Excerpt from A Long Day in a Short Life

At dawn of this October day in 1946 a muggy fog lay heavy upon the streets of Washington. Since the night was warm, the fog penetrated into bedrooms through open windows and added its moisture to the night sweat of humid bodies. Despite the heat, with easy conscience or bad, most citizens were asleep.

The inmates of the District Jail also were asleep. However, since they were the errant children of their society, their sleep was guarded by a group of trained custodians - by tier guards in each cell block, and armed guards in high turrets on the outer walls, and a night watch in the central control room.

In a narrow sense, the inmates of this particular jail slept better than some of the city's free citizens, who lay three in a bed, five and seven in one room of a rotting slum kennel. The central jail of this capitol city was modern in design, sanitary, and efficiently administered. Day in and day out it sheltered, fed, and supervised, eleven hundred inmates in various stages of the judicial process.

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