Prisons And The Correctional System

The Walnut Street prison, which was the first prison, built in 1790 was a prototype for other prisons to be built over the next 30 years. By the year 1817 the prison began to deteriorate. Changes and overcrowding of prisoners in one room pushed Pennsylvania legislature to build more prisons. In 1817 two more prisons where built, one in eastern and one in western Pennsylvania. They built these prisons with separate cell areas, so each inmate could be kept alone, eliminating all the problems of congregate living. The idea of having separate cells did not originate in America. "Of course the notion of forcibly confining people is ancient and there is extensive evidence that the Romans had a well-developed system for imprisoning different types of offenders." (Meskelly).

Prisons were " among the first public buildings erected in the New World," and were considered as essential as a cemetery in every town (Lynch, n.d.). However, colonial American prisons were not "houses of punishment," as they would later evolve to be (Lynch, n.d). A person who committed a crime was sent to prison only while awaiting trial, and after the trial was complete, the sentence would entail something quick and decisive either death or release. Thus, early American prison systems certainly worked to the extent that they were only designed to temporarily detain suspects and occasionally house convicted criminals for longer periods.

Throughout the years, the use of imprisonment has varied, along with its influences of society. It is thought that although prisons have been around since the thirteenth century, prisons as we know them now to be have only been around for the last three centuries. The first uses of prisons were not seen as a form of punishment instead they were used as a way of making people do something. People would be held in prison until they paid their debts, or awaiting trial and then leading up to their sentence. McGowen (1995) suggests that from the early 1700s ‘bridewells’ a house of correction have existed, however at that time being used merely for vagrants and drunks. At the end of the sixteenth century there was a shift in punishment to imprisonment, along with this came a new, more humane idea of reform. Criminals would spend their days of prison carrying out hard labour. However after the American Revolution, imprisonment took a step back and there was another change. There was mass overcrowding within the prison service and although the death penalty was still being used it was a symbol of the power of the state. Therefore, an everyday way of dealing with offenders would be transportation to the colonies, being either Australia or America.

The Penitentiary Era 1790 to 1825 mass prison building era housed many prisoners with the goals of rehabilitation; deterrence and allowing the inmates to work during the day and when they returned were put into solitary confinement (Ortmeier 2006, 391). This new era was too focused on making prisoners think about their crimes and learn skills in workshops and general labor to reenter society as a productive member. Capital and corporal punishment were looked down upon by many and they did not actually fix the problems of rising crime. Often time’s prisoners were held in a large jail cells, men and women alike that resulted in rape and fighting among each other. The strengths of this era looked to keep prisoners safe and at times lessen

The History of prisons goes through many eras. Many of these eras have a major impact on today’s prison system. The different was that the system worked and didn’t work really showed what was possibly and what should not be tried again. Each era tried to do something new are recreate something that had already been done by making changes to the way that they treated the inmates all the way to how they were housed and how much contact they had with one another. The different eras gave the present day prison system many great things to think about. Such as large capacity housing so you can properly use all the space in the prison and hold it to capacity. There is also the parole system that gives inmates a chance to work get out early and spend the rest of their sentence on the outside. These many great traits that the prison system today has all come from the hundreds of years of trial and error that occurred throughout the world.

One of the first prison systems was called the Pennsylvania System. The ideology of this system was used in the Eastern State Penitentiary in the early 1800s. This system had very definite ideas on how a prison should be organized and managed. The operation of this prison was based on the following 5 general principles (Clear, Cole, & Reisig, 2006):

American prison system incarceration was not officially used as the main form of punishment in United States (U.S.) until around the 1800’s. Before that time criminals were mainly punished by public shaming, which involved punishments such as being whipped, or branded (HL, 2015). In fact, President Lincoln codified the prison incarceration system in the Emancipation Proclamation that indicated no slavery would take place in America unless a person was duly convicted of a crime (paraphrased) (White, 2015). In this era prisons were used more as a place where criminals could be detained until their trial date if afforded such an opportunity. However, one of the main problems with this idea was the fact that the prisons were badly maintained, which resulted in many people contracting fatal diseases. Yet, according to White (2015) unethical and immoral medical experiments were also conducted on inmates’ leading to health failures. Moreover, because everyone was detained in the same prisons, adolescent offenders would have to share the same living space with adult felons, which became another serious problem in that adolescent were less mature and could not protect themselves in such environments

In this essay I will be looking at the key developments of the British penal system since the early nineteenth century. I will also discuss how the main objectives of the prison system have changed over this period of time.

