Correction System W1
Leroy SAveLesky once worked on A project To redecorate the offices of the legislators of the state of oregon.
One of his tasks was doing detail work on a six-
headed embroidery machine, concentrating to make sure that its threads did not cross so
that it could produce high-quality, brightly colored reproductions of the Great Seal of the
State of Oregon. Savelesky’s work would brighten up the desks of the state legislators: a
small Oregon flag with the state seal embroidered on one side and a beaver on the other.
However, Savelesky was not employed by an interior designer, nor were his hourly
wages anywhere close to the federal minimum. He was working at the garment factory
of the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in Pendleton. When residents of Oregon
visit their state capitol, they may or may not notice this emblem of state pride. But they
will certainly not realize that their state’s prison system’s industry was responsible for put-
ting it there.
America gave the world its first penitentiary, an institution created to reform offend-
ers within an environment designed to focus their full attention on their moral rehabilita-
tion. An important element in early American prisons was inmate labor. To the Quakers
in Pennsylvania, solitary work was viewed as necessary for reforming wayward men. New
York officials saw inmate labor not only as a way to reform prisoners but also as a way
to finance prison operations. The use of the penitentiary reflected a major shift in cor-
rectional practice away from the brutal public punishments that had once occurred with
some regularity. Ideas about both human nature and the purpose of punishment had
changed dramatically as well. Although the work of Cesare Beccaria and others affected
penal policies throughout much of the Western world, American correctional institutions
and practices have developed in decidedly American ways by responding to social and
political pressures within the United States.
This chapter surveys the historical changes in correctional thought and practices in
the United States. We focus on seven periods: the colonial period, the arrival of the peni-
tentiary, the reformatory movement, the Progressive movement, the medical model, the
community model, and the crime control model. As each period is discussed, we empha-
size the ways in which correctional goals reflected ideas current at the time.
The Colonial Period
During the colonial period most Americans lived under laws and practices transferred from
England and adapted to local conditions. In New England the Puritans maintained a strict soci-
ety, governed by religious principles, well into the middle of the eighteenth century, and they rig-
orously punished violations of religious laws. As in England, banishment, corporal punishment,
the pillory, and death were the common penalties. In 1682, with the arrival of
William Penn
,
Pennsylvania adopted “The Great Law,” which was based on humane Quaker principles and
emphasized hard labor in a house of correction as punishment for most crimes. Death was re-
served for premeditated murder. The Great Law survived until 1718, when it was replaced by
the Anglican Code, which was already in force in other colonies. The latter code listed 13 capital
offenses, with larceny the only felony not punishable by death. Whipping, branding, mutilation,
and other corporal punishments were prescribed for other offenses, as were fines. Enforcement
of this code continued throughout the colonies until the Revolution.
Unlike England, with its crowded hulks, jails, and houses of correction, the colonies seldom
used institutions for confinement.
1
Instead, banishment, fines, death, and the other punishments
just mentioned were the norm. As David Rothman writes, the death penalty was common:
The New York Supreme Court in the pre–Revolutionary era regularly sentenced criminals
to death, with slightly more than twenty percent of all its penalties capital ones. When mag-
istrates believed that the fundamental security of the city was in danger, as in the case of a
slave revolt in 1741, the court responded with great severity (burning to death thirteen of
the rebellion’s leaders and hanging nineteen others). Even in less critical times the court had
frequent recourse to the scaffold for those convicted of pickpocketing, burglary, robbery,
counterfeiting, horse stealing, and grand larceny as well as murder.
The arrival of the Penitentiary
Until the beginning of the 1800s, America remained sparsely populated and predominantly rural.
In 1790 the entire population numbered less than four million, and no city had more than 50,000
inhabitants. By 1830 the rural population had more than doubled, and the urban population had
more than tripled. Growth was accompanied by rapid social and economic changes that affected
all aspects of life. Colonial life had been oriented toward the local community: Everyone knew
everyone else, neighbors helped one another as needed, and the local clergy and elite maintained
social control. In the nineteenth century, however, social problems could no longer be handled
with the help of neighbors. In an increasingly heterogeneous urban and industrial society, respon
-
sibility for the poor, insane, and criminal became the province of the state and its institutions.
With the Revolution, the ideas of the Enlightenment gained currency (see Chapter 2), and
a new concept of criminal punishment came to the fore. This correctional philosophy, based
on the ideas of Beccaria, Bentham, and Howard, coincided with the ideals of the Declaration of
Independence, which took an optimistic view of human nature and a belief in each person’s per
-
fectibility.
5
Social progress was thought possible through reforms to match the dictates of “pure
reason.” Emphasis also shifted from the assumption that deviance was part of human nature to
a view that crime was caused by forces in the environment. The punitive colonial penal system
based on retribution was thus held to be incompatible with the idea of human perfectibility.
