Evolving Function: The early use

of Imprisonment as Punishment
Norman Johnson
 The Early records of Prisons’ existence
• Prison as a penalty is not a modern
innovation.
• Confucius notes the building of prisons around
2000 BCE and refers to one case in which
three political offenders were exiled and the
fourth received strict imprisonment
 The Early records of Prisons’ existence
• The old testament mentions prisons in Genesis 39, while
narrating the story of Hazrat Yousef (RZ)
• 19 When his master heard the story his wife told him,
saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with
anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in
prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined.
• But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the LORD was
with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor
in the eyes of the prison warden. 22 So the warden put
Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he
was made responsible for all that was done there. 23
 The Early records of Prisons’ existence
• Greece and Rome had dual systems of laws and
practices for slaves and for freemen or citizens.
The range of punishments for slaves was largely
physical; for freemen or citizens, financial, exile,
or death. In Greece, freemen could be
incarcerated indefinitely until a fine was paid, in
reality a possible alternative punishment not
spelled out in the written law
– The three choices for Socrates 1) Exile, 2)
Imprisonment till payment of Fine, 3) Compulsory
suicide
 The Early records of Prisons’ existence
• Penal slavery was also awarded to freemen
– Quarries, public works, galley ships etc.
• In Rome, there were private prisons for slaves and
family members as well as prisons for state slaves.
• Later, punishments reserved for slaves were used for
lower class criminals.
• Although some prison time might be short, there
were also life sentences at hard labor in chains.
• Incarceration was used also to censor authors and for
political prisoners.
Imprisonment? Why should I spend my days in prison, in subjection to
the periodically appointed officers of the law? A fine, with imprisonment
until it is paid? In my case the effect would be just the same, because I
have no money to pay a fine.
 The Early records of Prisons’
existence
• In 10th century England, prison sentences were
used to extract payments/fines from convicts
• 12th century on, prisons and their use as
punishment increased. Sentences were for fraud,
petty crime, and sometimes even felonies.
– Edward I (1272-1307), terms for petty larceny were
based on the value of the stolen goods, by weekly
increments.
• The costs of the prison were usually covered by
charges prisoners had to pay for services,
lodging, food, and drink.
 History: Nonprison Imprisonment
• An alternative to
imprisonment was galley
slavery, used for captured
war prisoners and those
intended for a death
penalty. Such vessels were
used as warships by Athens
and later by European
countries including England.
• A galley slave is
a slave rowing in a galley,
either a convicted criminal
sentenced to work at the
oar
 History: Nonprison Imprisonment
• Corporal Punishment and extensive use of the death penalty
was discouraged as the 19th century dawned
– In 1819 there were 223 offenses whose punishment was the death
penalty
– But the question was what should the state do with its criminals
• The solution was transportation to the American (Settlement) colonies
– Plantation workers, servants or laborers etc.
– As the colonies got populated by settlers and the colonies became
autonomous or got liberated this mode of punishment was also
discouraged
• The next solution was use of unbattleworthy or unseaworthy
vessels that were harbored, called the “Hulks” (From 1776 to
1850)
Filthy conditions and overcrowding led to disease and
large-scale epidemics. Inmates healthy enough were
sometimes used as labor on shore.
• Ultimately, penal colonies were established at
considerable costs for transport in Australia,
New Zealand, and Gibraltar.
– Other European countries followed suit
• French, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Denmark, Russia, and
Italy
 Modern Prisons and Christian Church
• Catholic Church and its extensive system of
monasteries.
– Solitude, reduced diet, and reflection, sometimes
for extended periods of time, not only provided
punishment but also the possibility of remorse
and penitence
• This regimen became a model, however
imperfectly followed, for later prisons.
 The House of Corrections
• For minor offender the fist prisons called “work
houses” were established by the mid 16th century
• 2 such institution were built in Amsterdam one for
male and the other for females
– Inmates lived in various-sized rooms where they ate,
slept, and sometimes worked. All inmates were expected
to work except for some sons of the wealthy who might
be committed by parents to instill discipline.
– This model was used in the rest of Europe and America at
the time
Beginning of the Prison reform movement
• 18th century
– Cesare Beccaria and Jeremy Bentham, pushing for a reform of the
criminal law and the reduction in the use of capital punishment;
– John Howard, who exposed the miserable prison conditions of
the day (The State of the Prisons from 1777 to 1792)
• harsh discipline, austere conditions, misery, and great looseness—
starvation, alcohol for sale, games that sometimes included outside
participants, and few comforts that inmates with money could not buy.
• Howard argued for better sanitation, and elimination of jailers’ charges
for various services, including alcohol, and for adequate medical care.
• He urged a regimen of individual night cellular confinement and
constructive labor by day
• Stress on Architecture and Surveillance
 Bantham’s Panopticon

