History of Imprisonment

8/11/2019 History of Imprisonment

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History of Imprisonment

in the United StatesIssues in Corrections

Dr. Jarrell


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Questions

What was the primary reason for Americancolonization?

Who were the nations first prisoners?

What crimes did they commit?

What were our nations prisons first used for?


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The Emergence and Growth ofthe Prison System

The development of the prison as a place ofpunishment corresponds not to crime but tomuch larger structural changes in thesurrounding society and the specific social andhistorical context.

The emergence and growth of the prison system

corresponded to the emergence and growth ofcapitalism as a dominant economic form (Sheldon, 2001: 153).


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Discovery of AmericaExplorer Christopher Columbus (1492) thoughthe had discovered the fabled passage to India.

Columbus: They should be good servants andintelligent, for I observed that they quickly tookin what was said to them.

Columbus went back to Spain with spices, herbs,cotton, animals, and his exotic prisoners whichthe Spaniards referred to as slaves.


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Christopher Columbus


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Spanish crown would send convicts withColumbus to deal with settling theIndians. Columbus also sent back Indiancaptives.

Columbus was eventually arrested andcharged with political crimes but releasedand returned on a fourth voyage to theNew World.


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Lands were not called Columbus; but America after Italian explorer Amerigo

Vespucci who claimed to discover the NewWorld a year prior to Columbus.

Spains discovery of precious ore depositsled to further exploitation of natives, war,disease, suicide, slavery, etc.

One of the worst genocides in recordedhistory.


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One Spaniard who was horrified by

what was happening to the natives wasa former explorer, Bartolome de LasCasas, who vowed to devote the rest of

his life to securing the justice of thoseIndian peoples, and to condemn therobbery, evil, and injustice committed

against them .


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To save them from extinction, he beseeched hisking to introduce Negroes from Guinea as asubstitute, arguing that the the labour of one

Negro was more valuable than that of fourIndians .

The king agreed, and in 1517 the first asiento

was arranged, enabling four thousand Negroesto be imported to the West Indies over the nexteight years.

African slaves started arriving a few monthslater, and by 1540 an estimated thirty thousandmen, women, and children had been taken toHispaniola alone.


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African Slave Trade


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At first the Spanish considered these Africans to

be ideally suited for slavery in the mines andfield. But in his old age, Las Casas came torealize he had made another terrible mistake.

Black slavery did not save the Indians butmerely added another oppressed race- andthe colony became even more dependenton slavery for its survival .


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More and more explorers brought convictsand Africans (held as prisoners) to theNew World.

They were set up as colonies in order tobring goods back to Europe.

Tobacco was discovered in Virginia but itbecame a tremendous challenge toproduce and ship to England.


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That year however, the Virginia Company underwent ashakeup that put Sir Edwin Sandys in control.

Under his direction the company launched an intensivepromotional campaign to attract more investors, settlers,and servants.

Publicists wrote enticing broadsides, promisingeverything from daily sustenance to eternal bliss toanyone who would go to Virginia.

Drummers marched from village to village, beating upinterest. Hucksters combed the fairs and groghouses,enlisting recruits. Minstrels sang seductive ballads.


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From Parliament to pulpit, Virginiascolonization was depicted as a noble effort ofChristian reformation, for, as one pioussupporter asked, What can be more excellent,more precious, more glorious, than to convert aheathen nation from worshipping the devil tothe saving knowledge and true worship of Godin Jesus Christ.?

Sandys offered a promise of something that wasgenerally not available in England: anopportunity for upward mobility. Piece by piece,he and his image makers created the AmericanDream.


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Colonization was touted as a way to

spread Christianity but really it was amechanism for obtaining labor.

Also: how can we get people here againsttheir will? Enslave certain groups ofpeople! Round up societies outcasts!

Banish convicts!


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In America, criminals could at least be put touse earning a profit for company and crown, andthey could serve the interests of Christendom atthe same time.

Having already established the reformativevalue of colonization for heathen savages, itrequired no great leap to apply this standard toothers.

Thus it was that a royal commission concluded

that any felon, except those convicted ofmurder, witchcraft, burglary, or rape, could belegally be transported to Virginia or the WestIndies to become servants on the plantations.


