American Corrections...A History
In colonial America (the period from the first European settlements through the Revolutionary War), there were no state or federal prisons. Towns operated jails, but these local institutions held mainly debtors and people awaiting trial or execution. The various colonies had different laws for dealing with felons (serious offenders), but generally speaking, their criminal laws imposed physical punishments. Colonial punishments included flogging, branding, mutilation (as in the removal of an ear or nose), hangings, public humiliation, and banishments to wilderness areas, but they seldom involved confinement in penal institutions. In short, in the colonial period punishments emphasized the infliction of pain, not the deprivation of liberty. After the Revolutionary War, citizens of the new country began to rethink issues of crime and punishment. Proud of having achieved liberty from England and stressing the importance of self-government, the leaders of the new United States began to think of deprivation of liberty as a better type of punishment than the old-fashioned physical punishments of the English and Continental traditions. Moreover, they decided that local communities should cont
The competing model, sometimes called the Auburn system after the New York State prison where it was first implemented, also held prisoners in separate cells and forbade communication, but it brought them together during the day for silent labor in prison factories. The Pennsylvania system was first realized at the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, an institution that, inside its walls, was designed like a wagon wheel, with long corridors of cells radiating off a central area in the middle of the yard. which seeks the reformation of its subjects as a primary object. From a central tower or observation post on the walls, a single guard could maintain surveillance of a large portion of the grounds. Otherwise, however, there were usually no other prisons in a state system until the 1970s began. This concern with social control spilled over into reforms of the prison system, manifesting itself in development of the so-called medical model of prison management and in a resurgence of interest in indefinite sentencing. Some found ways to escape or turn on their keepers. By 1870, then, the penitentiary system seemed to need an overhaul. A good-time law that permitted one day of sentence reduction for every five days of good behavior, for instance, could lead to the release of a prisoner with a five-year sentence in four years. The delegates referred to the proposed new type of sentence as an "indeterminate" sentence. )At the end of the Cincinnati conference, the delegates unanimously approved a document, the "Declaration of Principles," that became the philosophical foundation of American prison management for the next 100 years. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the world, locking up close to 450 people for each 100,000 people in our general population. In the Northeast and the Midwest most states also operated two reformatory prisons for young adults, one for males and one for females. And for convicts released on good behavior, they envisioned a system of the type now known as parole, in which state officials would keep former convicts under surveillance as they readjusted to the community.
Common topics in this essay:
Declaration Principles,
Revolutionary War-could,
Penitentiary Philadelphia,
Street Jail,
United Imprisonment,
Progressive Era,
Revolutionary War,
Northeast Midwest,
Pennsylvania York,
English Continental,
auburn system,
pennsylvania system,
declaration principles,
walnut street jail,
prison administrators,
revolutionary war,
street jail,
walnut street,
penal institutions,
medical model,
physical punishments,
misdemeanants minor offenders,
discover inner light,
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Acceptance Essays
