Punishment Within Prisons

2020

What aspects of human liberty does incarceration impinge? A remarkable group of Black and white prisoners, most of whom had little formal education and no resources, raised that question in the 1960s and 1970s. Incarcerated individuals asked judges for relief from corporal punishment; radical food deprivations; strip cells; solitary confinement in dark cells; prohibitions on bringing these claims to courts, on religious observance, and on receiving reading materials; and from transfers to long-term isolation and to higher security levels. Judges concluded that some facets of prison that were once ordinary features of incarceration, such as racial segregation, rampant violence, and filth, violated the Constitution. Today, even as implementation is erratic and at times abysmal, correctional departments no longer claim they have unfettered authority to do what they want inside prisons walls. And, even as the courts have continued to tolerate the punishment of solitary confinement in th...

2015

Countries with similar economies, cultures, languages and politics tend to have similar penal systems, albeit with some surprises and anomalies (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006). The purpose of this chapter is to explore the penal systems in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland to see if they converge with other Western, developed, industrialised democracies and what lessons can be learnt from the anomalies that emerge. The chapter is divided into five sections. Imprisonment in pre-partition Ireland is reviewed before moving on to examine how the penal systems in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland developed after partition. Next, everyday prison life is explored to investigate how order and control is maintained as well as the extent to which the needs and quality of life of those imprisoned are addressed. Lastly, the suitability of prison accountability mechanisms are reviewed to determine their ability to promote change and encourage improvements and reform in Irish and Northern Ireland prisons. Imprisonment in Pre-Partition Ireland Up until the mid-nineteenth Century, the primary methods of punishment in the island of Ireland were public punishments (such as executions) and transportation. In 1775, transportation to America was discontinued due to the American War of Independence and the use of public punishments were no longer deemed desirable because of their failure to deter criminality, increased questioning of the legitimacy of public executions and potential for such displays to agitate national unrest and uprisings against English and Scottish gentry, who had colonised the island of Ireland since the 16 th and 17 th Centuries (Kilcommins et al. 2004). This Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology 2 led to an increased interest in the prison as a place of punishment, with the introduction of legislation to promote prison reforms and establish a prison inspectorate. Prior to this, prisons had primarily been viewed as holding cells for people awaiting trial, sentencing, transportation or public punishment and were managed locally with conditions varying depending on a person's ability to pay (Ignatieff, 1981). Prison reforms provided an official salary for jailers and required local authorities to provide food and medicine to those imprisoned at public expense (Kilcommins et al. 2004). Failures to adhere to these reforms led to the appointment of local prison inspectors and an inspector-general who reported to parliament (Kilcommins et al. 2004). Unfortunately, this interest in prison reform was short-lived as the colonisation of Australia from 1788 to the 1850s meant that transportation was reintroduced as the primary means of punishment (Kilcommins et al. 2004). In addition, national uprisings and rebellions in the island of Ireland at this time meant that the use of corrective methods and reforms were postponed in favour of suppression (Kilcommins et al. 2004). Nonetheless, attempts were made to restructure imprisonment so that it could be used as an alternative to transportation. The penitentiary system was introduced to reform individuals through solitary imprisonment, labour and religious instruction, with Millbank in London and Richmond in Dublin chosen as the sites for the first penitentiary prisons in Britain and Ireland (Heaney, 2003). While the penitentiary system operated in Millbank between 1816 and 1843, it was less successful in Richmond due to an inappropriate prison design, lack of planning, insufficient supervision, staff malpractice as well as tensions between the Catholic Chaplin and Protestant Governor (Heaney, 2003). Further, people tended to prefer transportation to the strict discipline, lengthy periods of detention and unfamiliar evangelical atmosphere (Heaney, 2003). For these reasons, Richmond penitentiary was closed after eleven years (1820-1831) and transportation continued to be a popular punishment, with

Legal Horizons, 2023

The present article delves into the origins and theoretical underpinnings of the carceral model of corrective punishment at Walnut Street Prison and the system of solitary confinement at Eastern State Penitentiary. The central research question to the extent to which the ideology advocated by the Society of Friends served as a formative influence in shaping the Pennsylvania system of prison discipline and its implementation in practice, as frequently acknowledged in historiography. To probe this inquiry, we have resorted to primary source materials and literature addressing the historical trajectory of penal institutions in Pennsylvania. It has been ascertained that the contention positing the pivotal involvement of the Society of Friends in the reformatory initiative gained traction primarily within the European penitentiary discourse on penology, through accounts of American prisons penned by La Rochefoucauld, Niemcewicz, Beaumont, and Tocqueville. The carceral model at Walnut Street Prison, characterized by distinctive attributes encompassing segregated confinement, hard labor, distinct treatment protocols grave for the most egregious of offenders, and administrative oversight by the Board of Inspectors, largely adhered to the English carceral model of corrective punishment. The conviction in the redemptive potential of seclusion was intrinsic to both religious and materialist penitentiary discourses of the era. Therefore, the ideology of the Society of Friends was not determinative here. The establishment of the system of separate and solitary confinement during the 1820s was instigated by the challenges encountered within the carceral model of Walnut Street Prison. It was a complex process and cannot be reduced to the realization of one religious group's idea: it took into account the practical experience of prisons in Pennsylvania and other states, the theoretical research, and analyzed statistical data. The reform was predated by active public discourse and scholarly dialogues appraising the merits and limitations inherent in diverse models of prison discipline.

