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The above Hart Island house, once used as a staffer residence, was converted during the administration (1954-1966) of Correction Commissioner Anna M. Kross, herself a former judge, into an experimental combined court and social diagnotic center to devise sentences that upheld the law while providing social services support for certain quality-of-life offense repeaters upon release. The wooden structure is now in shambles and mostly hidden beneath island overgrowth.
Typical programs involved finding useful activity to occupy the hours, days and weeks spent by elderly inmates in the Workhouse, such as mending toys for Christmas distribution to needy children. In the photo on the left, Hart Island Warden Edward Dros and Commissioner Kross watch inmate at work.
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