Hanser, Introduction to Corrections, 2nd Edition: Instructor Resource

Chapter One: Early History of Punishment and the Development of Prisons in the United States

Instructor Manual

Learning Objectives

1-1: Define corrections and the role it has in the criminal justice system.

1-2: Identify early historical developments and justifications in the use of punishment and corrections.

1-3: Discuss the influence of the Enlightenment and key persons on correctional reform.

1-4: Discuss the development of t punishment in early American history.

1-5: Describe the changes to prison systems brought about by the Age of the Reformatory in America.

1-6: Identify the various prison systems, eras, and models that developed in the early- and mid-1900s in America.

1-7: Explain how state and federal prisons differ and identify the Big Four in American corrections.

Chapter Summary

Corrections is a process within the criminal justice system whereby practitioners from various agencies utilize organized security and treatment methods in an effort to correct and prevent criminal behavior. Corrections has taken various forms over hundreds of years and across the globe. Laws and punishment that comprise corrections reflect the cultural, social, and economic conditions of the eras in which they are created. For instance,correctional systems have varied between regions, under church and state rule, and according to prominent thinkers.Examining and comparing corrections across these contexts reveals not only insight into the justice system but also into history.

Punishment has consistently been central within corrections, and has ranged from corporal penalties to banishment, servitude, and confinement. While the goal of punishment is to deter law breaking, research reveals that some forms of punishment can in fact increase criminal behavior. This finding, known as the brutalization hypothesis, raises questions around the means and aims of punishment. Power-holders, practitioners, and philosophers have grappled with these queries, leading to a range of penal models and reforms.

Current debates continue to surround these models, reforms, and the most effective ways to deter criminal behavior.Corrections in the United States today grapples with questions of how to achieve a system that is cost-effective, humane, and serving public interests. In order to understand and contribute to these debates, one must grasp how today’s corrections system evolved. This chapter provides a historical account of corrections, up to and including modern policies and practices. It is hoped that readers examine historical developments and modern systems with a curious and critical eye, raising questions around the means and methods of corrections.