is where I became an artist,' Alfredo Santos says now, more than half a century after he painted the mural at top and five others in the dining hall while an inmate there." Preamble "When we return to the search for a more humane and rational response to crime, we must keep in mind that the prison is tied to other social and political arrangements that limit what changes are possible. The criminal justice system in general is at least partially involved, directly and indirectly, advertently and inadvertently, in repressing groups and classes of people and in maintaining unfair social, political, and economic relationships. Fundamental changes in its operation are impossible unless some higher degree of social justice has been achieved and the criminal justice system is relieved of these tasks. [….] One of the important obstacles that must be removed is the public conception of the prisoner. Presently, this conception is formed from the rare, but celebrated and horrendous crimes, such as mass murders by the Manson cult, Juan Carona, or the 'Hillside Strangler.' Whereas prisoners like George Jackson, viewed as a heroic revolutionary fighting back from years of excessive punishment for a minor crime (an eighty dollar robbery), shaped the conception of the prisoner in the early 1970s, persons like 'Son of Sam' do so today. These extraordinary cases distort the reality. Most prisoners are still in prison for relatively petty crimes, and even those convicted of the 2 more serious crimes must be understood in the context of society in the United States. What we need is a new theory of crime and penology, one that is quite simple. It is based on the assumption that prisoners are human beings and not a different species from free citizens. Prisoners are special only because they have been convicted of a serious crime. But they did so in a society that produces a lot of crime, a society, in fact, in which a high percentage of the population commits serious crime. Those convicted of serious crimes must be punished and imprisoned, because it is the only option that satisfies the retributive need and is sufficiently humane. Knowing that imprisonment itself if very punitive, we need not punish above and beyond imprisonment. This means that we need not and must not degrade, provoke, nor excessively deprive the human beings we have placed in prison. It also means that we must not operate discriminatory systems that select which individuals should be sent to prison and, once incarcerated, who should be given different levels of punishment. Since we assume that convicts are humans like us and are capable of myriad courses of action, honorable and dishonorable, we also assume that they will act honorably, given a real choice. This means that we provide them with the resources to achieve self-determination, dignity, and selfrespect. This theory continues to be rejected not because it is invalid, but because it challenges beliefs and values to which large segments of the population comfortably cling. [….] In pushing this theory, I admit that many prisoners, like many free citizens, act like monsters. But they are not monsters and often choose to act like monsters when their only other real option is to be totally disrespected or completely ignored, while being deprived, degraded, abused, or harassed." [emphasis added]-John Irwin, Prisons in Turmoil (1980)

Journal of Criminal Justice, 2012

Despite the growing literature on the punitive turn, knowledge of how the experience of American imprisonment varied across time and place remains limited. This article begins to fill that gap, providing a nuanced portrayal of variation in the practices of rehabilitation. Purpose: To examine how one aspect of the rehabilitative ideal in practice-the provision of staff dedicated to inmate services-varied across time and place over the past 30 years. Methods: The article presents statistics on the inmate-to-staff ratios for inmate services staff (including teachers, counselors, doctors, etc.) between the years 1979 and 2005 for all 50 U.S. states. Results: The analyses reveal that while there was a substantial decline in the services staff ratio during the 1990s and 2000s, this shift across time paled in comparison to variation across place. Northeastern prison systems, for example, on average maintained higher inmate services staff ratios in 2005 than Southern states in any year. In addition, results suggest state variation is related to differences in prison crowding, inmates' racial composition, and political cultures. Conclusions: The findings suggest the punitive turn was more variegated and partial than is often assumed and highlight the importance of exploring state variation in penal practices.

2019

American Prison Architecture: A Lack of Consideration, Priority, and Effectiveness In the United States, we have been placing people convicted of crime in prisons since the end of the 18th century. The general rule in this nation, as presented by the federal government, has been abide by our rules, and we won't bother you; disobey our rules, and we punish you. For a while many Americans confided that the "punish" meant "in hopes of making you better suit for society", and that therefore the role that prisons played was a rehabilitative one, but given the state at which our prisons are designed and maintained in, this "punish for the better" follows a "scared straight" ideology that just does not work. This flawed belief is visible in many aspects of society, be that in legislation, the old "Scared Straight" trips elementary students used to take in the 20th century, or the architectural design of the prisons themselves. The problem with this approach is that it is ineffective, as crime rates still are at a high, and the approach to prison architecture, as a means of psychological torture, is ineffective as recidivism rates are still on the rise. If the prison system wants to make any real progress in decreasing recidivism rates and having a positive effect on the people subject to its environment, a serious analysis of prison architecture and its shortcomings must be conducted, and revisions to the prison design model are to be carried out in order to rework the psychological impact these structures have on the human mind once inside.