...Penitentiary Ideal and Models of American Prisons Name Institution * The penitentiary was a stepping stone in the evolution of the prison. The penitentiary, however, was the first attempt to use confinement as the punishment itself. In England, one of the first models for the modern prison was intended to provide a place of penance for prostitutes. No matter where most of us live in the world the modern day penitentiary has some philosophy and design history thanks to such British thinkers (philosophers) as John Stuart Mill (Utilitarianism) and those who took some of his writings a step or two further: Jeremy Bentham and Thomas Robert Malthus. This radical experiment was based on principles of separation from the moral contagion of their former lives, religious contemplation, and rigid structure. * * The state can respond to crime in a number of ways; together, the responses of the criminal justice system constitute one set of possible actions. The American Prison Association changed its name to American Correctional Association. This name change reflected the growing role of probation, parole, and other non-institutional methods of supervising and helping criminals. But symbolically it gave prisons a new mission: rehabilitation. Prisons offered an unprecedented number of programs designed to change the behavior of men and women in prison-to turn their law-breaking behavior into law-abiding citizens...
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...Discipline and Punish is a history of the modern penal system. Foucault seeks to analyze punishment in its social context, and to examine how changing power relations affected punishment. He begins by analyzing the situation before the eighteenth century, when public execution and corporal punishment were key punishments, and torture was part of most criminal investigations. Punishment was ceremonial and directed at the prisoner's body. It was a ritual in which the audience was important. Public execution reestablished the authority and power of the King. Popular literature reported the details of executions, and the public was heavily involved in them. The eighteenth century saw various calls for reform of punishment. The reformers, according to Foucault, were not motivated by a concern for the welfare of prisoners. Rather, they wanted to make power operate more efficiently. They proposed a theater of punishment, in which a complex system of representations and signs was displayed publicly. Punishments related obviously to their crimes, and served as an obstacle to lawbreaking. Prison is not yet imaginable as a penalty. Three new models of penality helped to overcome resistance to it. Nevertheless, great differences existed between this kind of coercive institution and the early, punitive city. The way is prepared for the prison by the developments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the disciplines. Discipline is a series of techniques by which the body's operations...
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...History of Penitentiaries History of Penitentiaries The history of penitentiaries is not only important but also is interesting in the development of the Unites States of America. This paper will discuss the development of penitentiaries as well as how punishment had changed for inmates from the beginning days of penitentiaries to current day. So grab a drink and possibly a snack, and let’s get to it. The penitentiary was a stepping stone in the evolution of the prison. The penitentiary, however, was the first attempt to use confinement as the punishment itself. In England, one of the first models for the modern prison was intended to provide a place of penance for prostitutes. No matter where most of us live in the world the modern day penitentiary has some philosophy and design history. The penitentiary is a place that posted to be clean and healthy for the inmates. In addition, it a place that ensures the punishment the judge gives to the criminals and other punishment while in the penitentiary. The criminals are able to think about his or her wrongdoing and try to accomplish a change in life while incarcerated. The ideal for penitentiary is to keep the criminals off the streets, so that he or she cannot continue to commit crime in the society. Penitentiary ideal purposes were both secular and spiritual. A penitentiary had purposes to be both secular and spiritual. Instead of a penitentiary being all about physical punishment, it was supposed to be a place of humane...
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...Panopticism Summary Foucault begins with a description of measures to be taken against the plague in the seventeenth century: partitioning of space and closing off houses, constant inspection and registration. Processes of quarantine and purification operate. The plague is met by order. Lepers were also separated from society, but the aim behind this was to create a pure community. The plague measures aim at a disciplined community. The plague stands as an image against which the idea of discipline was created. The existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring and supervising abnormal beings brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms created by the fear of the plague. All modern mechanisms for controlling abnormal individuals derive from these. Foucault then discusses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a building with a tower at the center from which it is possible to see each cell in which a prisoner or schoolboy is incarcerated. Visibility is a trap. Each individual is seen but cannot communicate with the warders or other prisoners. The crowd is abolished. The panopticon induces a sense of permanent visibility that ensures the functioning of power. Bentham decreed that power should be visible yet unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but never knows from where he is being observed. The possibility that the panopticon is based on the royal menagerie at Versailles is raised. The Panopticon allows on to do the work of a naturalist: drawing...
