Prisons

In the United States, prisons are state or federal institutions designed to house individuals convicted of felony crimes. Prisons are governed through criminal justice systems, and in most countries, prisons are used to house people who have been sentenced by the criminal courts. This article briefly explores the history of imprisonment and then proceeds to ask questions regarding what prisons are for, who is sent to prison, and what happens to people when they are imprisoned.

History

This history of the prison can be traced back to at least 1700 BCE and the Code of Hammurabi, Babylon. Ancient Egyptians used imprisonment as a means of detention, and prisons were also widely used in Ancient Greece, although primarily to house debtors. Imprisonment, in the form of penal servitude in metal and salt mines (ad metalla) or chain gangs (opus publicum), was the primary punishment in the Roman Empire. Indeed, for Johan Thorsten Sellin, author of Slavery and the Penal System (1976), the history of imprisonment is intimately connected with that of servitude and slavery.

In England in 1166, King Henry II issued the Assize of Clarendon, which ordered his sheriffs to build a jail in each county. Jails held debtors and felons awaiting trial. In 1556, the first House of Correction was established at Bridewell, and in

1609, King James I made the House of Correction (popularly referred to as Bridewells) obligatory in every English county. Prisons at this time in England and across Europe were largely, but not exclusively, used as forms of detention for people awaiting punishment. The death penalty, public forms of corporal punishment (e.g., public whippings), banishment, and transportation were the main state punishments from the 16th to the 18th centuries. However, by the end of the 18th century, popular anguish about public execution, torture, and slavery raised serious moral questions about such practices. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Western societies were rapidly changing from a political economy of feudalism to first one of mercantilist capitalism and later one of industrialized capitalism grounded in the exploitation and domination of wage laborers in both the home nations and their colonies. As noted by penologists George Rusche and Otto Kirchheimer, practices of punishment, and especially imprisonment, reflected such socioeconomic changes.

By the early 1800s, across virtually the whole of the globe, the prison was considered a place for punishment. At this time, there was a change in emphasis from the elimination to the reclamation of the offender and the belief that new reformed prisons could act as a technology of salvation. Two diametrically opposed philosophies underscored this transformation: Christianity and Utilitarianism. On one hand, Christian reformers believed that the immorality of crime could be rectified by manipulating the offender through isolation in a prison cell where the offender could reflect and repent of his or her unrighteousness. Utilitarian philosophers, on the other hand, pleaded for the universality of reason and for acceptance of the idea that reformation could only take place through the socialization of the offender’s proclivity for pleasure. This would be achieved by constant inspection. The approaches to reformed prisons in the United States, France, and England at this time created the template for the modern prison.

In the United States, Pennsylvania led the way, passing new laws in the 1780s for the penal servitude of offenders through public works. In the 1790s, Walnut Street Prison opened in Philadelphia. This approach was based on silence and separation through solitary confinement and became known as the separate system. An alternative approach, known as the silent system, which allowed prisoners to work together in silence, was implemented at Auburn State Prison in New York in the 1820s. The influence of these prisons was felt across the Atlantic. In England, in 1810, the Holford Committee recommended that a convict prison should be built at Millbank, on the River Thames in London. The General Penitentiary was designed to hold 1,000 prisoners and later led to the opening in 1842 of Her Majesty’s Prison Pentonville. Pentonville housed 520 prisoners in separate cells and became the model prison in the Victorian era. Its regime—based on solitude, hard labor, religious indoctrination, and surveillance—became the basis for reformed prisons in England and many other places.

What Are Prisons For?

Since the 19th century, prisons have been justified on a number of different grounds. Retributivists argue that prisons should be places of pain because the prisoner, through his or her criminal offense, deserves to suffer. This justification has problems because it is based on the assumption that imprisonment can deliver justice in unequal societies and that two wrongs can make a right. Another justification is that harsh penal regimes, penal servitude, and discipline can act as deterrents to both individual offenders and the general public more broadly. This is closely connected to the doctrine of less eligibility—the belief that the conditions of imprisonment must not be higher than the living conditions of the poorest laborer. According to Rusche and Kirchheimer in 2003, less eligibility has been the “leitmotiv of all prison administration down to the present time” (p. 94). The problem with deterrence is that it can never be morally right to imprison one person for the benefit of others (general deterrence) and that there is no evidence that ex-prisoners reduce offending as a direct result of their imprisonment (individual deterrence). Prisons are also justified on the grounds of incapacitation and promoting public safety. Incapacitation, however, has an Achilles’ heel. Rather than preventing crimes, they are merely deferred; so when offenders are released, they may reengage in criminal behavior.