Reformers argued that if Americans were to become committed to the humane and op
-
timistic ideal of human improvability, they had to remove barbarism and vindictiveness from
penal codes and make reformation of the criminal the primary goal of punishment. Thomas
Jefferson and other leaders of the new republic worked to liberalize the harsh penal codes of the
colonial period. Pennsylvania led the way with new legislation that sought ‘
‘‘
to reclaim rather
than destroy,’ ‘to correct and reform the offenders,’ rather than simply to mark or eliminate
them.”
6
Several states, including Connecticut (1773), Massachusetts (1785), New York (1796),
and Pennsylvania (1786), added incarceration with hard labor as an alternative to such public
punishments as whippings and the stocks. For example, the Massachusetts State Prison, which
opened in 1805, was designed as a workhouse; inmates labored from dawn to dusk making
shoes and nails as a means of “destroying [their] ‘habit of idelness’ [
sic
] and replacing it with a
‘habit of industry’ more conducive to an honest livelihood.”
7
Incarceration, in the tradition of the English workhouse, developed in the immediate af-
termath of the Revolution. The
penitentiary
, as conceptualized by the English reformers and
their American Quaker allies, first appeared in 1790, when part of Philadelphia’s Walnut Street
Jail was converted to allow separate confinement. The penitentiary differed markedly from the
prison, house of correction, and jail. It was conceived as a place where criminal offenders could
be isolated from the bad influences of society and one from another so that, while engaged in
productive labor, they could reflect on their past misdeeds, repent, and be reformed. As the
word
penitentiary
indicates, reformers hoped that while offenders were being punished, they
would become penitent, see the error of their ways, and wish to place themselves on the right
path. They could then reenter the community as useful citizens.
The American penitentiary attracted the world’s attention, and the concept was incorpo-
rated at Millbank and Pentonville in England and in various other locales in Europe. By 1830,
foreign observers were coming to America to see this innovation in penology; France sent Alexis
de Tocqueville and Gustave Auguste de Beaumont, England sent William Crawford, and Prussia
sent Nicholas Julius. By the middle of the century, the U.S. penitentiary in its various forms—
especially the Pennsylvania and New York systems—had become world famous.
The Pennsylvania System
As in England, U.S. Quakers set about to implement their humanistic and religious ideas in the
new nation; in Philadelphia their efforts came to fruition. For Quakers, penance and silent con-
templation could allow one to move from the state of sin toward perfection. The penitentiary
thus provided a place where individuals, left on their own, could be reformed.
Quakers were among the Philadelphia elite who in 1787 formed the reformist Society for
Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisoners. Under the Quaker leadership of
Benjamin Rush
and others, including Benjamin Franklin, the society urged that capital and corporal punish-
ment be replaced with incarceration. Members of the Society had communicated with John
Howard, and their ideals in many ways reflected his.
In 1790 the Society was instrumental in passing legislation almost identical to England’s
Penitentiary Act of 1779. The 1790 law specified that an institution was to be established in
which “solitary confinement to hard labour and a total abstinence from spirituous liquors will
prove the most effectual means of reforming these unhappy creatures.”
8
To implement the new legislation, the existing three-story Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia
was expanded in 1790 to include a “Penitentiary House” for the solitary confinement of “hard-
ened and atrocious offenders.” The plain stone building housed eight cells on each floor and had
an attached yard. Each cell was dark and small—only 6 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 9 feet high.
From a small grated window high on the outside wall, inmates “could perceive neither heaven
nor earth.” Inmates were classified by offense: Serious offenders were placed in solitary confine-
ment without labor; the others worked together in shops during the day under a strict rule of
silence and were confined separately at night.
9
The Walnut Street Jail soon became unmanageable, with crowding a major issue. At one
point, upwards of 40 inmates were housed together in cells measuring 18 square feet.
10
The leg
-
islature approved construction of additional institutions for the state: Western Penitentiary on
the outskirts of Pittsburgh and Eastern State Penitentiary in Cherry Hill, near Philadelphia.
The opening of Eastern State Penitentiary in 1829 marked the full development of the peni-
tentiary system based on
separate confinement
. Eastern was designed by John Haviland, an
English immigrant and an acquaintance of John Howard. The newly constructed facility was
described at the time as “the most imposing in the United States.”
11
Cell blocks extended from
a central hub like the spokes of a wheel. Inmate cells measured 12 by 8 by 10 feet and had an at-
tached 18-foot-long exercise yard. Cells were furnished with a fold-up metal bedstead, a simple
toilet, a wooden stool, a workbench, and eating utensils. Light came from an 8-inch window in
the ceiling; the window could be blocked to plunge the cell into darkness as a disciplinary mea
-
sure. The inmates did not see peers; in fact, their only human contact was the occasional visit of
a clergyman or prison official.
12
Solitary labor, Bible reading, and reflection on their own behav-
ior were viewed as the keys to providing offenders with the opportunity to repent.