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The economic purpose of this policy was clearfrom the start.

In one case, a man convicted of manslaughterand condemned to death was reprieved

because he was a carpenter and the plantationneeded carpenters .

Soon afterward Sandys proposed sending overmaids as breeders, that wives, children, andfamily might make them less movable and settlethem, together with their posterity in that soil .


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The Growth of thePrisoner Trade

The infusion into Virginia of kidnappedchildren, maids, convicts, and Africans, allto work as servants on the plantations,marked the beginning of a pattern thatwould continue for nearly two centuries.By 1650, most British emigrants to colonial

America went as prisoners of one sort oranother.


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Some were forcibly kidnapped or arrested andshipped there against their will.

Some were tricked or enticed into giving up their liberty.

Others bound themselves as servants in order to avertexecution, starvation, imprisonment, or boredom.

There were some significant distinctions betweenindentured servants, transported convicts, slaves, andseamen or soldiers compelled into military service but all

of them qualified as prisoners, since they were deprivedof their liberty.


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British American was not the first prison colony. Manyearlier empires had used transplanted prisoners tocultivate foreign plantations, dig mines, and perform

hard labor.

Starting in the early seventeenth century and continuingfor 150 years, however, an organized, internationalprisoner trade, of which African slave trade was just oneimportant part, provided the foundation for Englandscolonial wealth and Americas identity.

To the extent that American history is the story of

immigration, then American colonial history is largely thestory of the immigration of prisoners .


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Following sea routes discovered by theirexplorers, European merchants transported iron,alcohol, and other goods to Africa, exchangingthem for human cargoes.

These people were brought by force to the WestIndies and the Americas and traded for tobacco,

sugar, gold, silver and other items that weretaken back to English and European ports.

Prisoners manned the ships, prisoners were

carried to the colonies to work in the mines andfields, prisoners were brought in chains from Africa and Europe to the Caribbean and the Americans as slaves.


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If a person disappeared, their relativesor friends would have little hope of findingthem. There was no professional systemof policing; no system of justice. Political,economic, and religious power ruled all.

Trafficking of prisoners was veryprofitable. Immense fortunes were madefrom tobacco, sugar, and rum but onlybecause of the seizure, imprisonment,shipment, and sale of human beings.


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By the end of the seventeenth century,England dominated African slave trade.They would establish a colony forproducing tobacco or sugar, a white laborforce would oversee the black slaves:

All that remained was to develop thelegal and moral justification for racialslavery .

Prisons were an essential part of theprisoner trade. They would serve asholding places near the shore to awaitshipment abroad.


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Plantations


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One characteristic which set American slavery apart wasits racial basis. In America, with only a few early andinsignificant exceptions, all slaves were Africans, and

almost all Africans were slaves. This placed the label ofinferiority on black skin and on African culture.

In other societies, it had been possible for a slave whoobtained his freedom to take his place in his society withrelative ease. In America, however, when a slavebecame free, he was still obviously an African. The taintof inferiority clung to him.

Not only did white America become convinced of whitesuperiority and black inferiority, but it strove to imposethese racial beliefs on the Africans themselves.


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The Atlantic slave-trade was different from allearlier slavery in several respects. Mostenormously important is that it was the firstform of slavery that was solely motivated bycommercial incentives.

Slaves in earlier times enjoyed social andindividual rights - like marriage, freedom to raisea family, speak their language and worship theirgods, rights which were denied the Africanslaves exported to the Americas. Africanscaptured and taken into the new world werestripped of all their personality and humanity -they could not even bear their own names.


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Another Group of Prisoners

Rise of the Quaker movement inNorthern England (1650s), a radical

religious movement; calledthemselves Friends but known as Quakers because of their religious

zeal; led by George Fox


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By the winter of 1655 -1656, Friends were meeting inalmost every county, despite severe repression. Themore they were imprisoned, the stronger their resolve;

the stronger their resolve, the more converts theygained; the more members they attracted, the morethreatening they were considered and the more of themthat were imprisoned; and the more that wereimprisoned, the more converts they made.