Perhaps the most influential justification for prisons is the claim that prisons can reform or rehabilitate offenders. The terms reform and rehabilitation, although often used interchangeably, in fact mean very different things. Reform ultimately means to change the offender. The aim of reformative punishment is to alter the individual by attempting to reeducate, teach, train, or instill a new morality. The offender is in need of moral education—work, religion, schooling, or vocational training. Rehabilitation aims to restore the individual to the person he or she was before the crime was committed. This suggests that treatment is most important, and, just like medicine, if the problems could be correctly diagnosed, then the offender and ultimately society can be cured of problematic behavior.

Who Is Sent to Prison?

The World Prison Population List details prison population rates per 100,000 of the national population in 223 countries. In October 2015, there were more than 10.35 million people held in penal institutions throughout the world. More than half were held in just five countries: the United States (2.2 million), China (1.65 million), Russia (0.64 million), Brazil (0.61 million), and India (0.42 million). The United States has one of the world’s highest prison population rate at 698 per 100,000 of the general population (behind only the Seychelles). Prison populations have been growing rapidly across the world since the early 1970s. According to Nigel South and Robert Weiss, this can be explained by the rise of neoconservative governance and neoliberal political economy in the global North and the growing reach of neoliberal capitalism across the world, including in the global South, following the end of the Cold War.

The people who are in prisons often come from impoverished social backgrounds and are often people of color or indigenous populations in countries that are former colonies. In Australia, for example, people of aboriginal descent make up about 2% of the overall population but over 20% of the prison population. About half of the U.S. prison population is made up of African Americans, though constituting only 13% of the general population. The vast majority of prisoners are men. One in three young Black men are currently in prison, on parole, or on probation. Black American men are 8 times more likely to be imprisoned than White Americans, and if current trends continue, 29% of Black American men born today will end up in prison during their lifetime. Across Europe, there are disproportionately large numbers of foreign nationals in prisons, even in countries with relatively low prison populations. In 2013, David Scott reported that 32% of prisoners in the Netherlands, 23% of prisoners in Germany, and 33% of prisoners in Norway are foreign nationals.

Prisoners around the world are also people with complex and multiple needs. Many prisoners have grown up in care homes or have had significant family difficulties. Many are unemployed or receiving benefits before prison or do not have paid employment to go to upon release. In addition, many prisoners are likely to be homeless or not living in a permanent accommodation prior to imprisonment. Many have no or only limited education (and often cannot read or write) and are in poor health, for example, with mental health problems, long-standing illnesses or disabilities, or substance usage problems.

It is also commonly accepted that offenders think and behave differently than nonoffenders. For example, offenders at moderate to high risk of crime engage in criminal thinking or have attitudes that are more antisocial than nonoffenders. Offenders are also more likely to associate with other offenders and less likely to engage in prosocial activities such as work or school, and prosocial leisure or recreational activities.

What Happens to People in Prison?

Prisons are a specifically designated spatial order controlling human freedom, autonomy, choices, actions, and relationships. External physical barricades regulate the conditions of social existence through sealing prisoners from their previous life, while internal control mechanisms survey constraints on the minutiae of the prison day. Security restrictions on prisoner movements—such as access to educational and treatment programs, religious instruction, work and leisure provision— are carefully structured and regimented around predetermined orderings of time and space. The architecture of the prison place determines the location of events and distribution of bodies and in doing so also highly regulates relationships.

According to Diana Medlicott, in one way or another, a sense of loss affects all prisoners. At times, prisons are places of frantic activities, highly structured routines, timetables, and regimentation. Paradoxically, at other times they are empty, dull, and motionless, where nothing is happening, but all the same, is passing at a fast rate. Scott and Helen Codd note that for some, the loss of freedom and time to live one’s life, the enforced passivity, and the emptiness of time can be exceptionally painful. For others, prison creates an opportunity for change, to rid oneself of prior antisocial proclivities in favor of a new goals and prosocial agenda, thus avoiding a return to the prison environment.

References:

1. Medlicott, D. (2001). Surviving the prison place. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
2. Rusche, G., & Kirchheimer, O. (2003). Punishment and social structure. London, UK: Transaction.
3. Scott, D. (2013). Why prison? Posing the question. In D.
4. Scott (Ed.), Why prison? Cambridge, pp. 1, UK: Cambridge University Press.
5. Scott, D., & Codd, H. (2010). Controversial issues in prisons. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
6. South, N., & Weiss, R. (Eds.). (1998). Comparing prison systems: Toward a comparative and international penology. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: OPA.
7. Walmsely, R. (2015). World Prison Population List. London, UK: ICPR.