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Penitentiary Ideals and Models

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“Assignment: Penitentiary Ideal and Models of American Prison Paper” The word penitentiary falls back on the story of Creation. In the Bible, the chapter Genesis 1:2 says, “And the Earth was without form.” This is how a penitentiary was back in the 1700’s; it was merely an idea that had not been concrete to others yet. According to chapter 2 of the textbook; The Penitentiary and the 1800’s, “The penitentiary was more of an idea or set of principles than a physical institution with shape or form.” (Burk Foster, 2006). The only strange questions asked throughout is, what should a penitentiary be? 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 punishment for wrong doers. Instead of prisoners being bunched together, the true penitentiary was meant to have them separated from each other to avoid contamination of the body and spirit. I personally think that a penitentiary should be more like a place to make an inmate know that they did wrong by breaking the law. Today in the 20th century, many prisons are giving inmates too many privileges. It seems as if they are trying to make their sentence spent in a penitentiary more like spending it at home. For example, inmates are allowed to watch television, have visitation form their families on the weekends, yard time, work out, work different kinds of jobs for a certain amount of money a month, and receive packages from families that contain new clothing, jewelry, and hotpots to make tea with. I think that a prison should make an inmate’s like behind bars torment, so that they are unlikely to become repeat offenders and land themselves a sentence back in prison. According to chapter 2 of the textbook; The Penitentiary and the 1800’s, “The principle goal of a

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