Preview

History of the Prison

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1922 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
History of the Prison
Introduction This research paper is on the history of the prison in America. How it came to be in its present state? Things I will be writing about in this paper are the early history of the prison history in England. I will be talking about early American prisons, the goal of rehabilitation, prison labor, changes in the prison system, rehab programs, population, housing and prison organization we will hit briefly on all those aspects of the history of prisons. The reasoning behind this paper is because many people do not know why prison are the way they are now. In order to know why we have prisons the way we have them today you have to know where they came from. The main findings from my paper are from the internet. Articles that I read for this are Towards a Fair and Balanced Assessment of Supermax Prisons by Daniel P. Mears and Jamie Watson. The textbook Twelfth Edition Introduction to Criminal Justice Author Larry Siegel Chapter 16. Prison Reform in Pennsylvania by Norman Johnston PH.D Board member Emeritus of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, Wikipedia. The Short History of Prison by the Howard League for Penal Reform. These articles helped me to understand how we have the prison system today. I found that the country has been through many phases and schools of thought on how to punish and house prisoners. The prisons went from just a holding place for people until they were sentenced. To the way things are today being time as the punishment for offenders. Most people who are punished for misdemeanor crimes are held in a jail. The most serious crimes which are felonies stay in prison

The early history of jails and prisons in America starts with England. This was a way to deal with people that are did some cruel deed. This was one of the tools courts had to deal with this problem. History shows that every civilized organization in the world had some place to lock away and separate those that do not know how to follow the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Throughout the centuries, both the system and the concept of prison have undergone many radical changes that eventually led to the formation of the prison as we know it now. In the 16th and 17th centuries, prison tended to be a place where criminals were kept in it while awaiting their punishment. It was a place, where criminals were held, rather than a means of punishment. In fact, criminals, at that time, were publically punished, rather than imprisoned, in the most torturous ways such as whipping, and slaughtering. However, in the 18th century, people in charge decided to put an end to these cruel methods of punishing. They came up with new methods of punishing instead of using torture in punishing criminals. In fact, the incarceration with hard labor was the new method of punishing criminals. Thus, the prison itself became a tool of punishment.…

    • 625 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Wilbert Rideau Analysis

    • 221 Words
    • 1 Page

    This week I found the paper written by Wilbert Rideau most interesting to write about. Rideau wrote an essay arguing to convince us that the prison system does not work. The prison system was built and designed to house criminals who committed crimes for punishment, and to deter people for committing criminal acts. Rideau states, “Although prison is set in place to, ensure public safety it has minimal impact on crime, because the response is after the fact.” Rideau believes when criminals commit crimes they are in a desperate situations and their state of mind is distorted so they aren’t thinking of the consequences, or many criminals think they won’t get caught. Although the prison system is put in place to punish criminals, and correct their…

    • 221 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In Europe, institutional confinement did not become a major punishment for criminals until the 1600s and 1700s. (In the United States, institutional confinement was not used extensively as a punishment until the 1800s.) As a practice, though institutional confinement has existed since ancient times. Before the 1600s, however, it usually served functions other than punishment for criminal behavior. For example, confinement was used to:…

    • 238 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    I believe that health care and safety are two significant changes that have occurred during the 20th century. We now have more advanced technology and more income coming into the prisons to provide efficient care for the inmate’s health issues or accidents that may occur within the facilities. Before the 20th century the death rate of inmates was extremely high, due to the fact of overcrowding and not having the means and resources to efficiently take care of any diseases, illnesses and wounds that passed through.…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Cjs/230

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Prisons, unlike jails, confine felons sentenced to longer then a year to serve their sentence within the facilities. They are operated by state governments but the Federal Bureau of Prisons also houses federal offenders in Federal penitentiaries. Since its establishment of prisons within the United States, over-crowding has always been a growing problem in both state and federal prisons. Since the beginning of the first state penitentiary in America, which was Walnut Street Jail led by Dr. Benjamin Rush in Philadelphia in 1790, officials and scholars have always been looking for more humane and reformed alternatives to punishments for criminals. Through the years state prisons have found ways of making the penitentiaries more humane and reformed through public work services and other forms of labor. In the 1930s, state prisons developed prison work camps in which inmates would be made to work various labor jobs as “slaves of the state”. Today prisons are much different where they do offer labor programs in some states, prisons are more for reforming the criminals through educational and religious programs. As well as work there is also the variety of security levels for prisons present today which are: Maximum-security prisons, Close high-security prisons, Medium-security prisons, Minimum-security prisons, and Open-security prisons. Most state prisons have multilevel prisons to house various levels of securities depending on the offender. State prisons aren’t the only one that has history throughout the years, as there is also Federal prison. Congress passed the “Three Prisons Act” in 1891, establishing the Federal Prison System implementing the first three prisons: USP Leavenworth, USP Atlanta, and USP McNeil Island. Throughout the years of federal prisons…

