Historical Origins and Evolution of Corrections

Historical Origins and Evolution of Corrections

Historical Origins and Evolution of Corrections

The major historical circumstances and societal developments that contributed to the

need for a correctional system at the beginning was a way that was able to contribute to help

society with good intentions (Stohr & Walsh, 2018). The main reason was that the correctional

system was made for a lest lethal way of dealing with certain people in the community the

people that were considered to have a bad reputation and those who were of the lower class and

most of all the criminals (Stohr & Walsh, 2018). The way that they were dealt with was by

various forms of corrections that were put into practice at the beginning which people were

either put to work in the galley, jails, or prisons (Stohr & Walsh, 2018).

The use of prisons or correctional system in the beginning was not used the way that its

used to do as a system for all criminal acts. The only confinement was for those that were

offenders of political and religion (Barnes, 1921). It was not until around the eighteenth century

is where the transition from the more severe corporal punishment to the use of imprisonment

during this time, the jails or prison were only used for people who were accused of a crime,

debtors and as mentioned earlier political and religious offenders. There was no set time limit to

how long a person stayed the only ones who stayed longer than any other were political, debtors

and religious offenders.

The three major historical reform movements in the correctional system are first the

Philadelphia Prison Society which is known today as the Pennsylvania Prison Society this

reform was led by Benjamin Rush who was also a physician (Stohr & Walsh, 2018). Rush saw

the need for improvement within the jail conditions and confinement. He saw the need that those

conditions needed to be improved and that the institutions could not just be used to just hold

those that broke the law or were outcast but should be used as a way to reform the inmates

(Stohr & Walsh, 2018).

The second is called the Elmira reformatory this reform was birth in New York around

1876. The goal of the Elmira was that prisoners could earn points that will go towards certain

privileges on the way that they behave. The person who was chosen to run this was Zebulon

Brockway (Stohr & Walsh, 2018). He wanted the program to only be used for a certain age

group that of those that were 16-30 only because he thought that the ones that were in this age

group will be more likely to change than any other group (Stohr & Walsh, 2018).

The third reform was presented by John Howard due to his own experiences with being a

prisoner before himself who firsthand saw what it was to see the deplorable conditions that he

was subjected to as a prisoner. The reform that Howard was aiming for was a non-privatized

prison. Jailers at the time were charging the inmates for everything like clothing, food even their

housing Howard seek to do away with this those necessities should be provided for the prisoners

along with decent sanitary conditions and male should be separated from the female prisoners.

The first correctional practice that I think shaped the contemporary correctional practices

the most I would have to say is the Pennsylvania system the reason for this system was that

criminals should be confined instead of facing capital punishment.

The role of corrections in today’s criminal justice system consists of a various of

agencies there are not just one authority it consists of probations, jails, prisons, and parole to all

make up the correctional system each of those are in place to accommodate the sentence of the

offenders due to the various sentences some are only sentence to pay fines or restitution those

may be sentence to probation while they are paying those fines, other may be sentence to short

jail sentences while the more severe ones will be sentence to prison because they will have to

serve out longer times.

The one aspect of the contemporary correctional system that I think that still needs to

evolve in my opinion is the need for the mandatory minimum although experts have different

feeling about this (Brooks, 2015). I think that there are more things that need to be looked at

when it comes to sentencing an offender. There are several things that need to be considered the

nature or seriousness of the crime along with the offender’s history.

There are first time drug offenders that has never had a criminal history, but due to the

need for there to have a required mandatory minimum when it came to the sentencing phase that

have been sitting in prison for some more than over 20 years. Those are the ones that would

make excellent candidates for release to solve the overcrowding that is currently plaguing the

prison system today.

References

Brooks, D. (2015, September 29). The prison problem. The New York Times, p. 27.

Stohr, M. K., & Walsh, A. (2018). Corrections: The Essentials [Sage] (3rd ed.). Retrieved from

https://class.content.laureate.net/f1c9fe54c53b798d7cff473663e78e7d.pdf

Barnes, H. E. (1921). The Historical Origin of the Prison System in America. Journal of the

American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, 12(1), 35. doi:10.2307/1133652