About a year after the Prison Association of New York gained authority comparable to that of the politically appointed prison inspectors, the New York legislature challenged the Prison Association’s inspection authority. In 1847, the legislature considered a bill to abolish the Prison Association’s inspection authority. Prison Association officials objected strenuously, and the bill did not pass.^

The New York legislature then indirectly undermined the Prison Association’s legal authority. On December 14, 1847, the legislature passed an act for better regulating prisons. Regarding prison inspectors, the act declared:

The following persons shall be authorized to visit at pleasure all county and state prisons: The governor and lieutenant governor, secretary of state, comptroller and attorney general, members of the legislature, judges of the court of appeals, supreme court and county judges, district attorneys and every minister of the gospel having charge of a congregation in a town wherein any such prison is situated. No other persons not otherwise authorized by law shall be permitted to enter the rooms of a county prison in which convicts are confined, unless under such regulations as the sheriff of the county shall prescribe, nor to enter a state prison except under such regulations as the inspectors shall prescribe.^

The Prison Association was omitted from the list of explicitly authorized visitors, but arguably included in the phrase “otherwise authorized by law.” The act incorporating the Prison Association, passed on May 9, 1846, gave the Prison Association the same rights as prison inspectors under the Revised Statutes of 1829. The 1847 act repealed those provisions of the Revised Statutes of 1829, but did not address the Prison Association’s incorporating act. The Prison Association’s statutory authority thus became a matter of controversy between the Prison Association and the prison inspectors after passage of the 1847 prison law.