Panopticon, was intended to provide, by mechanical

means and lines of sight, complete, unrelenting surveillance
over every movement and conversation of its inmates
 The Emergence of the Philadelphia style
Prisons: Penitentiary House
• Focus on Solitary confinement and reformation through
solitude and penitence
– Least contact with the other prisoners and the outside world
– Humane and hygienic conditions
• Reformers dominated by Quakers a group of prominent
Philadelphians formed a prisoners aid organization, in 1776.
• 1790, Walnut Street Jail was designated as a state prison, the
first in the United States. In the prison yard, a small block of
16 solitary cells called the “Penitentiary House” was built
– Its two floors of cells were raised on arches
– A partition ran down the middle of each corridor so that inmates
could not see one another. Each cell had a toilet.
Walnut Street Jail
 Philadelphia style Prisons
• But the experiment of Walnut Street prison failed
– Thorsten Sellin, however, after a careful examination
of the court dockets
• solitary confinement as an experiment in treatment
carried out at the Walnut Street Jail was “highly overrated”
– The little cellblock seems to have been used primarily as a
punishment section
– it was not uncommon for 30 to 40 inmates to be confined to a
sleeping room 18 feet square
– Prisoner interviews revealed that life was corrupt, and crime
enhancing
• The Philedelphia reformers continues and their effort led
to the development of the Eastern State Penitentiary, an
effort that was equally unsuccessful
 Penitentiary House:
• Easter State Penitentiary
• inmates housed in separate cells where they worked and slept,
leaving only to exercise in their attached exercise yard or to be taken
out, masked, for occasional showers or a visit to the prison
dispensary. Inmates were known only by number
• Received visits only from official visitors, ministers, or prison
overseers (guards) who provided vocational instruction. Meals were
brought to them by the same overseers. In theory, prisoners were
isolated both from the outside world and the world of their fellow
inmates. Punishments were mild by standards of the day—removal
to a dark cell with restricted diet
• This style was mainly criticized because of it was expensive, did
not use prison labor and simply did not work
 The parallel development of the New York
Model: The Silent system
• Auburn Hill Prison
– Meticulously conceived military-like routines
determined every movement and activity of the
inmates. Prisoners moved in tight formation called
“lockstep” in complete silence and with downcast
eyes. No prisoner was ever to see another face-
to-face, even in the workshops. Punishments
were severe: flogging with as many as 500 blows;
straitjackets; cold showers outside, even in winter
temperatures; and dark cells on reduced diet.
 The Silent System
Wardern Elam Lynds
• “I consider it
impossible to govern a
large prison without a
whip”
• “nothing, in my
opinion, is rarer than to
see a convict of mature
age become . . . a
virtuous man”
 The Silent System
• The Sing Sing Prison (1825)
– “prisoner was taught to consider himself dead to all without the
prison walls” (Rothman, 1971, p. 95)
– Sing Sing’s original cellblock had a thousand tiny sleeping cells
stacked back-to-back on five tiers.
– Little light could enter the cell, and there was no plumbing or heat.
– The prison had workshops. Prison labor not only satisfied one of
the goals of imprisonment—punishment—but also could be
interpreted as contributing toward eventual employment once
back in the community.
– That, however, was not its primary purpose in the New York
prisons. Cheaper to build and run and fully utilizing inmate labor
to provide goods sold on the open market without restrictions,
Auburn system prisons in a number of states claimed that their
prisons actually earned a yearly profit for the taxpayers.
Glimpses in ‘The Silent System’
 The Southern Perspective:
Inmate Labor and Chain Gangs
• “The southern states from a penological point of view never
really belonged to the Union” (McKelvey, 1936/1977, p. 172).
• Prisoners were formed in chain gangs
• Squalid and brutal conditions in the prison labor camps that
were used in contrast to the walled prisons in other parts of
the country.
• Prisoners were kept in chains and in some cases lived in
mobile wagons with two levels of cages.
• Long after the 1930s, southern prison systems continued to
rely on scattered labor camps maintained by the state or
private companies.
 The Southern Perspective:
Inmate Labor and Chain Gangs
• Work was, as it still is in some states such as Texas
and Louisiana, on large agricultural plantations.
• Other prisoners worked as miners or on highway
maintenance.
• Larry Sullivan (2002, p. 21) has suggested that the
southern penal systems replaced slavery, quoting
Enoch Wines’s 1874 study of American prisons
that found that 75% of the convicts in southern
prisons at the time were black.
 Prisons and the 20 century
th

• Two developments in the 20th century should

be noted: the supermax prison and the return
of privately run prisons.

The federal prison on Alcatraz Island

in the chilly waters of California’s San
Francisco Bay housed some of
America’s most difficult and
dangerous felons during its years of
operation from 1934 to 1963.
 Prisons and the 20 century
th

• private prisons, often seen as a solution to

budgetary limitations and freedom from labor
union demands