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The History of Corrections
in America
CHAPTER OUTLINE
I. The Colonial Period
A. During the colonial period most Americans lived under laws and practices
that had been transferred from England and adapted to local conditions;
Puritans rigorously punished violations of religious laws.
B. In 1682, Pennsylvania adopted “The Great Law,” which was based on
humane Quaker principles and emphasized hard labor in a house of
corrections as punishment for most crimes.
C. Banishment from the community fines, death, and the other punishments
were the norm; the death penalty was common.
II. The Arrival of the Penitentiary
A. Until the 1800s, American society was relatively sparsely populated and
predominantly rural.
B. With the Revolution, the ideas of the Enlightenment gained currency and a
new concept of criminal punishment came to the fore.
1. The penitentiary, as conceptualized by the English reformers and their
American Quaker allies, first appeared in 1790 when a portion of
Philadelphia Walnut Street Jail was converted to allow separate
confinement of inmates.
2. The penitentiary was conceived of as a place where criminal offenders
could be isolated from the bad influences of society and from one
another so that, while engaged in productive labor, they could reflect
on their past misdeeds, repent, and be reformed.
C. The Pennsylvania System
1. As in England, Quakers set about to implement their humanistic and
religious ideas in the new nation; in Philadelphia, their efforts came to
fruition. Dr. Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin and others urged
replacement of capital and corporal punishment with incarceration; in
1790, the group was instrumental in passage of legislation almost
identical to England’s Penitentiary Act of 1799.
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2. The existing three-story Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia was
expanded for the solitary confinement of “hardened and atrocious
offenders.”
3. The opening of Eastern Penitentiary in 1829 marked the full
development of the penitentiary system based on separate
confinement. Cellblocks extended from a central hub like the spokes
of a wheel. Prisoners ate, slept, worked, and received religious
instruction in individual cells and inmates did not see or interact with
their peers.
4. The Pennsylvania system was based on isolation, reflection upon prior
transgressions, and repentance.
D. The New York (Auburn) System
1. Faced with overcrowded facilities in 1816, the New York legislature
authorized a new state prison at Auburn.
2. Influenced by the success of the separate confinement, New York
decided on an experiment to test the effectiveness. It proved a failure;
there was a marked increase in sickness, insanity, and suicide among
the prisoners.
3. In 1831 Elam Lynds, a warden at Auburn, worked out a new
congregate system of prison discipline where inmates were isolated at
night, but congregated in workshops during the day; they were
forbidden to talk or exchange glances on the job or at meals, and they
were exposed to rigid discipline.
4. The New York system was more concerned with instilling good work
habits and preventing recidivism than with rehabilitation of prisoner’s
character.
E. Debating the Systems
1. Throughout this era, which system should be preferred was hotly
debated. Underlying the debates were questions about disciplining
citizens in a democracy and maintaining social norms in a society that
emphasized individualism.
2. The Pennsylvania (separate) system aimed to produce honest
persons; the New York (congregate) system sought to mold obedient
citizens.
3. Both systems agreed that the prisoner must be isolated from society
and subjected to a disciplined routine but they differed in the way the
reformation was to be brought about.
4. Pennsylvania was looked back to an earlier craft-oriented religious
society; New York looked forward to the emerging industrial age.
5. As prison populations increased in the US, the Pennsylvania system
proved too expensive.
6. In the US, the New York style was the overwhelming choice, with
Europe favoring the Pennsylvania system.
III. Development of Prisons in the South and West
A. Southern Penology
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1. After the Civil War, southern legislatures passed “black laws” designed
to control former slaves through the use of harsh punishments.
2. At the same time, southerners faced the task of rebuilding communities
and their economy.
3. Because of the devastation of the war and depression in the
agriculturally based economy, there were no funds to construct new
prisons, even with an increasing convict population.
4. Faced with those challenges, and coupled with a large African
American inmate labor force and the states’ need for revenue, the
lease system and penal farms were developed.
B. Western Penology
1. Settlement in the West was not extensive until the California Gold
Rush of 1849.
2. With the exception of California, penology in the West was not greatly
influenced by the prison ideologies of the East.
3. Leasing programs were used extensively in California, Montana,
Oregon and Wyoming; “following frontier traditions,” the care of
convicts was placed in hands of a lessee.
IV. The Reformatory Movement
A. By the middle of the 1800s, reformers became disillusioned with the
results of the penitentiary movement, though its failure was seen as a
result of poor administration rather than a sign of weakness of the basic
concept.
1. In England, Alexander Maconochie urged the mark system of
graduated terms of confinement.
2. In 1854 in Ireland, Sir Walter Crofton adopted practices similar to the
mark system that came to be known as the Irish or intermediate
system.
B. Cincinnati, 1870
1. By 1870 a new generation of American penal reformers had arisen.
Like Quakers, they were motivated by humanitarian concerns but also
understood how prisons operated.
2. The National Prison Association met in Cincinnati—it issued a
Declaration that advocated a new design for penology: a philosophy of
inmate change, and indeterminate sentences. Fixed sentences,
lockstep, silence and isolation were seen as debasing, humiliating and
destructive to inmate initiative.
C. Elmira Reformatory—1876 at Elmira, New York; Zebulon Brockway
appointed superintendent.
1. Brockway believed that diagnosis and treatment were keys to reform
and rehabilitation.