Annotated Chapter Outline

  1. Defining Corrections: A Variety of Possibilities
  2. The Role of Corrections in the Criminal Justice System
  3. Corrections is a process by which various practitioners engageorganized security and treatment
  4. Aim to correct criminal tendencies among the offender population
  5. Justice system includes five segments: law enforcement, the courts, corrections, juvenile justice system, and victim services
  6. The Notion of Punishment and Corrections Throughout History
  7. The goal of punishments is to prevent future criminal behavior.
  8. However, research finds that incarceration can actually increase future offending.
  9. The brutalization hypothesis contends that harsh punishments sensitize people to violence and teaches them to use violence, rather than deterring violence.
  10. Early Codes of Law
  11. Babylonian and Sumerian Codes:
  12. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known written code of punishment. Incorporated lextalionis, referring to the Babylonian law of equal retaliation.
  13. Included corporal punishments; established uniformity in punishments.
  14. Roman Law and Punishment and Their Impact on Early English Punishment:
  15. People accused of crimes in the Roman Empire were imprisonedin cages, quarries, and dungeons.
  16. If convicted, offenders were sentenced toslavery and civil death, including property seizure and complete exclusion from society.
  17. Penal servitude was used as cheap labor in both the East and West. However, in the East, such punishment extended to offenders’ family members.
  18. Early Historical Role of Religion, Punishment, and Corrections
  19. Middle Ages time of chaos, where people placed faith in religious leaders.
  20. The Church enacted punishment on offenders, utilizing tactics such as trial by ordeal, impossible tests to prove guilt or innocence.
  21. Aim of punishment to save the soul of the condemned.
  22. The Church also provided refuge for some offenders by granting sanctuary, protection from the king’s soldiers until the offender could negotiate or admit their crime and flee the country. Sanctuaries gradually abolished as secular courts gained power.
  23. Early Secular History of Punishment and Corrections
  24. As state power grew, the Church’s influence subsided. State gained control over revenues from fines and court proceedings.
  25. Crime regarded as an offense against the king’s or queen’s authority.
  26. Public and Private Wrongs:
  27. Public wrongs are crimes against society, including treason and witchcraft. Hysteria over witchcraft led to the execution of thousands of suspected witches over several hundred years.
  28. Private wrongs are offenses against individuals, such as physical injury or theft. In absence of official authority, the victim retaliated in seek of justice. However, if perpetrator responded, became tit-for-tat.
  29. The state inflicted a range of consequences on offenders, many focused on corporal punishment and humiliation. These included:
  30. Retaliation Through Humiliation – e.g., gag, ducking stool, stocks
  31. Corporal Punishment – often in public forum for deterrent effect
  32. Capital Punishment – hanging most frequent form
  33. Banishment – useful alternative to death penalty as discontent grew; temporary or permanent; included labor in English colonies
  34. Transporting Offenders – ideal punishment, as it involved minimal costs, effectively banished offenders, and offered labor for colonies
  35. Indentured Servitude – owned by employer; subject to any penalty except death; indentured servants were half of those sent to Americas during 1600s-1700s
  36. Hulks and Floating Prisons – began after American revolution; imprisonment in decommissioned ships; deplorable conditions
  37. The Enlightenment and Correctional Reform
  38. Beginning in the 1700s, notions of punishment shifted from desires for revenge towards humane treatment for prisoners.
  39. William Penn, the Quakers, and the Great Law:
  40. The Quakers followed the Great Law, which maintained thathard labor is more effective punishment than the death penalty, and that the loss of liberty is punishment in itself. Led by William Penn, the Quaker movement in reform spread through America as well as Italy and England.
  41. Charles Montesquieu, Francois Voltaire, and Cesare Beccaria:
  42. Montesquieu wrote Persian Letters, illustrating abuses of criminal law in France and Europe.
  43. Voltaire critiqued traditional ideas of legalized torture, criminal responsibility, and justice, leading to his exile from France.
  44. Beccaria condemned the death penalty,and proposed that punishments are effective as deterrence when they are certain, swift, and proportional. He also advocated for prisons as incapacitation, punishment in itself.
  45. Classical criminologyinfluenced by Beccaria, emphasizes that punishments must be useful, purposeful, and reasonable.
  46. John Howard: The Making of the Penitentiary:
  47. As a Sheriff, Howard inspected English prisons and became appalled by unsanitary conditions. He wrote and presented to Parliament State of Prisons to improve prison conditions, citing examples in France and Italy.
  48. Jeremy Bentham: Hedonistic Calculus:
  49. Influenced by Beccaria, Bentham advocated for the use of graduated penalties that connected punishment with the crime. He proposed that crime is motivated by the aim ofoptimizing pleasure while minimizing pain, known as the hedonistic calculus.
  50. Classical criminology also builds upon Bentham’s work that punishments should be swift, severe, and certain. Research maintains that swift and certain punishments are effective deterrent measures, while severe punishments are not.
  51. Punishment During Early American History: 1700s-1800s
  52. The Great Law in Pennsylvania was overturned upon Penn’s death in 1718. Until about 1787, penal reform largely occurred in Europe while America saw a digression in correctional thought.
  53. The Old Newgate Prison, established in 1773, was the first official prison in the U.S. It served as a copper mine and colonial prison. It was designed to punish offenders with crude underground housing and hard labor.
  54. The Walnut Street Jail:
  55. In the late 1780s, prison reform re-emerged, led by Benjamin Rush. Rush, the Quakers, and other reformers founded the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons.
  56. The group was active in developing the penitentiary wing within Walnut Street Jail, the first institution designed to reform offenders.
  57. Closed in 1835 after inmate disturbances, violence, and staff turnover.
  58. The Pennsylvania System
