Blountville Jail Clean, Crowded, Evangelist Avers
Capt. Dan McDonald Says He Cannot Say as Much For Other County Jails in East Tennessee
Sullivan county’s jail, although greatly overcrowded, “is as clean as it can be” and the sheriff (John L. Ford) is doing all he can to take care of the men,” according to Captain Dan McDonald, prison evangelist who said yesterday he had visited 85 chain gangs and jails in the last two months.
Other East Tennessee county jails he has visited do not merit commendation but the fault lies generally with the county instead of the sheriff, he said. Rev. McDonald, a Baptist minister who devotes his time to prison work, said conditions revealed by the Wickersham report on jails and penal institutions were not exaggerated.
“We, as a nation, have lost confidence in one another and as a result our prisons are filled to more than capacity. The conditions in many of them are not such that prisoners will have much respect for law and order when their terms are completed,” he said.
McDonald, has never, he stated seen a sheriff who wanted a jail packed with prisoners. ° “If the jail is overcrowded, it is not the sheriff’s fault–he can’t build jails. It is the county’s fault. 1 know of one that is more than 100 years old and is being used today, holding far more prisoners than it was ever intended to.”
The evangelist said “several penal institutions in Tennessee have great room for improvement, particularly Brushy Mountain.” Of the Sullivan county jail, McDonald said Sheriff Ford was doing all possible and that the jail was well kept but that the 104 prisoners are too many for that size jail, which at one time was considered crowded with 85 men.
The evangelist said the Virginia state road convict camp near Hilton was well conducted by Warden Reams, whom he described as “a very fine gentleman who treats the boys all right and has their respect.” He also said Sheriff H. W. Culbertson was handling the Scott county jail well but that he was handicapped in his efforts because it is “antiquated and overcrowded.”
McDonald’s theory of prison reform, he stated, is to seek “the cooperation of the prisoner with the officials, thereby leading to constructive prison reform, the moral and physical uplift of the prisoner, and the restoration of the offender to good citizenship.”
He visits chain gangs and county jails, he said, because “there !s the beginning of prison reform and because they do not, as penitentiaries do, have chaplains.”