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...utilitarian thinking, society recognized three additional goals: deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. The relative importance of these goals became tied to conservative, liberal, or radical ideology. In assuming management of a prison, wardens are responsible for perimeter security and maintaining an orderly, secure internal environment. Wardens often regard themselves as administrators, rather than leaders. As wardens become more educated, the formal structure of modern prisons is likely to resemble a large, private organization with an established hierarchy and defined responsibilities. When governments confine people, they assume certain responsibilities toward them, including provision of constitutional living conditions, thus avoiding law suits and court interventions. Other management issues, such as classification, custody, and control, are also a high priority for modern prisons. During the last several decades, there has been a move toward professionalization in—moving from custody to control to care. Achieving scientific, uniform, and successful administration of public punishment through professional development is the goal of the American Correctional Association. In this professionalization effort, issues such prison health care, privatization, and diversity of incarcerated populations are the frequent focus of correctional studies. This Week in Relation to the Course This week, you focus on the functions, policies, and procedures of corrections...
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...utilitarian thinking, society recognized three additional goals: deterrence, incapacitation, and rehabilitation. The relative importance of these goals became tied to conservative, liberal, or radical ideology. In assuming management of a prison, wardens are responsible for perimeter security and maintaining an orderly, secure internal environment. Wardens often regard themselves as administrators, rather than leaders. As wardens become more educated, the formal structure of modern prisons is likely to resemble a large, private organization with an established hierarchy and defined responsibilities. When governments confine people, they assume certain responsibilities toward them, including provision of constitutional living conditions, thus avoiding law suits and court interventions. Other management issues, such as classification, custody, and control, are also a high priority for modern prisons. During the last several decades, there has been a move toward professionalization in—moving from custody to control to care. Achieving scientific, uniform, and successful administration of public punishment through professional development is the goal of the American Correctional Association. In this professionalization effort, issues such prison health care, privatization, and diversity of incarcerated populations are the frequent focus of correctional studies. This Week in Relation to the Course This week, you focus on the functions, policies, and procedures of corrections...
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...Development of Corrections Hope Washington CJS/230 Introduction to Corrections May 2, 2013 John Feltgen Throughout history, the female criminal has been cast as a "double-deviant"; first, because she violated the criminal or moral law and, second, perhaps more importantly, because she has violated the narrow moral strictures of the female role within society. In almost every Western society, women have been cast as second-class citizens, subservient to the will and wishes of men. Women who violated the law, then, also violated their subservient position and were seen as morally suspect as well as criminal. Prior to the development of prisons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, punishment for women and men took a variety of forms: Serious offenders were put to death by hanging or burning, or banished from their community or sold as slaves. Prisons for women have changed now because they are not as brutal and it was in the 1800’s but women still go to prison for crimes they have committed. Despite the evidence for pre-modern concerns about juvenile crime, a number of historians have argued that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was a pivotal period of change in the treatment of juvenile criminals. Accordingly, a traditional approach to the history of crime has argued that during the nineteenth century there was an invention of juvenile crime, and that, henceforth, the foundations were laid for the juvenile justice system of the later nineteenth century...
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...Panopticism Summary Foucault begins with a description of measures to be taken against the plague in the seventeenth century: partitioning of space and closing off houses, constant inspection and registration. Processes of quarantine and purification operate. The plague is met by order. Lepers were also separated from society, but the aim behind this was to create a pure community. The plague measures aim at a disciplined community. The plague stands as an image against which the idea of discipline was created. The existence of a whole set of techniques and institutions for measuring and supervising abnormal beings brings into play the disciplinary mechanisms created by the fear of the plague. All modern mechanisms for controlling abnormal individuals derive from these. Foucault then discusses Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon, a building with a tower at the center from which it is possible to see each cell in which a prisoner or schoolboy is incarcerated. Visibility is a trap. Each individual is seen but cannot communicate with the warders or other prisoners. The crowd is abolished. The panopticon induces a sense of permanent visibility that ensures the functioning of power. Bentham decreed that power should be visible yet unverifiable. The prisoner can always see the tower but never knows from where he is being observed. The possibility that the panopticon is based on the royal menagerie at Versailles is raised. The Panopticon allows on to do the work of a naturalist: drawing...
