American Prison Model

2012
Penitentiary Ideal and Models of American Prison Thomas King
Emmalee J Mead

Looking back at history, there have been countless ideals to reform and rehabilitate convicted criminals to attempt to make them “normal” enough to rejoin society. I think it is important to look and all of the past options and modes of reform and rehabilitation and compare them to how criminals are treated in prisons in today’s society. This paper will discuss the ideals behind penitentiaries, as well as the goals and benefits to them and other American prisons from the 1800’s.
The idea behind penitentiaries was to incarcerate and reform individuals that committed a crime and were sentenced. The goal of the penitentiary ideal was for those who are/were
incarcerated to be able to be free to rehabilitate mentally and emotionally where as with prisons they are more strict and disciplined. When referring to penitentiaries, chapter two states “Its purposes were both secular and spiritual. It was supposed to be a place of humane punishment as opposed to the physical punishments still prevalent in Western societies…. It was supposed to be clean and healthy in contrast to the jail and to avoid the kind of contamination both of body and of spirit that took place in the existing lockups. This meant that criminals in custody ought to be separated from each other as much as possible, preferably in isolation.”(Foster, 2006) In the 1800’s there were two types of American prison models, the Pennsylvania and the Auburn systems.
“The purists agreed that the Pennsylvania model was closer to ideal. The environment was more penance inducing. The prison was orderly, quiet, and controlled. The prisoners were managed individually rather than in the congregate.” (Foster, 2006) It is my opinion that the Pennsylvania model was more of a spiritual model whereas the Auburn system, described as, “cheaper to build and operate, requiring fewer guards to service and control the prisoners, and used the space within the walls more intensively. Most important, group labor made it economically more productive. A hundred men working with machinery in a prison shop were vastly more productive than a hundred men working alone in individual cells” (Foster, 2006) was more towards having the inmates work off their time rather than simply waste tax payer’s dollars. I feel that both systems have the benefits and drawbacks but both could work. A benefit of the Pennsylvania model system would be peaceful and happy inmates but the drawback, in my opinion would be that they are in prison for a reason and this would make it seem like more of a separation from society as a vacation rather than with the Auburn system where each day makes them remember that they committed a crime and are being punished for it. That would also be the benefit of the Auburn system, they pay for their crimes as well as working while in prison at places that would ultimately benefit the vast majority of society. A drawback of the Pennsylvania, depending on how you viewed things, would be that while it makes happier inmates and helps spiritually rehabilitate the criminal, it kind of doesn’t serve its purpose in my opinion. The Auburn system would make angry or noncompliant inmates and could ultimately end up not helping in the rehabilitation of the
inmate.
The model that was viewed as having won overall was the Auburn ideal. According to the text, “three important reasons why Auburn won out first, the aftermath of the Civil War brought a big increase in the prison population both as a result of the effects of the war and as a result of immigration and economic depression. Second, isolation caused some prisoners to suffer psychologically, leading critics to condemn solitary confinement as cruel and inhumane punishment. Finally, keeping a growing inmate population in solitary confinement was expensive. Inmates could do only individual handwork in their cells, so the prison could not profit from captive labor to produce more goods as congregate prisons did.” (Foster, 2006)
It is my opinion as well that the Auburn model would be decidedly more effective at rehabilitation as well as being more effective cost wise. Having read the chapter I now have a better understanding about the direction prisons and penitentiary ideals. I personally think that jails and low security prisons are not harsh enough on the inmates as they have many more rights than I feel should be rewarded. Overall I have a better understanding of how things were in the 1700 and 1800 time periods.