Thus it was the prisons that became their primarymeeting places and suppliers of new members. Foxhimself was frequently shifted from one prison toanother and often released because he was more of athreat inside than out. But the more that he and hissupporters were mistreated, the more they seemed tothrive.


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English prisons were used as holding places forprisoners awaiting transportation; they weregenerally not used for punishment.

Punishment was very painful and the deathpenalty was often used, publicly, for a large

range of offenses, even minor offenses.

System of penalties known as The Bloody

Code. Religious offenses dominated the courts.


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In 1717, Parliament passed an actempowering courts to sentence offendersdirectly to transportation to Americanplantations. The convict trade to Americawas BIG business.

The passage to America was horrendous.Many died on the trip. Once they made it

to America, they were sold to the highestbidder.


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The Puritans

War on crime is a moral necessity; everycrime is a sin and every sin is a crime.

The most common crime was drunkenness.Harsh punishments!


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As believers in visible signs of sainthood or sinfulness,Puritans often attached appropriate physical stigmata toconvicted law breakers.

A woman who skipped worship might have to stand atthe church door with a sign around her neck or, if theoffense was more serious, the town fathers might forceher (like Hester Prynne) to wear a scarlet letter on herclothes for life.

Some markings were made permanent by the removal ofan ear or two, or the branding of a shoulder, hand,

forehead, or cheek. The punitive alphabet included A(adulterer), B (blasphemer), D (drunk), F (fighter), M (manslaughter), R (rogue), and T (thief).


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The upper-class persons were almost neverpunished.

Whipping was a standard punishment forservants, seamen, slaves or Indians.

The Massachusetts Bay Company charterrequired a House of Corrections to be built forboth the punishment of offenders and to deterothers by example.

In addition to establishing prisons, other criminalpunishments, and a system of servitude, thePuritans took extreme measures against thelocal Indians.


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They also carried out one of the bloodiestattacks on Indians in history, teaming up withNarragansett and Mohegan warriors to murderas many as seven hundred Pequot women andchildren at Mystick (Connecticut), after whichthey sold some of the survivors to theNarragansett and loaded seventeen others ontoa ship, the Desire.

Captain William Pierce of Salem guided thevessel to the Caribbean, where he exchangedthem for cotton, tobacco, salt, and negroes,which he took back to Boston.


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The Puritans considered two groups to themost dangerous and threatening: witchesand Quakers.

The Quakers, trying to escape religiouspersecution in England, were arriving indroves to New England. They began anew colony called Pennsylvania.


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By the end of the seventeenth century, threemain classes (besides the Indians) had emergedin the North American colonies: black slaves,

convicts/other white servants, free whitepersons. Regardless of class, women enjoyedfewer rights and privileges than their malecounterparts.

There isnt much written about the British andIrish prisoners who were transported intoservitude. Many historians have simplydismissed the transports as unsavory types who

did not play any significant role in Americandevelopment but this is mainly because firsthandaccounts by transported convicts are extremelyrare.


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Many historians have portrayed

transported felons as losers in their ownday who generally failed to rise very muchin economic or social status, a class thatover generations formed the basis forwhat came to be known as Southern poorwhite trash.


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Many colonists strongly resented andopposed convict transportation and theirlegislatures passed ordinances restrictingshipments of prisoners.

Indentured servants generally served six-year terms and convicts seven orfourteen, but slaves were bound for life.

Blacks took the place of the Irish as thecolonies most degraded class.


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Every colony developed its own slavecode and control apparatus. Police powersand punishments were bolstered, andcommunications networks among thecolonies were improved.

People had become conditioned to acceptthe notion of human beings as property tobe bought, sold, taxed, and transferred.

Much of Americas early government wasdevised and strengthened to protectslavery.


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Imprisonment was a mechanism for total control overslaves. The rural Southern plantation was a prisonwithout walls. George Washington himself was a third

generation slaveholder who grew up accepting slaveryas natural, necessary, and moral.

Consequently, a slaves choices were essentially those ofany prisoner.

Rebellion occurred with greater frequency in the early tomid 1700s. Punishment for rebellion was brutal.

Escape, although rare, was part of the reason a policeforce emerged.