  59. This system used solitary confinement. While offenders did not engage in labor, advocates said this system would be economical because offenders would repent more quickly, leading to reduced need for facilities.
  60. Western Penitentiaryand Eastern Penitentiary confined inmates in solitary cells.
  61. Long periods of solitary confinement led to emotional breakdowns and mental illness. Suicide attempts also became commonplace, undermining the Quaker goal of redemption. Closed after start of Civil War.
  62. The Auburn System
  63. Inmates were kept in solitary confinement during the evening, worked during the day, and expected to be silent. Inmates were treated equally but expected to work, read the Bible, and pray daily. The system aimed that hard work, penitence, and obedience wouldcorrect criminal behavior.
  64. The system had economic success. It included factories within facilities, labor to offset housing costs, and the contract labor system, which utilized inmate labor through state-negotiated contracts with private manufacturers.
  65. Two American Prototypes in Conflict
  66. States adopted the Auburn system, due to the economic benefits and belief that keeping convicts busy would deter future crime.
  67. The Southern System of Penology: Pre and Post–Civil War
  68. Prior to the Civil War, Black Codes were used, issuing harsher punishments for slaves than for free men who turned criminal. However, slaves usually were not sentenced to prison because interfered with labor.
  69. After the Civil War, southern states continued to lease inmates for economic benefits. Eventually, the leasing system was abolished and replaced with prison farms. These systems focused on profit, with little incentive to eliminate inhumane practices.
  70. In 1871, the Virginia State Supreme Court noted that inmates were the “slave of the state” in Ruffin v. Commonwealth. As the Civil War ended only a few years prior, the Supreme Court resisted issues pertaining to state sovereignty. This ruling essentially deprived inmates of rights or legal standing until the civil rights movement and Holt v. Sarver (1969).
  71. The Chain Gang and the South
  72. Inmates used as labor to build railroads and highways. System reduced housing costs and provided jobs to generally uneducated guards.
  73. The Western System of Penology
  74. Inmates confined in holding cells across desert terrain, as long-term housing did not exist.
  75. Western states eventually contracted their inmates with other states to maintain custody of offenders.
  76. As western state governments developed, prisons designed along Auburn system with emphasis on labor.
  77. The Age of the Reformatory in America
  78. The National Prison Association (1870) advocated for reform over punishment, classification of inmates, indeterminate sentences, self-efficacy.
  79. Elmira Reformatory (1876) first reformatory,brought new era of penology. The warden, Zebulon Brockway,used a mark system, providing marks to the convict for each day of successful toil. Marks were used forindeterminate sentencing, which allowed offenders early release if they demonstrated reform prior to expiration of the sentence.
  80. This differed from determinate sentences, which consist of fixed periods of incarceration imposed on the offender with no flexibility.
  81. Ultimately, indeterminate sentences not shown to be more effective in reform than determinate sentences.
  82. Prisons in America: 1900s to the end of World War II
  83. Prison Farming Systems– profit driven based on agricultural production.
  84. The Arkansas System: Worst of the Worst
  85. Inmates, known as trusties, in charge of other inmates. Trusties had more power, freedom than others. This system often led to extortion.
  86. The Progressive Era
  87. During this era, national focus to improve welfare of the underprivileged. For corrections, this resulted in a shift towards humane treatment of inmates.
  88. Believed that deviant behavior caused by social and psychological causes, and treatment key to reform.
  89. The Era of the “Big House”
  90. Big House prisons were made of concrete and steels, up to six levels high, and operated by machinery.
  91. Included guard towers and checkpoints throughout the facility.
  92. The Medical Model
  93. The medical model uses mental health approaches in corrections.
  94. Criminality viewed as result of internal deficiencies that can be treated.
  95. First implemented in 1929 when Congress authorized the Federal Bureau of Prisons to use standardized process of classifications and treatment.
  96. Classification key in the medical model, but ultimately found to be more of a management process rather than effective rehabilitation tool.
  97. The Reintegration Model
  98. The reintegration model maintained that external environmental factors caused criminality.
  99. The Martinson Report examined various educational, vocational, and mental health programs, and reported that they had limited effects on recidivism.
  100. The Crime Control Model
  101. The crime control model emerged during the “get tough” era, and utilized longer sentences, the death penalty, and supervised probation.
  102. The use of determinate sentences limited judicial discretion.
  103. Today, governments are increasingly realizing these get tough strategies may have been too ambitious, and too expensive.
  104. Modern Day Systems: Federal and State Inmate Characteristics
  105. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, established by Congress in 1930, has over 100 facilities.
  106. Over half of offenders in the BOP population are convicted of drug crimes and deemed low- or minimum-security risk.
  107. State correctional systems vary in their size and facilities.
  108. Over half of state prison inmates are convicted of violent crimes.
  109. State corrections are most common form of corrections, but also have smaller budgets than BOP, affecting staff, training, and opportunities.
  110. Texas, California, and Florida have the largest prisons systems each with over 100,000 inmates. Georgia, New York, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, all have between 50,000 and 55,000 inmates. All other states house less than 49,000 inmates.
  111. The Emergence of the “Big Four” in Corrections
  112. California, Texas, Florida, and New York, have the largest prisons systems.
  113. Additionally, these states have large free-world populations, are relatively representative of the overall U.S. population, are ethnically diverse, and have robust economies.
  114. Because they have relatively robust economies, they are able to fund their correctional programs.