In the old days, not sure when the modern era begins in regard to this topic, if you transgressed the law in some way, you were either fined, exiled or executed. When did the idea of a custodial service, with term imprisonments appear in history?
Prisons have been used for punishment since ancient times.
*Some Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato, began to develop ideas of using punishment to reform offenders instead of simply using it as retribution. Imprisonment as a penalty was used initially for those who could not afford to pay their fines. Eventually, since impoverished Athenians could not pay their fines, leading to indefinite periods of imprisonment, time limits were set instead.[6] The prison in Ancient Athens was known as the desmoterion (“place of chains”).
The Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment, rather than simply for detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house prisoners, such as metal cages, basements of public buildings, and quarries. One of the most notable Roman prisons was the Mamertine Prison, established around 640 B.C. by Ancus Marcius. *
The modern prison system dates back to, of all the people you’d least suspect, the Quakers.
The Quakers in Pennsylvania felt that existing legal punishments were cruel and did nothing to reform the criminal. They developed a new non-violent system. They would confine the criminal and isolate him from other people. They’d lock him in a cell with some simple jobs to perform and a Bible. The theory was that the criminal would be removed from the bad influences of his environment and all other distractions. He would do his work and read the Bible because they were no other less worthwhile activities to divert his attention. This enforced period of working and Bible study would turn the criminal into a industrious and religious person who could then rejoin the community.
To put this idea into practice, Eastern State Penitentiary was built in the Philadelphia area in 1829.
Huh! I thought the Romans usually just sent their criminals to the salt mines.
Possibly the oldest prison in the English-speaking world has become a slang term for any prison: the Clink
Nice try, Quakers, but how well that has worked out in the long run?
Prisons seem like an irrational lose-lose way to deal with crooks. For the most part, it appears that they do poorly at rehabilitation, and they just cost the public a LOT of money to operate, and waste a large chunk of the prisoner’s life.
It’s at least arguable that convicts and society would be better off if they just whipped their backsides bloody raw, gotten it over with, and be done with it.
Recall a case, circa early 1990’s, of an American tourist in Singapore who got accused of doing graffiti. They were going to “cane” him, which we all learned really meant whipping him bloody raw, and be done with it. It became a big-headline international incident and things got delayed for many weeks over the international furore. IIRC, the tourist himself (a college-age kid, IIRC) allegedly wanted to just get his whipping and be done with it.
(But, he also claimed that his confession had been beaten out of him — an angle of the story that, for some reason, never gained any traction.)
After a few weeks, while the controversy still raged, the news came out that they had quietly taken him out and done it and it was a fait acompli.
Sidenote: Graffiti was so severely punished in Singapore because it was one of the few ways to make a public statement opposed to the dictator/government.
The commercial printers weren’t allowed to print anti-government flyer or political literature, and the newspapers & media wouldn’t accept ads that criticized the government. Copies from laser printers or copy machines can be traced back to the specific machine, resulting in punishment for the owner.
So graffiti on public walls was one of the only ways to protest the government.
I think prisons need to be 100% non-smoking, everywhere, all the time, and it needs to be strictly enforced-- it’s harder to hide smoke than evidence of harder drug use. I’ll bet that’ll make them much less popular.
And the objection to chewing gum was that chewing gum was one of the only ways to protest the government.
And the emphais on clean toilets was that leaving public toilets in a mess was one of the only ways to protest the government.
Also, the head of governement was contrasting Chinese cities and English cities, and thought cleanliness was next to civilization. A view my Singapore/Malasian Chinese relatives still hold, even though they were never supporters of that government.
With some justification, flogging as a punishment or deterrent is illegal.“The Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture all prohibit torture and “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment”. Various United Nations organs, including the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) and the UN Human Rights Committee, have made it clear that flogging amounts at the very least to cruel and inhuman punishment.”
If corporal punishment is out of the question (in most Western countries at least) what alternative is there.
In my career, I never experienced any difficulties with prison being too popular. Maybe it was a local fad where you live.
As for smoking, it was generally banned in New York state prisons in 2001. (The ban isn’t complete. But it prohibits all smoking indoors, which is where prisoners spend most of their time.) We were in the middle of the curve on this one; some jails and prisons had banned smoking ten years earlier. Most jails and prisons have banned or severely restricted smoking by now.
I’m not sure how original the inovation was. HM Prison Shepton Mallet (closed 2013) was "established as a House of Correction in 1625, to comply with an Act of King James I in 1609 requiring that every county have such a House. " HM Prison Shepton Mallet - Wikipedia. The 1609 law replaced the law of ?? 1597 ??. Apparently penitentiary were a bit of a 1500’s thing that (in England) later became less of a thing aa they were replaced by deportation, until the loss of the American colonies interupted deportation.
There does seem to be a distinction between a house of correction and a Gaol/Prison, which leads me to think that a “house of correction” was for prisoners deemed capable of correction, perhaps young first offenders, as an alternative to the death sentence or birching.
But I think that fixed sentences existed independent of regard for penitence and correction. Sometimes the motive for a fixed sentence for minor crime (begging or drunkeness) was just to get people off the streets.
Just locking people up, of course, was something that was always done. Henry II made a national order for prisons in 1166. But I don’t think that was for “a term imprisonment” – it was just locking people up.
Most locking people up was for noblemen who could not just be executed or sent to the salt mines. It was a way for the ruler to keep control of someone who could be a threat or the figurehead to a rebellion; or those who were awaiting trial.
The problem with locking people up who had nothing - peasants, etc. - is food. We forget that in medieval times (and before) food was the biggest living expense for most people. Feeding someone who got to sit around and do nothing was expensive and certainly not something to be one for years on a large scale. Prisnoers ere put to use. If you recall the story of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables, condemned prisoners were sent to be galley slaves - same as Ben Hur in… wait for it … Ben Hur.
Oh, I don’t know. I certainly associate Quakers with porridge.
Which probably exemplifies the type of food served in prison?
Porridge is British slang for prison. (But it may have originated in the practice of serving actual porridge as a prison meal. So somebody who was “spending two years eating porridge” was going to prison for two years.)