Elmira Prison

The history of Elmira as a prison has two discrete periods. The second period is well known to criminologists; the first period, almost not at all. But it was in Elmira's period of infamy as a prison camp for Confederate prisoners of war that the adjacent community discovered the profitability of prison as industry. The primary attraction of its location was that it was near an important railroad junction and that the prisoners could not be freed by a sudden Confederate lunge into Maryland, where most prisoners had previously been ...