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...4.4 Discipline and Punish This book, published in 1975, is a genealogical study of the development of the “gentler” modern way of imprisoning criminals rather than torturing or killing them. While recognizing the element of genuinely enlightened reform, Foucault particularly emphasizes how such reform also becomes a vehicle of more effective control: “to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better”. He further argues that the new mode of punishment becomes the model for control of an entire society, with factories, hospitals, and schools modeled on the modern prison. We should not, however, think that the deployment of this model was due to the explicit decisions of some central controlling agency. In typically genealogical fashion, Foucault's analysis shows how techniques and institutions, developed for different and often quite innocuous purposes, converged to create the modern system of disciplinary power. At the core of Foucault's picture of modern “disciplinary” society are three primary techniques of control: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. To a great extent, control over people (power) can be achieved merely by observing them. So, for example, the tiered rows of seats in a stadium not only makes it easy for spectators to see but also for guards or security cameras to scan the audience. A perfect system of observation would allow one “guard” to see everything (a situation approximated, as we shall see, in Jeremy Bentham's...
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...Development of Corrections CJS230 John O'Hern The 18th century government had started sending prisoners to penal colonies, this was first in America, for a given period, usually seven years, but in some cases for life. The American War of Independence which broke out in 1775 stopped this. After this men and women were sent to new penal colonies in Australia. During the course of the years roughly 160,000 people were sent including both men and women of all different ages some as young as nine years old. Despite evidence of concerns about juvenile crime, several of historians have debated that the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was a pivotal era of change in the treatment that juvenile criminals received. Accordingly, a traditional approach to the history of crime has debated that during the nineteenth century there was what some would call and “invention” of juvenile crime, and that the foundations were created for the juvenile justice system not only for the nineteenth century but also for our modern system. Several key features that were enshrined in this system were the axiomatic tension between systems of punishment and reformation, as well as the seperation of juveniles and adults on all stages of the criminal justice system which was effectively the removal of the child from what were believed as debilitating domestic environments. Traditional histories show that it was no coincidence...
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...History and Development of Prisons The historical account of jails in our country can be traced back to the Epic age. In Ramayana, when Bharata saw Rama at Chitrakut, the latter, while making detailed inquiry about the state of polity and welfare of people of Ayodhya, did not forget to elicit the situation in jail there. References of jail are also there in the Mahabharata. In those mythological period there were eighteen important state officials and one of them was the bead of the institution of jail (karagriha) designated as kamyadhyrrkrkcr". In Manusmriti it is stated that "(the King) should have all the prisons built on the royal highway, where the suffering and mutilated evil doers can be seen". Development of the prison system Until the late 18th century, prisons were used mainly for the confinement of debtors who could not meet their obligations, of accused persons waiting to be tried, and of convicts who were waiting for their sentences--either death or banishment--to be put into effect. But imprisonment gradually came to be accepted not only as a device for holding these persons but also as a means of punishing convicted criminals. During the 16th century a number of houses of correction were established in England and on the continent for the reform of minor offenders. The main emphasis was on strict discipline and hard labour. The unsanitary conditions and lack of provisions for the welfare of the inmates in these houses of correction soon produced widespread...