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Owners formed networks of volunteers to

patrol their areas. The first wereconducted sporadically, on a rotatingbasis; patrols eventually became the duty

of the local militia, whose primary functionin some places grew to be policesupervision of the slaves. Thus was bornthe first organized system of police inplantation country.


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Jails were among the first public structures builtin colonial America. They were an essential part

of the prisoner trade and also essential to thesystem of servitude and slavery.

Colonial America had more jails than publicschools or hospitals.

Criticisms of the prisoner trade increased during

the 18th century.

Slavery also came under attack.


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Man is born free, and yet we see himeverywhere in chains, Jean -Jacques Rousseau

wrote in The Social Contract (1762).

Rousseau rejected the notion that some menwere slaves by nature. He argued that slaverywas not a natural right or condition, but aforcibly imposed and maintained status.

Force made the first slaves, he wrote, andslavery, by degrading and corrupting its victims,perpetuated their bondage.


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Up to this point, we find that despite the vanillalessons of high school history, most criminals

were the product of slavery, indenturedservitude, and transportation. A new group ofconvicts emerged during the Revolutionary War:prisoners of war.

The prison trade was disrupted by the war whichmeant that England faced serious prisonovercrowding. The British could not transportprisoners of war back to England, so they keptthem in prison ships, anchored off-shore.


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By wars end, more Americans hadperished as prisoners than had been killedin combat. As many as 11,500 men haddied on the Jersey alone- far more thanwere lost in all of the battles of theRevolution.


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Jersey Prison Ship


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Imports of slave, convicts, and servantshad virtually ceased during the war.

All of the new states ended theinternational slave trade. But most slavesremained slaves and the system continuedto be the law of the land.

Two Northern states outlawed slavery, Vermont and Pennsylvania. Anti-slaveryactivities became better organized.

f


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The Development of theAmerican Prison System

Did not occur until the late 18th century in America

Traced back to William Penn

Colonial America: most common form ofpunishment was banishment and various formsof public punishment; stocks, pillory, branding,workhouses (last resort, usually for the poor, rogues, vagabonds, and other idle and dissolutepersons).


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Shortly after the end of the AmericanRevolution, a group of prominent citizens,including Benjamin Franklin, BenjaminRush, William Bradford, and CalebLownes, came together to update thecriminal code of 1718.

The new law, passed in 1786, authorizeda penalty of hard labor, publicly and

disgracefully imposed (Takagi, 1975).Prisoners were to be sentenced to performhard labor in the city streets.


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Walnut Street Jail


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First state prison: Walnut Street Jail

Focus on maintaining social order, rise ofthe class system


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The major worry was whether the poor would corrupt society and criminals would roam outof control. Thus, comprehension and control ofdeviance promised to be the first step inestablishing a new system for stabilizing thecommunity, for binding citizens together. . .

And here one also finds the crucial elements thatled to the discovery of the asylum. In the end,the prison system became one among severalmethods of reforming and controlling thedangerous classes (Rothman, 1971).

E f h P l i


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Emergence of the Pennsylvaniaand Auburn Systems (1830-1870)

Belief that criminals lacked respect forauthority and proper work habits (neededhard labor).

Others believed that criminals weresinners who needed to repent.


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Pennsylvania System

Modeled after beliefs of John Howard

1826: Pittsburgh, Western Penitentiary

1829: Cherry Hill, Eastern Penitentiary

Solitary confinement, no contact with other prisoners,blindfolded

Wheel shaped prison


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Pennsylvania System


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Auburn System


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Auburn System eventually prevailed; toomany inmates died, committed suicide, orwent insane in Penn System.

Auburn system was more profitable, cheaplabor, fit into larger structure ofcapitalism, resembled factories, producedgoods sold in free market

d T ill i hi l i k


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de Tocqueville, in his classic work,Democracy in America, had noted that

while the Native American was much toodifferent to become part of this new order,the other race (the colored) would, oncefreed, be exposed to the new penitentiaryregime- which is exactly what happened.

