In the 1770s British social reformer John Howard criticized prison conditions and the exploitation of prisoners in England. Howard visited several countries to inspect their prison systems and reported his experiences and observations to politicians in England. His work helped influence the British Parliament to pass penal reform legislation. Under the Penitentiary Act of 1779, the British government established new facilities to house prisoners in individual, sanitary cells and provide them adequate food and clothing. Lawmakers believed that through hard labor and productive work prisoners could be made to realize the seriousness and consequences of their actions. <\/p>\n
British penal methods influenced the development and growth of prisons in the United States. Historians consider the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be the first U.S. prison that attempted to rehabilitate offenders, rather than simply punish them. The Walnut Street Jail was built in 1790 on a site previously occupied by the High Street Jail. Conditions at the High Street Jail typified prisoner treatment in the United States at that time. Officials routinely combined men and women into one overcrowded locked area, with straw strewn on the floor for sleeping. Inmates lived in deplorable conditions, since there was no systematic way of ridding cells of human waste. Prison administrators made no attempt to protect prisoners from one another. Sexual exploitation, rape, and other forms of aggression were commonplace. <\/p>\n
In contrast, administrators operated the Walnut Street Jail according to rehabilitative principles. Prison officials separated men from women and children during evening hours in reasonably clean, solitary cells and encouraged humane treatment of inmates. In 1787 a group of Christians known as the Society of Friends (or Quakers) established the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. The Quakers, who considered the main objective of jails and prisons to be reformation, significantly influenced the philosophy and operation of Walnut Street Jail. Key elements of the Quaker jail plan included basic education and religious instruction in the Quaker faith. <\/p>\n
Administrators of the Walnut Street Jail also incorporated some of the ideas of American statesman and physician Benjamin Rush. Rush believed that punishment had three legitimate purposes: to reform offenders, to prevent them from committing future crimes, and to remove them from society temporarily until they developed a repentant attitude. The pattern of discipline and offender treatment practiced at the Walnut Street Jail became known as the Pennsylvania System. Hallmarks of this system included the use of solitary confinement, periods of silence for meditation, religious study, promoting repentance as a goal, and rehabilitative work. The Pennsylvania System was incorporated into the Western Penitentiary (built in Pittsburgh in 1818) and the Eastern Penitentiary (built in Philadelphia in 1929).<\/p>\n
In 1816 New York constructed the Auburn State Penitentiary, which contained tiers where inmates were housed on several different levels according to their age and the seriousness of their offense. The Auburn State Penitentiary used some features of the Walnut Street Jail, such as housing inmates in individual cells at night. However, cells were poorly lit and unsanitary. Guards strictly enforced silence among inmates and implemented harsh physical punishment to ensure compliance with prison rules. <\/p>\n
In an innovation known as the congregate system, officials at Auburn permitted inmates to work and eat their meals together during daylight hours. Dining rooms were patterned after large military mess halls, and large work areas accommodated several hundred inmates. Prisoners wore different uniforms to set them apart from one another. The stereotypical striped uniform of prison inmates began as a novelty at Auburn, which was widely copied as well. More than half of all state prisons patterned their structures after the Auburn System during the next half century, including the style of prison dress and manner of separating offenders according to the seriousness of their crimes.<\/p>\n
Auburn prisoners helped to defray a portion of their housing and food costs through their labor. Prison officials contracted with various manufacturers and retailers who purchased prison goods. Thus, prison industry was a mutually beneficial enterprise-prison officials considered prisoner labor as worthwhile and rehabilitative, and the prisons also profited from prisoner-made goods. ” (1)<\/p>\n