How might we best explain the rise of the prison as a replacement for other punishments?
Ellen Jones
How might we best explain the rise of the prison? as a replacement for other punishments?
This essay aims to account for the rise of the prison as a replacement for other types of punishment during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. First explaining what the 'other punishments' were and the practical and ideological reasons that led to their decline. For example how public opinion turned against capital punishment feeling it was ineffective and worrying about rising crime, or the difficulties that hampered the transportation system. It will then look at how these problems stimulated interest in prisons as an alternative to other punishments. What the functions and conditions of the unreformed prison were, how this stimulated debate and the groups who championed for prison reform.
As Hay tells us, in the first chapter of Albion's Fatal Tree, the law had three main elements: majesty, mercy and justice. Before the rise of the prison criminals were deterred, or not, by numerous capital statutes and transportation. Criminals faced either death or exile. When a criminal was hanged the ceremony and ritual of the court procedure and execution exhibited the majesty of the law. The law could also choose to show mercy to the criminal in which case the criminal would instead be transported. The aims of transportation were to reform the criminal and for the criminal to show retribution for his crime. Finally, the criminal could be hanged which would exhibit the justice of the law. Thus within these two methods of punishment other important elements can be cited such as the need for the punishment to deter possible offenders, and the importance placed on the reform and retribution of the offender.
With both of these methods of punishment problems developed, in the early nineteenth century crime was predominantly in London and industrial cities. The increased urbanisation and industrialism causing large numbers of people to move to cities meant that people became less familiar with those around them and no longer knew their neighbours. These factors helped to increase people's perceptions of crime, which were especially prevalent among respectable people. Crime statistics show a steady and large increase in the numbers of trials and convictions, 'from roughly 11, 000, 000 to 16, 500, 000'1in the years 1801 to 1831, an increase of approximately fifteen times. These figures substantiated the worries people already had about rising crime and a 'crime wave'. Although they do not confirm an actual 'crime wave', they were evidence to people of a failing system.
Crime waves may be seen to occur in statistics, however most commonly they have appeared due to a change in the way crimes are recorded. For example, changing the catagories or definitions of offences, the ? Act of 1827 or reform of the police could thus be an influence in these figures. Similarly the growth of the population in this period (how much?), contributed to raising people's perceptions of crime.
However, numbers aside, there was a public feeling that crime was rising and perceptions of crime were strengthened by these figures. People were not satisfied with the success of capital punishment as a deterrent. There was no gradient to the punishments people received in accordance with the crime they had committed as Cesare Beccaria recommended in his Delite thing which is perhaps why it was not working. For most offences, petty theft to murder, the punishment was death. Another part of the reason it was no longer an adequate deterrent was due to jury's reluctance to find a prisoner guilty when they knew they would be sending him to his death. It was also common to down-value stolen items so that the offence was not capital. Despite public feeling capital statutes were still increased by the government in the first decade of the nineteenth century. If the jury refused to convict transportation was still an option that would dispose of prisoners to far away settlements.
As public opinion turned against capital punishment due to its perceived ineffectiveness and called for 'a moderating of the severity of the criminal law'2 the option of transportation was also coming into problems. Transportation to the American colonies had for a long time been becoming problematic. Settlers were increasingly unhappy with the dumping of convicts on their soil and the system was in decline, the influx of black slaves had made white convict labour obsolete3. The American revolt brought the issueof transportation to a head and the British involvement in the conflict from 1776-83 disrupted the shipping of ...
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As public opinion turned against capital punishment due to its perceived ineffectiveness and called for 'a moderating of the severity of the criminal law'2 the option of transportation was also coming into problems. Transportation to the American colonies had for a long time been becoming problematic. Settlers were increasingly unhappy with the dumping of convicts on their soil and the system was in decline, the influx of black slaves had made white convict labour obsolete3. The American revolt brought the issueof transportation to a head and the British involvement in the conflict from 1776-83 disrupted the shipping of criminals to America. This caused English prisons to fill however little was initially done to find a solution. There were efforts to find other places to transport people, for example to Africa, however these were unsuccessful, generally due to the hot climates. In the interim after the last fleet to America and before Australia again made transportation possible the government looked for alternatives and relied heavily upon hulks, 'old troops and men-o'-war, their masts and rigging gone, rotting at anchor, but still theoretically habitable'4. The Hulks Act was drawn up in 1776 and those who would have been transported were now sent for a spell of hard labour on the Thames. The first Penitentiary Act was also passed in 1779 which shows that problems with other methods was stimulating interest in prisons as an alternative. The act embodied the moderate views on prison reform held men such as John Howard the ? prison reformer. It served as a model for local acts and building schemes recommending silent labour and exercise during the day with coarse food and religious instruction and solitary confinement at night (change).
