Development Of The Prison System Essay Research

Development Of The Prison System Essay, Research Paper

Development of the Prison System

Prisons were virtually non existent before the 1700s; prison was not considered a serious punishment for crime, and was seldom used. Instead, governments imprisoned people who were awaiting trial or punishment whereupon they would receive the more common capital or corporal types of punishment. Common punishments at that time included branding, imposing fines, whipping and the death penalty (capital punishment). The authorities punished most offenders in public in order to discourage people from breaking the law; this falls under the theory of deterrence. Some prisoners were punished by being made to row the oars on ships called galleys.

However, English and French rulers kept their political enemies imprisoned in such prisons as the Tower of London and the Bastille in Paris. In addition, people who owed money were held in debtors’ prisons. In many such cases, offenders’ families could stay with them and come and ago as they pleased. But the debtors had to stay in prison until their debts were settled. Despite these two exceptions, these early prisons bore virtually no exception to the modern prison system.

During the 1700s, many people criticised the use of executions, mutilations and other harsh punishments. This was the beginning of the early prison reform. These critics included the British judge Sir William Blackstone. As a result, governments turned more and more to imprisonment as a serious form of punishment.

Early prisons were dark, dirty, unhygienic and overcrowded. They locked all types of prisoners together, including men, women and children, plus dangerous criminals, debtors and the clinically insane. During the late 1700s, the British reformer John Howard toured Europe to observe prison conditions. His book, the State of the Prisons in England and Wales influenced the passage of a law that led to the construction of the first British Prisons designed partly for reform. These prisons attempted to make their inmates feel penitent(sorry for doing wrong) and became known as penitentiaries; this is where the origins of the theory of rehabilitation are found.

One form of imprisonment was transportation to a penal colony. During the 1700s, British Convicts were sent to North America to work in cotton fields. This ceased in 1776, when the United States achieved independence. After 1789, convicts were sent to Australia. The first convicts were sent to work as servants. If they misbehaved, the government took them back and put them in chain gangs to break stones and build roads. Eventually purpose built penal colonies were established, such as the one at Port Arthur, Van Diemens Land (now Tasmania), founded in 1833.

At the beginning of the 1800s, prison reformers began to emphasise the importance of keeping prisoners alone. It was thought that if they had time to reflect in solitary confinement, prisoners would see the error of their ways and become reformed. Prisons were built consisting of many tiny cells where the prisoners lived and worked alone. Each cell had its own exercise yard. Prisoners were separated even in church by tall screens to prevent them from seeing other inmates. By the 1850s, however, the separate system had been largely superseded by the silent system, mainly because of overcrowding. In the silent system, the prisoners worked and exercised with other inmates, but they were forbidden to talk to, even look at each other.

Later reformers introduced the idea of an indeterminate sentence, dependant on the prisoners behaviour. Good conduct and hard work led to privileges and association with other inmates. These ideas were tried in Ireland, France and the English penal colony on Norfolk Island, off the coast of Australia. There, prisoners gained marks for good conduct and hard work, or lost them for bad behaviour. When they reached the required number of points, they could be released. Other reformers introduced the idea of a conditional release, whereby a prisoner was released before the end of his sentence provided he complied with certain conditions. If not, he was returned to prison. This led to the parole system, widely used today.

Reforms in the 1900s have led to further improvement of prisons. In the 1930s, for example, prisons began to develop rehabilitation programmes based on the background, personality and physical conditions of the inmate. This approach made rehabilitation programmes more meaningful. But despite such efforts, attempts to rehabilitate offenders had disappointing results. Many failed because of poorly trained staff, lack of funds, and ill defined goals.

By the 1960s, many people felt that criminals could be helped better outside prison. As a result, many countries began to set up community correctional centres and halfway houses. Offenders lived in these facilities just before the release and received counselling to help them adjust to life outside prison. The number of prison inmates declined, but community correction programmes also failed to meet expectations, and prisons again become the most preferred institution.

Prisons today are very different. Severe overcrowding is now the major problem in most prisons. Cells originally built for one prisoner, now often house two or three men. Judges in the United States have ruled that many prisons are so cro