    • 443 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    prison privatization policy

    • 2129 Words
    • 14 Pages

    (8) Morris, Norval and David J. Rothman, eds. 1998. The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society. New York: Oxford University Press.…

    • 2129 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Abstract: Based on the ideals of a penitentiary, what it should be like? What was the principal goal of a penitentiary? What were the differences between the two prison models? What were the benefits and drawbacks of each model? Which model was considered to be the winning model?…

    • 969 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    CJS/230

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the late 1700’s prison was an idea that had not taken on form. Serving time was a set idea of principals and many saw the need for change. As time went on a penitentiary became a more solid idea that began to take shape.…

    • 706 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    If a criminal is committed of tax fraud then they will most likely end up in a federal prison. Federal Prisons are run by the national government and primarily house those known as “white-collar criminals”. A while-collar criminal is a person who commits what is known as a white-collar crime such as Income tax evasion. The term white-collar criminal is related to the term “white-collar worker”, who are mostly those who receive higher wages and are part of the upper-middle class to the higher class range.…

    • 269 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Historical Prison Eras

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Throughout the years the way prisons are run has changed. Changes include social roles, informal behavior norms, and social solidarity. Prison history has three major eras the Big House, the correctional institution, and the contemporary prison.…

    • 645 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In this essay I will be looking at the key developments of the British penal system since the early nineteenth century. I will also discuss how the main objectives of the prison system have changed over this period of time.…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    During the age of enlightenment state prison were formed because scholars felt that there was a more humane way of treating criminals. Prison was not used as a form of punishment before the enlightenment era; it was primary used as a holding place for men,…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    To learn the knowledge of the history about federal prison in so many different books it gives me the ability to learn more on when and how they were originated. Before the federal prisons were created they depended on the state and local levels to house there prisoners. The Federal Bureau Of Prisons confines felons convicted of federal crimes and houses pretrial defendants in federal jails in several large cities (Foster, 2006). The beginning of the federal system was in the 1890s and did not come about until president Hoover in the year 1930 signed a bill that gave the federal prison system permission to establish a building for the federal facilities. This became the first federal U.S. Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas and was created in an old military prison.…

    • 328 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The history of state and federal prisons is quite interesting. Long ago, prisons did not really exist. Prisoners were housed in jails until trial, discharge, or execution. Since that time, state and federal prisons have been introduced and utilized. State prisons were the first to be invented. Prison facilities house criminals sentenced to one year or longer of incarceration, (usually felons). State prisons are run by the government of the individual state they are located in and the federal government is somewhat involved also. Over the years, the severity and number of crimes had increased, violent crimes had increased immensely. Therefore, state prisons began to have major problems with overcrowding. It was also determined that there needed to be separate facilities to house more violent and dangerous criminals away from other inmates. These facilities also needed to be more secure and protected than state prisons. Hence, Congress passed the Three Prisons Act in 1891 and the first federal prison was created and began to house federal prisoners in 1895. This first federal prison was an old military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The second prison under this act was the prison at McNeil Island in 1907. The third prison enacted under this act was Atlanta. This prison opened in 1902 and was the first prison that was built new. Since then, many more state and federal prisons have been built and opened all over the United States. As crime increases, so does the need for these facilities.…

    • 268 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    History of Corrections

    • 1751 Words
    • 8 Pages

    In 1790 came the birth of the Penitentiary in Philadelphia. The penitentiary was different than other systems in that it isolated prisoners, “ …isolated from the bad influences of society and one from another so that, while engaged in productive labor, they could reflect on their past miss-deeds…and be reformed,” (Clear, Cole, Reisig). The American penitentiary and its new concept was observed and adopted by other foreign countries.…

    • 1751 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics