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Origins of solitary confinement in the U.S.

Origins

Up until the end of the Revolutionary period, sanguinary punishments were used to penalize those who had committed a crime. Nose-slitting, ear-cropping, branding and other physical punishments were all state-sanctioned methods of official retribution.(1) Death was reserved for serious offenses. However, this category was over-inclusive and resulted in under-punishment by hesitant jurors.(2) Facing growing pressure from the electorate, legislatures were faced with the need to either reform the criminal justice system or return to the old sanguinary punishments. (3)

It was at this time, at the end of the 18th century, that solitary confinement first made its appearance in American legal discourse.(4) One of the sources for its advent was the Englishman John Howard, the sheriff of Bedfordshire county placed in charge of its prison reform. He had toured over forty prisons in Britain and Continental Europe, concluding that there was an overwhelming need for penal reform.(5) The solution he advocated for the problems he saw was forced labor during the day, and solitary confinement by night.(6)

American reformers, notably Benjamin Rush, echoed Howard’s ideas.(7) They cited the “bad effects of associating, in night rooms, such numbers of depraved and unprincipled men.(8)” Thus, the separation of inmates was crucial.

Advocates of solitary confinement proclaimed it as both more and less severe than capital punishment. On the one hand, solitude would force prolonged reflection upon one’s crimes, and presumably result in a penitent, humbled convict ready to re-enter society.(9) As the Philadelphia Quakers believed, “it would be punishment par excellence, but more importantly, it would give a man time for reflection and contrition and protect the naive from contamination by the more sophisticated.”(10) On the other hand, implicit in the very nature of this form of punishment was the idea that severing all human connections is comparable to an execution. This conceptual duality of solitary confinement allowed it to garner wide support, and was essential to its popularity among penal reformers.(11)

In the first half of the 19th century, there developed two models of solitary confinement in the United States: the Pennsylvania and the Auburn systems.

Pennsylvania System

The first post-revolutionary penal changes took place in Philadelphia in the 1790s.(12) Through several acts, notably those passed on March 27th, 1789, and April 5th, 1790, the Pennsylvania legislature restructured the penal system and adopted “unremitted solitude” as a new form of utmost punishment.(13)

The Walnut Street Jail was designated as the first state penitentiary, and was the predecessor of the system of solitary confinement adopted in the state.(14) Although it had not been designed for solitary confinement, it had a structure in the prison yard to accommodate sixteen solitary cells.(15) Called the “penitentiary house,” this building was intended for prolonged, absolute solitude – no labor, no visitors, no communication.(16) There were even partitions down the corridors, so as to prevent inmates from seeing each other. Meals were served once a day, to minimize the number of distractions. The study of holy scripture was the one diversion allowed. The goal was to force inmates to reflect upon their sins, and to come out with a changed moral character.(17) As South Carolina lawyer Robert Turnbull stated after his visit to the prison, it is “in this state of seclusion from the world that the mind can be brought to contemplate itself.”(18) If true penitence came from within, then prisons needed to provide an environment free of any distractions.(19)

Following the experiment at Walnut Street, on March 20, 1821, the General Assembly of Pennsylvania passed an act establishing the Eastern State Penitentiary.(20) This act provides for the construction of “a State Penitentiary, capable of holding two hundred and fifty prisoners, on the principle of solitary confinement of the convicts.”(21) The prison, known as Cherry Hill, instituted complete cellular separation.(22) This system resulted in absolute solitary confinement, twenty-four hours a day.(23) Each man had a cell to himself, with an exercise yard, separated from others by a high wall, for exercise.(24) An inmate’s cell was both his home and his workroom; all inmates were forced to work, but only at tasks that could be performed within their cells. They were released only for occasional showers, a visit to the prison dispensary, or to exercise in their individual yards.(25)

The Pennsylvania legislature labeled this system a humanitarian success.(26) Despite its high costs, it was hailed as an example to be followed by other states.

Auburn System

In 1821, the New York legislature ordered Gershom Powers, the inspector of the state’s Auburn prison, to conduct an experiment.(27) As he noted in his later report, by 1821 the public had become dissatisfied with the effects of the existing penal system.(28) Wishing to avoid a return to sanguinary punishment, the legislature authorized him to select “a class of convicts [of eighty inmates] to be composed of the oldest and most heinous offenders,”(29) and confine them to individual cells.

Although inspired partially by the alleged success in Pennsylvania, this experiment in solitary confinement differed greatly from the one at Cherry Hill. What was hailed as the “great feature”(30) of the system was a strict rule of complete silence, by day and by night. Inmates were not allowed to speak at all, except to the chaplain or to inform an officer that they were ill.(31) During the day, they engaged in congregate labor.(32) When confined to their cells during daytime, they were not allowed to lay down. Not only banned from talking, they also weren’t supposed to look at each other, or, as a matter of fact, away from their work.(33) Every Sunday, inmates had to attend church; however, even during mass they were banned from singing or looking away from the minister.(34)

This regime of discipline and humiliation was an intrinsic part of the Auburn system.(35) It was thought that by instituting a strict regimen and separating inmates from outside, and each other’s, influence, the prison could reform them.(36) As Inspector Powers proclaimed, “a degree of mental anguish and distress may be necessary to humble and reform the offender.”(37)

