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  3. At seven o’clock each morning a bell sounds in the red brick buildings on the steep bank of the Hudson River at Ossining, New Yo

At seven o’clock each morning a bell sounds in the red brick buildings on the steep bank of the Hudson River at Ossining, New Yo

admin2012-01-05  29
问题 At seven o’clock each morning a bell sounds in the red brick buildings on the steep bank of the Hudson River at Ossining, New York. As it rings, an entire, separate town of some 2300 persons comes to life. It is the prison town of Sing Sing, a world of men who are confined but also living, working, playing—and hoping Sing Sing is a town that lives on hope.
   The seven o’clock bell is the signal for Sing Sing’s 1748 inmates and 514 man staff to begin another round of duties. The prisoners rise, wash and dress. They make up their narrow beds army-style and make certain that the objects on their dressers are regulation neat. By 7:15, when guards come along the runways to unlock the individual cells, the men are ready. They file slowly to the mess hall, failing into step along the way with friends and acquaintances. Each man grabs a tray and gets a breakfast of oatmeal with milk and sugar, bread, and coffee; he takes his seat at one of the long rows of eating benches, places the tray before him, and begins his breakfast. So starts the day in Sing Sing.
   Breakfast over, the men file from the mess hall and under the watchful eyes of guards, drop their eating utensils into boxes provided at the doors. At five minutes to eight they go outside in a long, chattering line down to the cluster of prison workshops.
   The prison has a dual function: it has its own permanent population, but it also serves as a receiving station for the great flow of prisoners from New York City. Here they come to be examined, screened, and eventually transferred to upstate institutions.
   For the first two weeks, the new arrival is put through a series of mental, physical, and psychological examinations and given courses to prepare him for prison life. In each batch of new prisoners there are hardened men for whom prison can serve just one function—to remove them form society and keep them from doing further harm. But in each batch there are also those who can be helped and encouraged and turned into law-abiding citizens. It is toward these that most of the effort at the prison is directed.
   Sing Sing is a school, hospital, and factory as well as a prison. If initial tests show that a man is illiterate, he goes to the prison school to receive the equivalent of an eighth-grade education. If he needs medical treatment, he is sent to the prison hospital. If he shows some special aptitude, or appears capable of learning a trade, he is assigned to a regular job in one of the shops.
   The shops cover a wide range of activities. A man may be assigned to the printshop to learn the printer’s trade, or to the neighboring machine shop, where a twelve-month course turns raw trainees into good auto mechanics, Many of the prisons "graduates," incapable of earning an honest living before now support themselves on the good wages they make as skilled workers.
   The shops are busy until 11:40 a. m., when the men straggle up the slope to the mess hall for dinner. In the afternoons some men go back to the shops. Others may meet and talk with relatives in the prison’s visiting room. Athletes may spend hours running and drilling on the basketball court.
   The day’s work ends at 3:30, giving the men more than an hour of relative freedom before the supper whistle sounds at 4:40. With the evening meal, the day ends. The men go directly from the mess hall to their cell blocks and are locked in for the night. Each cell is equipped with a Set of radio headphones tuned into programs sent over the prison circuit. A prisoner may read one of the well-thumbed volumes from the prison library, which circulates about 36,000 volumes a year, or he may work, as many inmates do, on a correspondence course to improve his chances of making a living when he gets out. Lights go out at ten o’clock. This routine does not vary greatly, for any of Sing Sing’s inmates.
   "We run the prison like a city of eighteen hundred people, only of course with a lot more police," says Warden Wilfred I. Denno. "Anything you couldn’t do on the outside, you can’t do on the inside. You can’t fight, you can’t abuse an officer, you can’t steal. If you do, you’ll be punished. We hold court twice a week and try to make the punishment fit the crime."
   This code is impressed on the prisoner from the start, it underlies his every move on every day he spends in Sing Sing. He is faced with clear alternatives. If he misbehaves, he received punishment in the form of restricted privileges or even strict confinement. In one typical week there were only five infractions of prison rules, most of which were minor. One man was reprimanded for not reposing to work on time, one for creating a disturbance by trying to shove his way into the mess-hall line ahead of those already waiting. In three weeks of reports there was only one case of serious, outright rebellion against prison discipline. An inmate who was to be released in a month suddenly refused to follow an officer’s order. He was promptly placed in segregation for the rest of his prison term. There are no dark holes or bread-and-water routines at Sing Sing in segregation, the cells and the food are the same as in the rest of the prison. But a man’s movements are restricted. He is kept locked in his cell, isolated from his fellows, and cannot go to the movies or to the commissary.
   If a prisoner behaves, he accumulates "good time," an important source of hope for most prisoners. Good time is the time by which, through his own good conduct, a prisoner may reduce his minimum sentence. Good behavior earns a man ten days good time a month. So a prisoner facing a three-to-six-year term would be able to appear before the parole board for possible release at the end of two years.
   Release then is not automatiC. The parole board must consider many other factors. All that good time does is to guarantee a prisoner the right to appear before the parole board earlier than he other wise could.
    The real importance of good time is that it gives a prisoner the one hope that stirs all Sing Sing—the hope of earlier parole, the hope of freedom. A prisoner has to hope, "Once you take away a man’s hope, you make a bitter man." Warden Denno says. That is the problem of Sing Sing: to punish and yet avoid the deprivation of hope that can make an imprisoned man more desperate, mere vengeful, and a greater menace to society.
What does "good time" refer to? Does it have any importance to the prisoners?
选项
答案Good time is the time by which, through his own good conduct, a prisoner may reduce his minimum sentence. Yes, it does. Because good time may shorten the sentence period of a prisoner, offering prisoners hope of freedom and the opportunities to be released earlier.
解析 (“好时光”的定义见文章倒数第三段第二句。“好时光”指的是罪犯通过良好的表现获得的减刑。“好时光”的重要性参见文章倒数第一段。)
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