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...Death Penalty The Death penalty is one of the most controversial and debatable questions in the history of criminal justice. The main problem is that the death penalty is irrevocable so a wrong decision can lead to a terrible mistake and injustice towards an innocent person. “On the other hand, the death penalty is the only possible measure to punish criminals and protect our society from cruelty and repeat crimes” (Coyne and Entzeroth 72). Objectively speaking, plausible moral arguments can be made both for and against capital punishment. A key element of the debate, moral arguments have tended to remain fairly static over the years, and often have been used in conjunction with religious arguments. Two moral arguments have remained particularly important throughout the death penalty debate: retribution and the sanctity of life. Argument: Death penalty is a crucial punishment which violates human and constitutional rights of people, thus it is the only possible measure to protect society from violence and repeat crimes. Those favoring the death penalty often argue that society must express moral outrage at -- and condemnation of -- heinous crimes such as murder. Proponents of death penalty typically consider deterrence to be one of its fundamental goals. “The execution sermons of the early colonies were full of warnings against following in the footsteps of the condemned, and executions were public events designed to instill fear and reverence for the law in the people of...
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...PRISON IN AMERICA Since the beginning of time there has been good and evil, as man developed modern society he found that a need existed to separate the bad from the good. Society needed to find a way to protect the weak and defenseless citizens from the dangers of mankind. The use of confinement to punish offenders began in Europe in the early eighteen century. The concept of incarcerating offenders for long periods of time as a way of punishment for crimes is fairly new development in America. (McShane, Williams 1996) Before 1770’s with a few exceptions serious offenders received fines, corporal punishment, death, and banishment, but they were not incarcerated as a form of punishment. (McShane, Williams 1996) Jails were made to only hold people awaiting trail and minor offenses. This was in accordance with Puritan views that man was born into sin and punishment was God’s way of dealing with sin and evil deeds. This type of thinking was thrown out due to changing ways of criminal behavior. Now enter the modern institution designed to deal with this new breed of criminal behaviors. The first prison in America is supposed to be the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia (1790) There is however another, an abandoned copper mine in Connecticut which was converted into a prison. In 1773 Newgate prison accepted its first inmate by the 1820’s it was closed due to rising costs. (McShane, Williams 1996) This was the first institution designed to incarcerate offenders with...
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...Purpose and History Paper of Penitentiaries Ericka N. Williams CJA/234 May 14, 2013 Matt Holquin The development of prisons date as far back to the early Roman times, which forms of punishment were being used for offenders suspected or convicted of criminal activity. Prisons have developed and modified the effectiveness and appropriateness of punishment over time to function the way they do in today’s society. The correction process is among three of the major components of the criminal justice system, but could not be successfully complete without the police and the courts. There are two types of systems that prisons use to design and enforce punishment among offenders – Pennsylvania and Auburn. The systems tweaked and modified the original ideas, in order to form a prison system that would be effective and serve the purpose intended for criminals and impact and distinguish the amount of involvement of prison labor over time. History of punishment The history of the word punishment derives from the Latin word peonalis. Before the word punishment was used penology was the term used, which meant “punishment.” The term penology was later replaced by the term corrections. Our criminal justice system has a broad perspective of corrections for the criminal offenders convicted of criminal acts against another person or community. The use of punishment in earlier days resulted in public shaming, which was thought to prevent the accused from committing future crimes. These...
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...Why are so Many Minorities in Prison? Robert Klein ENG 122 English Composition II Instructor Megan Lockard January 19, 2015 Outline: Why are so Many Minorities in Prison? I. Introduction A. Thesis: Racial disparity in the criminal justice system is widespread and it threatens to challenge the principal that our criminal justice system is fair, effective, and just. II. Body Paragraph I- As the rise of private, for-profit prisons increase in number there has to be a steady flow of inmates to keep a profit for these private, for-profit prisons. A. Supportive Evidence- As Hallet says in his 2002 essay, “ Race, Crime, and For-Profit Imprisonment: Social Disorganization as Market Opportunity,” “It is perhaps surprising to realize that the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which ended slavery, also authorized the ‘involuntary servitude’ of prisoners as a punishment for crime.”(p. 370) 1.Explanation- The private, for-profit prisons or as some people are now starting to call them corporations. The prisons need people in them to receive taxpayer dollars to house inmates and the idea is to make a profit off of every inmate in the prison. The Thirteenth Amendment protects the prisons to have free labor, so the owner of the prison does not have to pay the inmates for the work therefor; the owner keeps the profit. 2.So What? – That quote is important because it shows that prisons can get contracts and be protected to use the inmates as free labor. It shows...
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