sculptors, poets,
writers, and others who began moving in early in 2008 make for a lively bunch. (They report that the three foot thick stone
walls keep their apartments cool in the summer and warm in the winter.) A series of small shops offer visitors an
opportunity to purchase works produced by the residents.
Additional funding promises the conversion of additional space
into 88 townhouse units for senior citizens.
Armory Arts Village resident and master storyteller Judy Krasnow
was drawn to the development when she first heard of it and became one of the
first residents when she moved up from Florida.
Intrigued by the setting, Krasnow began researching the history of the
old prison. Working with current and
former prison guards in the Jackson area, she found all of fascinating
information. She began arranging guided
public tours of the facility, together with visits to the studios of some of the
artists in residence. When I took the
tour a cousin and her husband in August, 2012, we had the opportunity to visit
the studios of woodcarver Carol A. Kent and acrylic painter and woodburner Lou
Cubille. 
(Above, woodcarver Carol A. Kent with a casting of one of her carvings.
Below: Other than the eyes [acrylic paint], Lou Cabille's wolf
was produced solely by woodburning)
Below: Other than the eyes [acrylic paint], Lou Cabille's wolf
was produced solely by woodburning)
Krasnow had also arranged a contract with the Michigan
Department of Corrections which allowed our guide and us a glimpse into the
real, working prison down the road from the original one.
After the federal government ruled that the
sheer size of the new facility inherently led to inhumane conditions, eight of
the sixteen cellblocks were shuttered.
The closed cellblock that we were permitted to visit had been the
reception center. Every prisoner
entering the custody of MDOC initially resided in that structure during a
quarantine period (for health reasons) and while the determination was made
where to house them within the Jackson complex.
Some areas of the complex were medium security, while others were high
or even maximum security.
Cameras were
not permitted during this portion of our tour, but the reality of seeing five
floors of barred cells was sobering.
When our guides pushed the button to open or close the sliding doors of
a dozen cells at a time, the sound was eerie.
The End of the Line for Prisoners
The tour ended after we were returned to the old prison to
visit the gift shop. Marilyn, Dick, and I,
however, didn’t want it to end. We
checked with our guide and learned that prisoners who died in either the old or
the new prison and whose bodies went unclaimed were buried in the prison plot
of nearby Woodland Cemetery. We found a
bleak scene.
The tombstones reflected the bleak and anonymous nature of a lifer’s
prison life. Most were marked only with
sequential numbers reflecting the order in which burials had occurred.
On occasion, loved ones would pay for a more
personalized marker reflecting the date of death. Even these, though, lacked the prisoner’s
name.
It was as though the individual’s
identity had entirely faded away during his time within the walls.
Eventually, even the tombstone might cease to
exist.
Booking Your Own Tour
As I write this, the 2012 tour season has ended. Judy and her crew
will certainly resume and maybe even expand them. The historicprisontoursjackson.com site seems
to have gone dark, but that’s probably only a temporary glitch. In addition to the regular daytime tours,
they also offer a limited number of evening events during which visitors can
determine whether or not the place is haunted.
(Left: Marilyn (my cousin) & Dick Ludman in front of the wall surrounding the old prison.
Right: Marilyn with a cutout of tour originator Judy Krasner re-enacting Temperance activist Carrie Nation)
Right: Marilyn with a cutout of tour originator Judy Krasner re-enacting Temperance activist Carrie Nation)