Hulks quickly became over crowded and the conditions squalid, transportation needed to be resumed and the government chose Australia 'their new, vast, lonely possession, a useless continent at the rim of the world'5. The first fleet of convicts arrived in Australia on January 26, 17886 and government interest in prisons decreased. However it had been raised as an alternative and when the Napoleonic Wars began in 1796 and again created difficulties in shipping criminals across the sea the prison was again considered, until Nelsons victory at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 when the difficulties of shipping decreased.
(1st fleet 1788, last 1868). No where to send people late 18th early 19th century when Australia and van diemens refuse to take anymore, thus big rise in interest in prison.
Apart form the practical problems of transportation there were also theoretical/ideological problems. As a punishment transportation was meant to deter people as well as reform them and gain retribution from them. However it was not actually clear that it was worked. Once people were out of site it was hard to tell how much of a deterrent they had created by leaving and more importantly there was no visual evidence of their being reformed. There were also problems with the fact that once the criminal had done his time and hard labour he had a new start in a new place. There were strong feelings that the prisoner should not have any advantage over a person who hadn't offended. There is also evidence of people returning from being transported and re-offending making its value as a punishment increasingly questionable.
If there was to be a change from the present system the new system needed to continue to reflect the elements of the law as shown above, majesty, mercy and justice. It also needed to satisfy the views of public opinion and of reformers. Public opinion strongly reflected the view above that offenders should have no advantage over a non-offender. This was also a strong influence when reform began on prisons and people worried that prisoners ought not to receive a better diet the working poor. Reform also became very important with the rise of the prison as at some stage prisoners would re-enter the community.
Current prisons
When did campaign for reform begin?
Two main groups of reformers were Utilitarians led by Bentham and influenced by Beccarias ideas and religious groups such as the Quakers and Evangelicals. These groups campaigned for better conditions in prisons aiming to 'develop imprisonment as a suitable substitute for indiscriminate hanging' and transportation. The changes they thought necessary differed between each group but they all agreed prisons should be 'less physically damaging and morally corrupting but not easier or pleasanter'7 for prisoners.
John Howard, Jonas Hanaway and George Holford were all prominent prison reformers who visited and wrote books and pamphlets about the conditions they observed in prisons and their ideas to improve them. These groups started calling for prison reform in the 1770s, Jonas Hanaway wrote two pamphlets in 1776 and 1781 outlining the use of solitary confinement for reforming prisoners. The methods employed would be seclusion of the prisoners from one another, manual labour and religious exhortation (need word), later collectively termed the separate system. Signif early critics of reform were dissenters think crime sin and the purpose of punishment conversion and reformation of the sinner.
John Howard the prison reformer drew attention to this (published something?) and conditions improved in larger prisons but not the small borough or private-franchise prisons. Many societies for reform of prisons voiced concern over the moral effect the state of prisons had on its inmates, without segregation of offenders inmates convicted of serious crimes mixed with and could influence those guilty of only minor offences. Henriques tells us 'the unreformed prison was a kind of inversion of the moral order ... those who suffered most where the comparatively clean, honest, industrious and respectable'8.
Another school of reformers are those influence by Beccaria's 'Dei Delitti e delle Pene', led by bentham. Bentham, Utilitarians believe crime to be cured by deterrent example and by prisoner being industrious rather than religious moral conversion. Utilitarians and Religious puritan groups two main schools of thought on reform of prisons, advocating similar schemes by different means. Benthams factory panoptican.
As a result there was, as Henriques states, a 'general revision of the methods of dealing with crime'9 one aspect of which was the reform of prisons. The decline in success of capital punishment stimulated continued interest in different methods of dealing with crime. When transportation also became a problem this too encouraged interest in prisons as an alternative place to put those convicted of crimes and for use as in place of present practices.
There were then both practical and ideological reasons that led to the present methods declines leaving the need for other ways to punish and control, all eyes looked to the prison.
The prison at that point was not used as a long term souution for what to do with criminals. Prisons were...
In the 18th and early 19th century (?) there were two kinds of prison: the gaol, which was used mostly for criminals awaiting trial or removal to place of punishment and the house of correction for those committing minor offences. Eighteenth century prisons were very different places to the ordered institutions we have today. They were run under the system of fees where gaolers were not paid salaries and gained their wage by selling food and other necessities to prisoners. As a result the conditions of prisoners in any given prison could vary immensely, those with money being able to purchase alcohol and female prisoners who could make their living through prostitution. The living conditions were foul, many inmates were constantly ironed to prevent escape and there was no separation of sex or age among prisoners. They were damp, dirty and ridden with disease, many had only the floor on which to sleep. There was gambling and bullying, with prisons being dominated and even run by the stronger inmates.
The purpose of the prison was threefold; it was to act as a deterrent to reform and retribution (?).
When people considered the prison, their only real alternative to failing current methods, as a place of punishment it was clear that at present it fell short of some of the nessarsary critera. As it had not until now served that purpose it needed much reform to continue the values that the present system embodied. It had little deterrent and offered no chances of reformation and retribution. Many people had ideas about how it could change in order to provide these nessarsaries.
Once interest in prison reform was stimulated and it became the only choice as a punishment the prison had risen. All that was left to decide was the form it should take and for what purposes. A big all, and one that produces endless debate under influence from many factors, public opinion, reforming groups and the government, which push in different ways. The result being that the prison is now the primary method for dealing with criminals. Its numbers grow as the debates about its purpose and how that would be best achieved continue.
Go to stagiest system requires have pentonvilles. Govt department made and grows, wants to build prisons
Late 18th early 19th reorg of prisons to greater segregation
Disappearance of private and local prisons- to central govt control, national system.
Also ideas change (- theoretical probs with transportation and death sentence? prison? Put here)
Groups such as utilitarians and evangelicals (ideological reasons) once start thinking about what a prison should do can't carry on that way. Views similar without priest.
How prison develops
Reorganisation of prison to greater segregation
Central not system emerges/constructed
Once get to separate system at rise of the prison
2.The unreformed prisons
There were two kinds of jail, the house of correction for minor offences and gaol for criminals awaiting trial or death. These were used indiscriminately for all, however Henriques tells there was actually more distinction than thought between the two.
Ideas of police reform were stimulated by the lower number of capital statues (?), no transportation being available any longer and increased perceptions of a failing justice system.
The penitentiary act of 1779 acted as an alternative to transportation as America was no longer available.
There was lots of corruption in prisons; they were very inept and filled with bad practices.
Groups for reform were religious groups, mainly the Quakers and Evangelicals and the Liberals and Utilitarians including men such as John Howard, and John Holford. They were concerned about the moral effect of prisons on prisoners and the people who ran them due to gambling lack of separation of males and females and general bad practice.
3.Early demands for the classified prison
Demands for reform began in the 1770's, men such as Howard and Hanway published books and pamphlets about the present conditions of prisons and setting out ideas for reform.
There were two man schools of thought the dissenters, who wished to see a religious emphasis and the Utilitarian who advocated industrial prisons promoting the 'separate system'.
The parliamentary act of 1779 instituted a hybrid of the two and a further penitentiary act in 1791 invited all prisons to adopt these rules also creating salaried jailers. The same year a select committee from the House of Lords and House of Commons reported. The House of Commons reported on the need for classification. Peels prison act of 1923 summarised the reports of the two committees institutionalising classification and industry. However it did not touch Hulks, which were increasingly used due to the lack of transportation and were also in desperate need of reform or removal, first being established as a temporary measure.
However the ides of industrial prisons was not popular with the public for three main reasons; protest of local craftsmen who felt threatened by the industry; growing uselessness as machines can do the job better along with public feeling criminals should not be put in a more eligible position than others by being given education and taught a trade; and lastly the public felt prison should not be a scene of 'cheerful industry', thus there was a growing imposition of silence.
Rothman argues for prison as method of dealing social control, just one of a lot of institutions that popped up?? America. Weiss is evaluating arguments that place political economy in the forefront of analysis such as Rusche and Kirchheimers, penal system serves the economy in some way, form and severity influenced by labour supply, prison system in eng principle of 'less eligibility', prison conditions must be worse than poorest.
Conclusion
Once become interested in prisons as a punishment don't stop?
Notes
John Howard in Ignatieff
Who were reformers? What were their motivations?
Prison was not used in the way that it is today
Rich tend to assume are nice to neighbours and poor don't do this.
Bibliography
* Henriques, Ursula, Before the Welfare State, London, 1979
* Weiss, P., Robert, 'Humanitarianism, Labour exploitation, or social control? A critical survey of theory and research on the origin and development of prisons',
Pg. 155, Ursula Henriques, Before the Welfare State, London, 1979
2 Pg. 156, ibid.
3 Pg. 41, Robert Hughes
4 Pg. 41-2, Robert Hughes
5 Pg. 42, Robert Hughes
6 Pg. 7, Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore,1987
7 Pg. 160 ibid.
8 Pg. 160 ibid.
9 ibid.
