This essay is going to show the development with four eras of the correctional system. The four eras that will be discussed with be: 1800, 1960, 1980 and 2000. For each era we will go over the description of the holding or monitoring of the offenders, the treatment and punishment of the offenders and the influences of the particular era on today’s correctional system. The conclusion will discuss the most beneficial era to the correctional system, as well as, recommendations for ways in which the current correctional system could be improved upon.
Penitentiary era 1800’s
With the ideas of The Age of Enlightenment growing in popularity, a new concept of criminal punishment came into play; the penitentiary. The penitentiary first appeared in 1790 when the Philadelphia Walnut Street Jail was expanded to allow separate confinement of inmates. The western State Penitentiary was established in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1819, as well as the Auburn State Penitentiary in New York. The Auburn State Penitentiary was based on a congregate system. Seeks to redeem offenders through a well-ordered routine of the prison, implementing strict discipline, labor, obedience, and silence. The inmates were held in isolation at night but congregated in workshops during the day. They could not talk or look at each other while working or at meals. The work consisted of hard labor, such as the construction of roads or buildings. The inmates had to walk in unison, in a formation known as the lock step. The goal of The Auburn State Penitentiary was to redeem the offender through the well-organized practice of the prison (Clear, Cole, & Reisig, 2009). In 1821 after many years of lobbying from the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons, the Pennsylvania Legislature approves funding to build the Eastern State Penitentiary. The new prison will hold 250 inmates. In 1829 Masks are fabricated to keep the inmates from communicating during