Department of Criminal Justice
California State University - Bakersfield
CRJU 100
Introduction to Criminal Justice
Dr. Abu-Lughod, Reem Ali
The History of Control
Before there were prisons:
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No CJS to punish and deal with violators
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Family, tribes enforcing laws
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Blood feuds
Corporal Punishment:
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Revenge
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Physical harm on body relatively equal to crime
committed
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1) Torture: disembowelment or impaling but now
solitary confinement
Michael Foucault: Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
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Torture as justice
2) Flogging (whipping)
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Leather thongs
3) Branding:
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Assuring community offender has been punished
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Repeat offenders branded on their forehead
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Women wore identification on clothing
4) Mutilation
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Eye for eye
5) Humiliation:
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Verbal or physical
6) Shock Death:
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Hanging
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Psychological torture
ECONOMIC PUNISHMENT:
1)
The Galley: Ships powered by prisoners and slaves
2)
Workhouses: bad living conditions and treatment. 1779
Penitentiary Act passed, reform legislation to address
living conditions. Did not work but gave feds authority to
oversee prison system
3)
Exile and transportation: exchange of labor for money
Prisons in America:
 replaced workhouses
 A) Control in Colonies: all housed together.
 The Quakers movement in Pennsylvania:
incarceration and hard labor preferable to corporal
punishment
 Walnut Street Jail: no women housed with men
 Used as military prison ion Revolutionary War. Was
converted into nation’s 1st penitentiary housing
serious offenders. Set tone for formal prisons
 Castle Island: another modern pen
Development of the Pen:
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Two systems: 1) Pennsylvania and Auburn
Penn: known as Cherry Hill
Separate and silent
Solitary confinement
Then overcrowding
Auburn in NY
Congregate and silent: eat and work together but
locked in isolation and no face-to-face contact
AGE OF REFORM:

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1860-1900
Charles Dickens toured Penns and criticized it
Yes for reform
Irish system of reform:
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Punish but focus on reintegration
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Developed 3 systems:
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1) Alexander Maconochie: making inmate trustworthy to soc
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2 beliefs: cruelty will create problems and must focus on
reintegration

Instituted indeterminate sentences

Marks of commendation system
2) Sir Walter Crofton:
 Ticket of leave, conditional release under police
supervision
3) Zebulon Brockway:
 Crofton and Maconochie’s models at the
reformatory in Elmira, NY.
 Used 3-grade program for first time offender
 No supervision after release. If in solitary
confinement then bread and water only for months
Prison Labor and Public Works: 1900-1930
 work as beneficial
 Keep them out of trouble
 Rehab and offset cost of incarceration
 Make goods used by state government, e.g.office
furniture
 Today: clean highway trash, dressed in prison
attire for humiliation
Age of Rehabilitation:
 Very important goal of CJS esp since 1930s
 Criminologists and correctional practitioners
perceived criminality in a different manner
 “germ theory of medicine”
Rehab not fully accomplished:
 Lack of resources
 Consensus
 Medical model: flawed
Retributive Era: 1970s to present
 Mov’t away from rehab
 1960s events caused change
 E.g. political movement: minorities, youth and
women challenged how soc treated them, and
inmates challenged conditions and confinement
 Courts had “hands off” policy in matters concerning
prison operation
 1960s: more constitutional rights
 Black Panther Party and Black Muslims wanted
legitimacy of their political orgs
 Change from rehab to retribution
1)
2)
3)
Determinate sentences
Voluntary treatment
Abolition of parole: no early release although not
fully accomplished: critics “soft on crime”
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT :

Method of social control

Controversial

Courts limited execution on mentally ill for
deterrence and understanding
Supporters to death penalty:

Deterrent: specific and general deterrence

Just deserts model: for soc justice

Retribution model: eye for an eye
Against death penalty:

Old testament of Bible “thou shall not kill”
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Deterrence
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Barbaric
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Racial biases
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Social class
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Innocence