As to the Native Americans, genocide wasthe preferred method (Melossi andLettiere, 1998). (Sheldon, 2001)

Rise of the Reformatory


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Rise of the Reformatory(1870-1900)

Response to the brutality of the prison system

Need treatment and reeducation

Rise of indeterminate sentencing, parole, andvocational/educational training

Reformatory ideas came from Captain AlexanderMaconochie, head of penal colony on NorfolkIsland in Australia and Sir Walter Crofton inEngland.

Th f t i d ig d t ibl t


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The reformatories were designed ostensibly totransform the dangerous criminal classes into

Christian gentlemen and prepare them toassume their proper place into hardworking, lawabiding, lower class citizens.

These institutions would also inculcate good old-fashioned American values such a habits oforder, discipline, self-control, cheerfulsubmission to authority, as well as respect forGod, law, country, and the principles ofcapitalism and democracy (Pisciotta, 1994).


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1877: Elmira Reformatory, ZebulonBrockway

Wide variety of programs including

industrial/academic education, religious services,libraries, gyms, etc.

Good intentions but big failure; strict militaryform of discipline, tyrannical cruelty,overcrowded, beatings were routine.


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Contract system: prisoners produced goods to be sold to


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Contract system: prisoners produced goods to be sold toprivate companies who then sold them on the freemarket

Convict lease system: prisoners hired out to privatebusinesses and worked away from the prison during theday; build railroads, bridges, roads, etc. Chain gangs

State-use system: prisoners produced goods for thestate (other prisons, schools, hospitals); most commonform of prison labor today.

Convict exploitation disappeared in the North butbecame popular in the South after the Civil War.


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Twentieth Century Developments

Inmate self-government; goal of rehabilitation

Prison as a community, similar to outside society

Needs humanizing, democratizing

Introduced movies, sports, exercise, etc.

Problem: accused of coddling criminals


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Individualized treatment

Medical model: the offender is sick and suffersfrom some sort of disease which must bediagnosed and cured.

Emergence of Positive School of Criminology

Emergence of academic and professional fieldsof social work, sociology, and psychology.


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Prison as a convenient laboratory for thescientific study of human behavior

Classification became permanent part of prisons

(sex, age, race, type of offenses, grades, trustysystem)

Problem: treatment never really became areality, most states were not willing to spend themoney, medical model never really went beyonddiagnosis.


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1900: 81 prisons, 50,000 inmates

1935: 100+ prisons, 120,000 inmates

1990: 1,287 prisons

1995: 1,500 prisons, over 2.5 millioninmates


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1900-1946: The Big HouseDominant type of prison until late 1940s/early 1950s

This granite, steel, cement, and asphaltmonstrosity stood as the states most extremeform of punishment, short of the death penalty.It was San Quentin in California, Sing Sing inNew York, Stateville in Illinois, Jackson inMichigan, Jefferson City in Missouri, Canon Cityin Colorado, and so on. It was the place ofbanishment and punishment to which convictswere sent up. Its major characteristics wereisolation, routine, and monotony. Its mood wasmean and grim, perforated here and there byragged- edged vitality and humor (Irwin, 1980).

1946- 1980: The Correctional


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1946- 1980: The CorrectionalInstitution

New era of penology after WWII

A correctional system with inmates (not prisonsor convicts), guards were transformed into

correctional officers

Emergence of rehabilitative ideal (used to becalled treatment)

Most common treatment was group counseling(not very successful)


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It did not take too long for this newtreatment-oriented prison to succumb tothe realties of prison life and became justanother prison. Prisoners became aware

of the fact that the new treatment was inreality simply new methods of control.Further, an influx of African Americansand Chicanos created racial divisions.(Sheldon, 2001).


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1980- present: Warehousing

Most prisoners today are still drawn from thebottom of the class structure, have fewmarketable skills, little formal education, andpoor employment records, and aredisproportionately non-white.

Also, it is clear that the prison system isbecoming a form of apartheid because for thefirst time in our history, African Americansconstitute a majority of prisoners.


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Result of the war on drugs; between1988-1994, number of persons convictedof drug offenders jumped 155%.

Over 60% of all federal inmates and 30%of state inmates are serving time for drugoffenses; over 40% are African American.


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American Prisons

History of Imprisonment

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