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The Penitentiary Era: 1790-1825

In the Penitentiary Era, which lasted from 1790 to 1825, prisoners were housed in penitentiaries, where they were supposed to do penance and be rehabilitated into productive citizens (Schmallenger, 2003). The Quakers converted the Philadelphia Walnut Street jail into a penitentiary in 1790, hoping to use religious and human principles to rehabilitate the inmates. Charles Dickens, on a visit to America in 1842, requested visiting a penitentiary to explore the new punishment adopted in the Philadelphia prison by Dr. Benjamin Rush of solitary confinement, an idea which sprang from the confinement of disobedient monks in monasteries (Brook, 2003). The prison had been visited a decade earlier by Alexis de Tocqueville for the same purpose, and attracted thousands of visitors each year. Rush was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a prominent physician and social activist, who objected to capital punishment, and also to corporal punishment which was administered publicly (whipping or the stockade) in the belief that public shaming would bring about the reform of criminals. At this time, prisoners were generally held in large jail cells, both male and female together, and often with access to alcohol, only until their trial and punishment.

Rush believed that prisoners should be housed individually in 8 x 12 foot cells, and maintained in silence and in solitary confinement for the period of their sentence (Brook, 2003). He was responsible for the building of the first such prison, the Eastern State Penitentiary, then the largest public building in the country, at a cost of $800,000. The 1858 annual report for Eastern State maintained that the system actually made prisoners more sane, and that those prisoners who suffered mental breakdowns did so because of self abuse - masturbation which, at the time, was thought to drive men crazy. The philosophy behind this prison system was one of rehabilitation and deterrence. Th...

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The Penitentiary Era: 1790-1825. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:46, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1708765.html