The Governor’s Dilemma: The Hand-Me-Down Prison
When Washington became a state, the federal government tried to offload the McNeil Island Penitentiary and its prisoners to state control—but Governor Elisha Ferry wasn't having it.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the report to the second legislature of Washington, Governor Elisha P. Ferry detailed a contentious dispute between the state and the federal government. On July 17, 1890, United States Marshal Thomas R. Brown, acting under instructions from the federal Department of Justice, tendered the United States penitentiary at McNeil Island to the state of Washington. The offer included the twenty-seven-acre property and the charge of the federal prisoners currently confined therein. Governor Ferry declined the transfer, stating in a letter to Marshal Brown on July 22, 1890, that he had no legal authority to accept the custody of federal prisoners. He argued that the state was not equipped to assume the burden of federal incarceration, noting that the prison building provided insecure accommodations for about sixty prisoners. Governor Ferry insisted that the transfer of such property and the associated responsibilities of federal prisoners must be delayed until the state legislature could properly debate and act upon the matter, asserting his refusal to let the federal government unilaterally offload its penal obligations onto the fledgling state government.
“I have arrived at the conclusion that I have no authority to accept for the state the property and prisoners tendered by you.”
This tug-of-war over who is responsible for carceral facilities and the costs of housing inmates mirrors modern-day friction between state, federal, and municipal governments regarding jail overcrowding and funding. Even over 130 years ago, the struggle to balance administrative autonomy with the expensive mandates of statehood defined local political discourse in Seattle.
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