Andersonville Prison Research Paper

The first shipment of prisoners to reach Andersonville came from Libby Prison in Virginia on February 24, 1864 (Hackmann 1). From that day on, 400 men showed up each day. At the end of June, 26,000 men were held captive, and by August, the total had risen to 33,000, making that the largest population of men held at one time. Originally meant to detain only 10,000 men, a solution needed to be found. (2 “Andersonville” 1) The Confederates made the decision to expand the stockade to twenty-six acres, but that did not help the declining conditions (Hackmann 1). Henry Devillez remembers arriving on June 18, 1864, and states, “. . . we [Naviaux, Devillez, and both Rogier brothers] beheld misery on all sides. Sickness and death by hundreds was the program every day.” Over time the creek banks gave way and resulted in the whole compound becoming a swamp infested with maggots and lice. The pests would

An example of what happens when prisons become overcrowded took place in Trenton, New Jersey in 1952. The small prison was made up of "sexual psychopaths, passive homosexuals, aggressive 'wolves' with long records of fights and stabbings, escape artists, agitators and incorrigibles of all ages" (Blackwell). While Trenton’s overcrowding was minimal compared to today’s standards, there was 1,312 inmates in a facility designed to hold 1,190. The cells were old and rundown, barely lit, and infested with rats that were fed better than the inmates (Blackwell). The prison began hiring tougher, more rugged correction officers to combat the rowdy inmates. The inhumane treatment of the inmates contributed to an unstable and volatile emotional state among the inmates. Around midnight on March 29, 1952, the inmates began to tear apart their cots, using the metal legs to pry open their cell doors. The inmates “chased their guards out of the wing, barricaded the entrance and wrecked everything they could lay their hands on. They smashed cell toilets, shredded beds, broke windows and set fires” (Blackwell). The guards broke the will of the inmates after 46 hours by using tear gas and water hoses. Two weeks later, a group

“At the top of a list of “demands” was the basic request that officials “provide adequate food, water, and shelter for all inmates.” Others included adequate medical treatment,” “realistic, effective rehabilitation programs,” “true religious freedom” “an end to “censorship of newspapers, magazines [and] letters” and tellingly, “a program for the recruitment and employment of a significant number of black and Spanish-speaking officers” (“Attica At 40” 8).

In an official report of the events that occurred at Attica Correctional Facility, the McKay Commission, called it the “bloodiest one day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.” From September 9th, 1971 to September 13th, 1971 inmates took control of Attica in hopes of gaining leverage on the demands of obtaining the removal of state control over the prison, livable conditions, amnesty for crimes during the rebellion and diversity among correctional staff. For five days, inmates ceased control of this state operated prison by taking hold thirty-nine guards and employees as hostages. After four days of negotiations, state officials retook the prison by lethal force killing a total of thirty-nine unarmed citizens, ten of which were

All throughout history, Prison war camps Sorta became a thing of the norm . Whether it is in Nazi ,Germany during World War II or The United States during the civil war. Both packed and riddled with disease, both brutal, no doubt, but one more than the other.

Historian Watson interviewed a survivor of the Walnut Street Jail some years after the War's end. The veteran, Jacob Ritter, recalled that prisoners were fed nothing for days on end and were regularly targets of beatings by the British guards. The prison was freezing as broken window panes allowed snow and cold to be the only blankets available to the captives. Ice, lice, and mice shared the cells. Desperate prisoners dined on grass roots, scraps of leather, and "pieces of a rotten pump." Rats were a delicacy. Upward of a dozen prisoners died daily. They were hauled across the street and slung in unmarked trenches like carcasses from an abattoir.

Although the prison was enlarged, the number of prisoners continued to swell. By August 1864, more than 32,000 prisoners were confined at Andersonville. Also, the lack of shelter from the searing heat and the bitter cold. Historical documents, however, attest to the fact that prison officials attempted to acquire supplies for the prisoners but were severely hampered by the need to use supplies for the military and war effort.

