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Jan 19, 2022 · The justice system of 17th and early 18th century colonial America was unrecognizable when compared with today’s. Early “jails” were often squalid, dark, and rife with disease. Cellars, underground dungeons, and rusted cages served as some of the first enclosed cells.
Prisons quickly became overcrowded, expenses mounted, and taxpayers were unwilling to make convicts' lives more comfortable. High recidivism led many to question whether reformation was possible after all.
The onset of the eighteenth century brought major demographic and social change to colonial and, eventually post-colonial American life. [73] The century was marked by rapid population growth throughout the colonies—a result of lower mortality rates and increasing (though small at first) rates of immigration . [ 73 ]
- Bringing Convict Labor from Great Britain
- Privatizing The Penitentiary
- Selling Children Into Slavery
- Replacing Enslaved People with Convicts
- Squeezing Every Dollar Out of Prisoners
Before the American Revolution, Britain used America as a dumping ground for its convicts. In 1718 Britain passed the Transportation Act, providing that people convicted of burglary, robbery, perjury, forgery, and theft could, at the court’s discretion, be sent to America for at least seven years rather than be hanged. The convicts were chained bel...
In the early 19th century, the United States was exporting more cotton than all other nations combined. The frontier was constantly expanding, opening up more land for cotton, and it seemed impossible to lose money on real estate. New Orleans had the densest concentration of banking capital in the country, and money poured in from Northern and Euro...
Before the Civil War, most prisoners in the South were white. The punishment of enslaved African Americans was generally left up to their owners. Louisiana, however, did imprison enslaved people for “serious” crimes, generally involving acts of rebellion against the slave system. A number of these imprisoned slaves were women. Penitentiary records ...
After the Civil War, the former owners of enslaved people looked for ways to continue using forced labor. With Southern economies devastated by the war, businessmen convinced states to lease them their prisoners. Convicts dug levies, laid railroad tracks, picked cotton, and mined coal for private companies and planters. The system, known as convict...
Around the end of the 19th century, states became jealous of the profits that lessees were making from their convicts. In Texas, a former slaveholder and prison superintendent began an “experiment.” The state bought two plantations of its own to work inmates that were not fit enough to “hire out for first-class labor.” As a business venture, it was...
Mar 18, 2022 · Yet today, prisons face a legitimacy crisis, and are considered by many policymakers and reformers as bloated, inhumane institutions. How did we get here? What’s reasonable to ask of prisons and do they ever work as intended? How is incarceration experienced by those who are imprisoned?
Jan 22, 2015 · Correctional history in the United States is riddled with peculiar ideas about how to change behavior. In the colonial days, pillories were used to confine the heads of beggars and drunkards so that they were unable to avoid public gaze.
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From the early forms of punishment in colonial America to the emergence of the penitentiary system, the influence of the Auburn and Pennsylvania models, and the transformative reforms of the Progressive Era, each epoch reflects a response to societal needs and evolving philosophies.