There is no typical jail. Many jails are part of multipurpose buildings that also serve as the county courthouse, the sheriff's office, or the police station. Others are larger and self-contained. Although it is often charged that most jails are antiquated, the majority of jails were opened between the 1950s and 1980s. Although most jails are small, rural or suburban facilities, almost half of all jailed prisoners are in large urban institutions, which tend to be chronically overcrowded. Many jails utilize double occupancy, perching two or more inmates into cells designed for one. Large numbers of inmates are also housed in dormitories. Many of these arrangements are a far cry from meeting the standards promulgated by the Commission on Accreditation

The state prisons today were founded on the basis of the 1700s to 1800’s during the Age of Enlightenment. The English correctional facility referred to as a “gaol,” commonly known as a jail. They housed men, women, children, the mentally ill along with the civil and criminals. The individuals suffered from idleness, diseases, despair and malnutrition. The gaols were maintained by local authorities, classification did not exist, and the purpose of gaol was to detain or hold people for court.

The first penitentiary in United States was considered to be the Walnut Street Jail. This facility provided coordinated penal process such as manual labor. The Pennsylvania prison system was established to create order. The prison’s basic principle was to place all criminals in one place regardless of gender or type of crime. Obviously reform was needed, placing inmates by specific groups based on sex, age and type of offense. Inmates less dangerous were placed with the general population, while dangerous offenders were separated from non- violent offenders and solitary confinement. The characteristics of these program was used to implement and served as the basic model for future prison designs in the United States.

Prison population. Prisons in the United States have changed throughout the years and became the standard for punishment. Here in America we jail on more offenses for longer periods of time than in any other country (Deady, 2014). Our prison population has increased to over 500% in the last forty years (The Sentencing Project, 2014). A lot of this is due to the crack down on crime and the war on drugs. With the influx of inmates in our prison system we must look at what our prison

The evolution of prison reform is a reflection of society's changing attitudes toward crime and punishment. Prisons have progressed from simple places for incarceration where the primary purpose is to protect the public to instruments of punishment where the loss of freedom is penalty for breaking the law, to institutions for reform dedicated to mould the guilty to conform to society's norms. Prisons were among the first public buildings erected in the New World. The city of Boston felt the need of a "house of detention" when the town consisted of a mere forty homes. Early American prisons were not conceived as houses of punishment. In English and American law, political prisoners and high-ranking prisoners of war were occasionally incarcerated, but few common criminals could expect such treatment. Almost the only time commoners were locked away was while awaiting trial, once a verdict was delivered, they were punished on the spot or released (Lynch, 2011). The eighteenth century transformed not only the physical form of prisons but their function and their place in American consciousness.

“The history of correctional thought and practice has been marked by enthusiasm for new approaches, disillusionment with these approaches, and then substitution of yet other tactics”(Clear 59). During the mid 1900s, many changes came about for the system of corrections in America. Once a new idea goes sour, a new one replaces it. Prisons shifted their focus from the punishment of offenders to the rehabilitation of offenders, then to the reentry into society, and back to incarceration. As times and the needs of the criminal justice system changed, new prison models were organized in hopes of lowering the crime rates in America. The three major models of prisons that were developed were the medical, model, the community model, and the crime

“… incapacitation focuses on the characteristics of the offenders instead of the characteristics of the offenses”(Clear, Cole, Reisig).