Conditions inside the prison were no better. For starters, many of the prisoners were those who had committed menial crimes. Worse so, many were war heroes, back from Vietnam who couldn’t find a job and thus had to go about other illegal means to stay alive, and thus were thrown in prison. Attica prison in particular was famous at the time among prisoners for having the most horrific treatment of their inmates. Guards did whatever they could both legally and illegally to keep their prisoners in perpetual fear and discomfort. The prisoners were not just treated like children, but as animals. The one thing prisoners treasure the most is their contact with the outside world. It keeps them sane and allows them to remain in some type of contact both with their families as well as with what is going on outside the prison walls. But, guards did whatever

Robert H. Kellogg, who was a sergeant major, described his entry as a prisoner into the camp on May 2nd, 1864: “As we entered the place, a spectacle met our eyes that almost froze our blood with horror, and made our hearts fail within us. Before us were forms that had once been active and erect; stalwart men, now nothing but mere walking skeletons, covered with filth and intensity of their feeling, exclaimed with earnestness. "Can this be hell?" "God protect us!" and all thought that He alone could bring them out alive from so terrible a place. In the center of the whole was a swamp, occupying about three or four acres of the narrowed limits, and a part of this marshy place had been used by the prisoners as a sink, and excrement covered the ground, the scent arising from which was suffocating. The ground allotted to our ninety was near the edge of this plague-spot, and how we were to live through the warm summer weather in the midst of such fearful surroundings, was more than we cared to think of just then.”

In their observation of the Auburn Prison in New York, they found that the use of solitary confinement and subjecting the inmates to complete isolation had serious negative results, in which Beaumont and Tocqueville noted that solitary confinement did not reform and rather killed (Panzarella & Vona, pg 287). As a result, solitary confinement lost much of its popularity over the next couple of decades and later reemerged with the establishment of supermax prisons in the late nineteenth century. Supermax prisons, which is short for maximum security prisons hold the most dangerous convicts using the methods of isolation and solitary confinement to primarily control and direct them. Inmates in maximum security prisons are held in isolated cells for years or even decades as they serve their sentence. In her University of Michigan Journal of law Review, Solitary Confinement, Public Safety, and Recidivism, Prisoner Rights advocate Shira Gordon states, “Unlike the nineteenth century, correctional administrators in modern prisons do not implement solitary confinement for rehabilitative purposes. The goals of modern solitary confinement are simply to incapacitate and assert control over prisoners: the warden and

Twenty miles northeast of california's state capital sacramento, lays a castle like structure known as folsom prison. Folsom prison is the second oldest prison in california but Folsom was the first prison in the world to have electricity do to the first hydroelectric powerhouse in California. San quien was the first prison to open in california but after 6 years the prison became over populated and corrupted. After the gold rush the state decided it was time to open a new prison. In 1873 prisoners from san quien were shipped to folsom to help build the foundation of the prison. Folsoms construction of the cell blocks started in 1878 and the prison was opened in 1880.

Since the Bureau of Prisons sold the Cibola County Correctional Center to a private company, there have been reports that the prison has accumulated the most repeat significant deficiencies in health services than any other federal prison currently in operation. The prison is set to close in October.

By what i researched and what i saw on the internet i understood that the attica prison was a big riot that was

In 1819 the prison in New York, Auburn was opened which was design by its first agent, it included a center of containing tiers of cell blocks. The Auburn system was meant to divide the prisoners into three distinct categories: The problematic convicts were isolated, the second class which were less difficult spent half of the day at work in groups and the rest of the day isolated, and finally the third class were the “least guilty” they (third class) operated (worked) together through the day and were divided at nights as they (third class) would return to their spate cells. Though it is questionable that the Auburn prison or others like it could result in much income, the clue of convicts evolving skillsand a work ethic was common.

Throughout the Civil War, prisoners of war were abundant and thus a popular topic of debate. This likely influenced Lieber’s ideas as to what was important to include in the code, leading to much of Lieber’s code entailing the treatment and exchange of prisoners of war. “Early in the war prisoners received equal treatment from both sides. However the lack of a systematic programs