2. He questioned each new inmate to explore the social, biological,
psychological and “root causes” of the offender’s deviance.
3. An individualized program of treatment, work and education was then
prescribed.
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D. Lasting Reforms
1. The ideals of Wines and Brockway made major contributions to
American corrections: the indeterminate sentence, classification,
rehabilitative programs, and parole were developed at Elmira.
2. In the mid 1800s, the US was coming to grips with 2 forces: a gradual
shift of the population from countryside to the cities and a cultural
threat posed by the flood of immigrants.
V. The Rise of the Progressives
A. First two decades of the 20th century were called the “Age of Reform”
1. This period framed the dominant tone for American social thought and
political action until the 1960s.
2. Industrialization, urbanization, technological change, and scientific
advancement had revolutionized the landscape.
B. The Progressives came from upper-status backgrounds, were optimistic
about the possibility of solving the problems of modern society and they
pursued 2 main strategies.
1. Improve conditions in social environments that seemed to be breeding
grounds for crime
2. Rehabilitate individual offenders
C. Individualized Treatment and the Positivist School: The progressives were
benevolent and philanthropic people who aimed to understand and cure
crime through a case-by-case approach and promoted positivist reforms;
progressive programs can be epitomized in 2 words: conscience and
convenience.
D. Three basic assumptions shared by most positivists:
1. Criminal behavior stems from factors over which the individual has no
control.
a. Biological characteristics
b. Psychological maladjustments
c. Sociological conditions
2. Criminals could be treated so that they would lead crime-free lives.
3. Treatment must be focused on the individual and their specific
problem.
E. Progressive Reforms
1. Probation: Originated in the work of John Augustus in the Boston
Police Court, beginning in1841.
a. An alternative to incarceration
b. Recognized individual differences
c. Allowed offenders to be treated in the community under supervision
2. Indeterminate Sentence and Parole: Although the idea of parole
release has been developed in Ireland and Australia in the 1850s, and
instituted at Elmira in 1876, it didn’t catch on in the US until the mid20s.
VI. The Rise of the Medical Model
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A. Even before psychiatry began to influence American society, the idea that
criminals are mentally ill was current in correctional circles.
1. Not until the 1930s were serious attempts made to implement what
was known as the medical model of corrections.
2. Under the banner of the newly prestigious social and behavioral
sciences, the emphasis of corrections shifted to treatment of criminals
as persons whose social, psychological, or biological deficiencies had
caused them to engage in illegal activity.
B. Howard Gill tried to create a”community” of inmates within secured walls.
He helped design Norfolk in the style of a college campus, staffed with
guards and educators, psychiatrists, and social workers providing
treatment programs.
C. Rehabilitation as the primary purpose of incarceration took on national
legitimacy in 1929 when the new Federal Bureau of Prisons was
authorized by Congress to develop institutions that would ensure the
proper classification, care, and treatment of offenders. Sanford Bates was
a proponent of the new medical model.
D. Karl Menninger observed that criminal acts are “signals of distress, signals
of failure…the spasms of struggles and convulsions of a sub marginal
human being trying to make it in our complex society with inadequate
equipment and inadequate preparation.”
VII. From Medical Model to Community Model
A. The move toward community corrections was aided by the inmate riot and
hostage taking at New York State’s Attica Correctional Facility in 1971.
1. The bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil
War
2. The hostilities were viewed as demonstrating that prisons are
counterproductive and unjust.
B. Community corrections called for a radical departure from the medical
model’s emphasis on treatment in prison. Instead, prisons were artificial
institutions that interfered with the offender’s ability to develop a crime-free
lifestyle.
1. The reintegration idea was dominant for about a decade until the late
1970s.
2. It gave way to a new punitiveness in criminal justice in conjunction with
the rebirth of the determinate sentence.
VIII. The Crime Control Model: The Pendulum Swings Again
A. In the 1960s, the public became concerned about rapidly rising crime
rates, while at the same time, studies of treatment programs challenged
their efficacy and the Progressive assumptions on which treatment
programs were based.
1. Critics attacked the indeterminate sentence and parole, urging that
treatment be available on a voluntary basis and not tied to release.
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2. Proponents of increased crime control called for longer sentences,
especially for career criminals and violent offenders.
B. James Q. Wilson summarized the “new realism” in regard to treatment
programs and crime rates when he declared that efforts to understand and
curb the rise in crime had been frustrated by our optimistic and unrealistic
assumptions about human nature.
1. According to critics of rehabilitation, reportedly high recidivism rates
proved its ineffectiveness.
2. Critics have also challenged as unwarranted the amount of discretion
given to correctional decision makes to tailor the criminal sanction to
the needs of each offender.
C. The Emergence of Crime Control
1. As the political climate changed in the 1970s and 80s, with the crime
rate at historic levels, legislators, judges, and officials responded with a
renewed emphasis on a crime control model of corrections.
2. Critique of the rehabilitative model led to changes in sentencing
structures in more than half of the states and the outright abolition of
parole release in many.
3. New determinate sentencing laws incarcerated offenders for longer
periods of time; the thrust was toward incarceration risk containment.
IX. Where Are We Today?
A. As the U.S. enters a new century, the time may be ripe for another look at
correctional policy.
B. The optimism that once suffused corrections has waned.
C. The financial and human costs of the retributive crime control policies of
the 1990s are now being scrutinized.
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