However, the results did not exactly meet expectations. After a year, of the eighty inmates selected for solitary confinement, five had died, fo fallen ill, one had committed suicide and one had gone insane.(38)

Post-Auburn

Nevertheless, the proponents of solitary confinement remained undeterred. Looking at the Pennsylvania system, it wasn’t clear whether the health of the inmates could be preserved in the “continued state of secluded retirement.”(39) Uninterrupted solitude often led to mental derangement.(40)

The Auburn system, on the other hand, had the favorable effect of instituting order and discipline. Moreover, the regime of forced labor made it more economical. Although its opponents noted that inmates mental health deteriorated rapidly in this environment, and their employment produced little of value, these claims went largely ignored.(41) Beginning in 1825, Sing Sing continued Auburn’s tradition, further embedding solitary confinement in the state’s penal system.(42)

-- JuliaGrabowska - 20 Oct 2017

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Notes

1 : ALICE M. EARLE, CURIOUS PUNISHMENTS OF BYGONE DAYS 11-28, 29-42, 85-95 (1896); WILLIAM ANDREWS, BYGONE PUNISHMENTS 138-42, 186-200 (l899).

2 : REPORT OF THE AGENT OF THE MOUNT-PLEASANT STATE PRISON, RELATIVE TO THE GOVERNMENT AND DISCIPLINE OF THAT PRISON, N. Y. St. S. Doc. No. 92, 57th Sess., 3-4 (1834).

3 : GERSHOM POWERS, REPORT OF GERSHOM POWERS, AGENT AND KEEPER OF THE STATE PRISON, AT AUBURN 80 (Jan. 7, 1828) (made to the legislature).

4 : On Solitary Imprisonment, 20 The Weekly Entertainer 304, 305 (1797).

5 : Norman Johnston, Evolving Function: Early Use of Imprisonment as Punishment, 89 PRISON J. 10S, 16S (2009).

6 : Id.; Report of Charles Bulfinch, on the Subject of Penitentiaries, H.R.Doc.No. 98, at 5 (2nd Sess., Feb. 13, 1827).

7 : Peter Spierenburg, From Amsterdam to Auburn an Explanation for the Rise of the Prison in Seventeenth-Century Holland and Nineteenth-Century America, 20 J. SOC. HIST. 439, 454 (1987).

8 : Report of Charles Bulfinch, at 5.

9 : LOUIS P. MASUR, RITES OF EXECUTION: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICAN CULTURE, 1776-1865 84 (1989).

10 : Norman Johnston, The Human Cage: A Brief History of Prison Architecture 29 (1973).

11 : Id. at 84.

12 : Spierenburg, at 452.

13 : Masur, at 80.

14 : Johnston, at 17S.

15 : LETTER, REPORT AND DOCUMENTS ON THE PENAL CODE, FROM THE PRESIDENT AND COMMISSIONERS APPOINTED TO SUPERINTEND THE ERECTION OF THE EASTERN PENITENTIARY, ADAPTED AND MODELELD TO THE SYSTEM OF SOLITARY CONFINEMENT 2 (1828) (read in the Senate on January 8, 1828).

16 : Ralph S. Herre, THE HISTORY OF AUBURN PRISON FROM THE BEGINNING TO ABOUT 1867 18 (1950).

17 : LETTER, REPORT AND DOCUMENTS ON THE PENAL CODE, at 8.

18 : Robert J. Turnbull, A VISIT TO THE PHILADELPHIA PRISON 58 (1796).

19 : Masur, at 82.

20 : Muriel Schmid, "The eye of god": Religious beliefs and punishment in early nineteenth-century prison reform, 59 THEOLOGY TODAY 546, 549 (2003).

21 : Richard Vaux, BRIEF SKETCH OF THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF THE STATE PENITENTIARY FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA AT PHILADELPHIA 33 (1872).

22 , 26 : Herre, at 21.

23 : Spierenburg, at 484.

24 , 39 : Report of Charles Bulfinch, at 7.

25 : Johnston, at 20S.

27 : T.P., Solitary Confinement, U.S. GAZETTE, Feb. 25, 1989.

28 , 31 : GERSHOM POWERS, at 80.

29 : Id.

30 : Prison Discipline Society, Does the Auburn System of Prison Discipline Depend on Stripes?, BOSTON RECORDER (Feb. 18, 1842), at 28.

32 : Laws of the State of New York 42 Session (l§19), "Act concerning State Prisons," at 87.

33 : GERSHOM POWERS, at 24.

34 : Id. at 35.

35 : Spierenburg, at 452.

36 : Norbert Finzsch, Comparing Apples and Oranges? The History of Early Prisons in Germany and the United States, 1800-1860 in Institutions of Confinements; Hospitals, Asylums and Prisons in Western Europe and North America, 1500-1950 213, 230 (Norbert Finzsch & Robert Jütte eds., 1996).

37 , 40 : GERSHOM POWERS, at 85.

38 : REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON STATE PRISONS, TO WHICH WAS REFERRED SUNDRY MEMORIALS RELATING TO THE PUNISHMENTS AND DISCIPLINE OF CONVICTS IN THE STATE PRISONS, N. Y. St. S. Doc. No. 121 (1846), at 6 .

41 : Finzsch, at 228.

42 : Johnston, at 22S.