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CHAPTER 3
Study Guide
The History of Corrections in America
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 American 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’s 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.
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. Cell blocks 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.
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