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Elmira, New York
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Elmira /ˌɛlˈmaɪrə/ is a city in Chemung County, New York, US. It is the city of the Elmira, New York Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 29,200 at the 2010 census and it is the county seat of Chemung County. The City of Elmira is in the part of the county. It is in the Southern Tier of New York, a distance north of the Pennsylvania state line. This was long an area inhabited by indigenous people, in historic times, it was occupied by the Cayuga nation of the Iroquois Confederacy, also called the Kanawaholla. They had some relations with Europeans and English over fur trading, during the American Revolutionary War, the Sullivan Expedition of 1779 was mounted against the four Iroquois nations who had allied with the British and Loyalist forces. It fought a combined British-Iroquois force at the Battle of Newtown, south of the current city, in which Sullivan, after the conclusion of the war, the Iroquois and the new United States made a treaty at Elmira in 1791 to settle territorial disputes in the region. Most of the Seneca emigrated under pressure with the other Iroquois to Canada, the first European-American settler in Elmira was captain Abraham Miller of the Continental Army. He built a cabin after resigning just before the Revolutionary War, millers Pond and Miller Street are named after him and are near the location of his house. The New York legislature established the Township of Chemung, now Chemung County, the settlement of Newtown was soon established at the intersection of Newtown Creek and the Chemung River. In 1792, the settlement at Newtown joined with the Wisnerburg and DeWittsburg settlements to form the village of Newtown, in 1808, the village officially changed its name to the Town of Elmira, at a town meeting held at Teals Tavern. It is said the town was named after tavern owner Nathan Teals young daughter, in any case, the City of Elmira, also called The Queen City, was incorporated in 1864 from part of the town of Elmira and the village of Elmira. The remaining part of the town of Elmira exists still, surrounding the city on the west, north, the city and town share an intricately entwined history. Carpenters Family History book printed in 1898, Elmira is named after Major General Matthew Carpenters daughter and this occurred according to the book in 1821 at the constitutional convention which Matthew was a delegate to. In 1849, the New York and Erie Railroad was built through Elmira, in 1850, the Elmira and Jefferson Railroad gave the area a route north and the Elmira and Williamsport Railroad a route south in 1854. This made the city a prime location for an Army training, in 1872 the Utica Ithaca and Elmira Railroad was begun, eventually creating a route to Cortland and Syracuse via Horseheads, Breesport and VanEtten. The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad was completed in 1884, the camp, in use from June 6,1864 until autumn 1865, was dubbed Hellmira by its inmates
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New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
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Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
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Incarceration in the United States
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Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world, in 2013 in the US, there were 698 people incarcerated per 100,000 population. This is the U. S. incarceration rate for adults or people tried as adults. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics,2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, additionally,4,751,400 adults in 2013 were on probation or on parole. In total,6,899,000 adults were under supervision in 2013 – about 2. 8% of adults in the U. S. resident population. In 2014, the number of persons in the adult correctional systems had fallen to 6,851,000 persons. About 1 in 36 adults was under some form of correctional supervision – the lowest rate since 1996, on average the correctional population has declined by 1. 0% since 2007, while this continued to stay true in 2014 the number of incarcerated adults slightly increased in 2014. In addition, there were 54,148 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2013, although debtors prisons no longer exist in the United States, residents of some U. S. states can still be incarcerated for debt as of 2016. According to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report, tough-on-crime laws adopted since the 1980s, have filled U. S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders and this policy failed to rehabilitate prisoners and many were worse on release than before incarceration. Rehabilitation programs for offenders can be more cost effective than prison, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, falling crime rates cannot be ascribed to mass incarceration. According to a 2016 analysis of data by the U. S. Education Department, state and local spending on incarceration has grown three times as much as spending on education since 1980. In 1841, Dorothea Dix discovered that prison conditions were, in her opinion, prisoners were chained naked, whipped with rods. Others, criminally insane, were caged, or placed in cellars and she insisted on changes throughout the rest of her life. While focusing on the insane, her comments also resulted in changes for other inmates, the BOP also houses adult felons convicted of violating District of Columbia laws due to the National Capital Revitalization and Self-Government Improvement Act of 1997. As of 2004, state prisons proportionately house more violent felons, in 2016, almost 90% of prisoners were in state prisons, 10% were in federal prisons. At the beginning of 2008, more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States were in prison or jail, total US incarceration peaked in 2008. Total correctional population peaked in 2007, if all prisoners are counted, then in 2008 the US had around 24. 7% of the worlds 9.8 million prisoners
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Prison
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Besides their use for punishing crimes, jails and prisons are frequently used by authoritarian regimes against perceived opponents. Prisons often have facilities that are designed with long term confinement in mind in comparison to jails. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in prisons or prisoner of war camps. The use of prisons can be traced back to the rise of the state as a form of social organization, corresponding with the advent of the state was the development of written language, which enabled the creation of formalized legal codes as official guidelines for society. The best known of early legal codes is the Code of Hammurabi. Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform instead of simply using it as retribution. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines, eventually, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead. The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion, the Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as cages, basements of public buildings. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, the Mamertine Prison was located within a sewer system beneath ancient Rome and contained a large network of dungeons where prisoners were held in squalid conditions, contaminated with human waste. Forced labor on public projects was also a common form of punishment. In many cases, citizens were sentenced to slavery, often in ergastula, during the Middle Ages in Europe, castles, fortresses, and the basements of public buildings were often used as makeshift prisons. Another common punishment was sentencing people to slavery, which involved chaining prisoners together in the bottoms of ships. However, the concept of the modern prison largely remained unknown until the early 19th-century, Punishment usually consisted of physical forms of punishment, including capital punishment, mutilation, flagellation, branding, and non-physical punishments, such as public shaming rituals. However, an important innovation at the time was the Bridewell House of Corrections, located at Bridewell Palace in London and these houses held mostly petty offenders, vagrants, and the disorderly local poor. In these facilities, inmates were given jobs, and through prison labor they were taught how to work for a living, by the end of the 17th century, houses of correction were absorbed into local prison facilities under the control of the local justice of the peace. From the late 17th century and during the 18th century, popular resistance to public execution, rulers began looking for means to punish and control their subjects in a way that did not cause people to associate them with spectacles of tyrannical and sadistic violence. They developed systems of mass incarceration, often with hard labor, the prison reform movement that arose at this time was heavily influenced by two somewhat contradictory philosophies
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Chemung County, New York
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Chemung County is a county in the southern tier of the U. S. state of New York. As of the 2010 census, the population was 88,830 and its name is derived from a Delaware Indian village whose name meant big horn. Chemung County comprises the Elmira, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Elmira-Corning. Many signs posted along roads in Chemung County refer to the area as Mark Twain Country, because the author lived. For the history of Chemung County prior to its creation by partition, see Tioga County, Chemung County was formed from 520 square miles of Tioga County in 1836. In 1854, Chemung County was divided and 110 square miles became Schuyler County, reducing Chemung to 410 square miles, in the late 1870s, the Greenbacker Party became prominent in Chemung and nearby counties in western New York. Here it was allied with labor in a critique of capital, reaching its peak in 1878, the year following the Great Railroad Strike of 1877. There were also strikes that year in Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo and it gradually declined after that, due to internal dissension and the strength of the two major parties. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 411 square miles. Chemung County is in the part of New York State, along the Pennsylvania border. The Southern Tier Expressway runs through the County east-west near the Pennsylvania border, the population density was 223 per square mile. There were 37,745 housing units at a density of 92 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 90. 96% White,5. 82% Black or African American,0. 23% Native American,0. 78% Asian,0. 02% Pacific Islander,0. 75% from other races, and 1. 44% from two or more races. 1. 77% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,16. 4% were of German,15. 7% Irish,12. 5% English,11. 8% Italian,7. 8% American and 6. 3% Polish ancestry according to Census 2000. 96. 2% spoke English and 1. 6% Spanish as their first language,27. 90% of all households were made up of individuals and 12. 20% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the family size was 2.97. Age distribution was 24. 40% under the age of 18,8. 80% from 18 to 24,28. 30% from 25 to 44,22. 90% from 45 to 64, the median age was 38 years. For every 100 females there were 97.70 males, for every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 95.30 males
7.
Supermax prison
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Supermax is the name used to describe control-unit prisons, or units within prisons, which represent the most secure levels of custody in the prison systems of certain countries. It typically involves up to 23-hour-per-day, single-cell confinement for a period of time. Inmates in supermax housing have minimal contact with staff and other inmates, leena Kurki and Norval Morris have argued there is no absolute definition of a supermax, and that different jurisdictions classify prisons as supermax inconsistently. They identify four general features that tend to characterize supermax prisons, Long-term – Once transferred to a supermax prison, powerful administration – Supermax administrators and Correctional Officers have ample authority to punish and manage inmates, without outside review or prisoner grievance systems. Solitary confinement – Supermax prisons rely heavily on intensive solitary confinement, no activities – Few opportunities are provided for recreation, education, substance abuse programs, or other activities generally considered healthy and rehabilitative at other prisons. In supermax, prisoners are allowed out of their cells for only one hour a day. They receive their meals through ports in the doors of their cells, when supermax inmates are allowed to exercise, this may take place in a small, enclosed area where the prisoner will exercise alone. Prisoners are under constant surveillance, usually with closed-circuit television cameras, cell doors are usually opaque, while the cells may be windowless. Conditions are plain, with poured concrete or metal furniture common, cell walls, and sometimes plumbing, may be soundproofed to prevent communication between the inmates. The United States Penitentiary Alcatraz Island, opened in 1934, has considered a prototype. An early form of supermax-style prison unit appeared in Australia in 1975, dubbed the electronic zoo by inmates, Katingal was a super-maximum security prison block with 40 prison cells having electronically operated doors, surveillance cameras, and no windows. It was closed two years later over human rights concerns. Since then, some maximum-security prisons have gone to full lockdown as well, while others have been built, Supermax prisons began to proliferate within the United States after 1984. Prior to 1984 only one prison in the U. S. met supermax standards, by 1999, the United States contained at least 57 supermax facilities, spread across 30–34 states. This prompted Norman Carlson, director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, in Carlsons view, such a prison was the only way to deal with inmates who show absolutely no concern for human life. The Federal Bureau of Prisons solitary confinement units are known as Special Housing Units. In recent years a number of U. S. states have downgraded their supermax prisons, as has been done with Wallens Ridge State Prison, There is only one supermax prison in the United States federal system, ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado. However, it is best known for housing inmates who have been deemed either too dangerous
"Elmira Reformatory". New International Encyclopedia. 1905.
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