A Monument to Convict Labor

Upon Statehood in 1889, the federal penitentiary at Deer Lodge, Montana, became a state institution. The prison housed 198 inmates in a cell block built to hold no more than 140. Prisoners spilled over into the outbuildings in the yard, the wash house, and the prison’s carpenter shop. Warden Frank Conley foresaw the deterioration of the prison if nothing were done to repair and expand it. But the state had no money. Conley was convinced, like other penal administrators of the time, that...