Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US Und.) a psychiatric institution.

1859

Matsell Vocabulum.

2. (US prison, also crank row) the prison segregation block.

1912		A. Berkman Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 325: I am placed in Number 35, the ‘crank row’ beginning several cells further. [...]. [Ibid.] 347: A good-natured boy, turned imbecile by solitary [...] staring at me from the ‘crank row,’ wild-eyed and corpse-like.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 9: Crazy Alley also Cranky Hatch The segregation area of a prison reserved for the mentally unstable inmates.