In the years between Walnut Street and Eastern, other states had adopted aspects of the
Pennsylvania system. Separate confinement was introduced by Maryland in 1809, by Massachu-
setts in 1811, by New Jersey in 1820, and by Maine in 1823, but Eastern was the fullest expres-
sion of the concept of rehabilitation through separate confinement.
As described by Robert Vaux, one of the original reformers, the Pennsylvania system was
based on the following principles:
1.
Prisoners would not be treated vengefully but should be convinced that through hard and
selective forms of suffering they could change their lives.
2.
Solitary confinement would prevent further corruption inside prison.
3.
In isolation, offenders would reflect on their transgressions and repent.
4.
Solitary confinement would be punishment because humans are by nature social beings.
5.
Solitary confinement would be economical because prisoners would not need long periods
of time to repent; therefore, fewer keepers would be needed, and the costs of clothing would
be lower.
13
The Pennsylvania system of separate confinement soon became controversial. Within five
years of its opening, Eastern endured the first of several investigations carried out over the years
The new York (auburn) System
Faced with overcrowded facilities such as Newgate Prison, in 1816 the New York legislature autho
-
rized a new state prison in Auburn. Influenced by the reported success of the separate confinement
of some prisoners in the Walnut Street Jail, the New York building commission decided to erect a
portion of the new facility on that model and to authorize an experiment to test its effectiveness.
The concept proved a failure—sickness, insanity, and suicide increased markedly among the prison
-
ers. The practice was discontinued in 1824, and the governor pardoned those then held in solitary.
In 1821
Elam Lynds
was installed as warden at Auburn. Instead of duplicating the complete
isolation practiced in Pennsylvania, Lynds worked out a new
congregate system
of prison
discipline whereby inmates were held in isolation at night but congregated in workshops during
the day. The inmates were forbidden to talk or even to exchange glances while on the job or at
meals. Lynds was convinced that convicts were incorrigible and that industrial efficiency should
be the overriding purpose of the prison. He instituted a reign of discipline and obedience that
included the lockstep and the wearing of prison stripes. Furthermore, he considered it “impos-sible to govern a large prison without a whip. Those who know human nature from books only
may say the contrary.”
16
Southern Penology
Following the end of the Civil War, southern lawmakers enacted “Black Codes,” which were laws
designed to control newly freed African Americans. Such codes established curfews for blacks
and made it a crime for them to own a gun or use offensive language around white women.
19
Freed slaves and their descendants were also subject to vagrancy laws that required all individu-
als to give proof of employment at a moment’s notice. Unemployment among all southern men
following the Civil War was extremely high, but it was primarily black men who were subjected
to the enforcement of vagrancy laws. Once arrested, these men enjoyed almost no rights af
-
forded to arrestees today, such as legal representation.
20
Any conviction, regardless of the crime
committed, resulted in harsh punishments.
Because of the devastation of the war and depression in the agriculturally based economy,
funds to construct new prisons were scarce. At the same time, southerners faced the task of
rebuilding their communities and economy. Given these challenges, a large African American
prisoner labor force, and the states’ need for revenue, southern states saw the development of
the
lease system
. Under this system, prisoners (most of whom were African American) were
leased to large corporations, small-time entrepreneurs, and local farmers. Those leasing the
prisoners agreed to pay off these men’s fines and fees.
21
Originating in Massachusetts in 1798, the leasing of convicts to private entities took
hold in the South first in Kentucky (1825) and later in other states. Businesses in need of
workers could negotiate with the state for the labor and care of prisoners. This was particu
-
larly true in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi.
22
In 1866 Al-
abama turned over the state prison to a contractor that used inmate labor to build a railroad
through the heart of the state’s mineral region.
23
Texas leased the Huntsville Penitentiary
inmates to a firm that used them as laborers on railroad construction, wood milling, and
cotton picking.
24
As Edgardo Rotman notes, the entities who leased black prisoners, “hav-
ing no ownership interest in them [the prisoners], exploited them even worse than slaves.”
25
Diseases such as tuberculosis and pneumonia regularly sickened and killed large numbers
of prisoners. Accidents and homicides resulted in the deaths of others. As such, prisoner
death rates soared. Prisoners were usually buried in shallow graves around work sites.
26
(See
“Do the Right Thing” to consider further the problems surrounding inmate labor.)
The South’s agrarian economy and the great number of African American prisoners also
provided the basis for state-run plantations that grew crops to feed the prisoners and to sell on
the market. Large-scale penal farms developed mainly in the latter half of the century, particu-
larly in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Upset by the failure of authorities to collect profits
from lessees of convict labor, the people of Mississippi adopted a constitutional provision to end
all contracts by 1895. Prison officials then purchased the 15,000-acre Parchman Farm, which
served for many at the time as a model for southern penology.
27
In many southern states, penal
farms remain a major part of corrections.