Jail and Prisons Comparison

Solution Preview

Reference: [PDF] The History of Prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877 Author ...jthomasniu.org/PDF/prisonhistory111.pdf

- A description of jail's place in corrections and its role throughout history

Jails place in corrections emerged with the English system of jail wherein it was primarily a for-profit venture that incarcerated debtors and other criminals who were forced to pay fees to get out of the jail. During the medieval period many crimes were punishable by death in England with only crimes that could allow for financial compensation to the jail able to get the prisoner placed in the jail. This ideology of jails transferred to the British colonies in America as well with the caveat being that many of the original colonies were too small to financially construct jails. Therefore, the church was the primary harbinger of justice netting out the sentences to those in the community that ran afoul of the religious doctrines.

Later in the colonial period the ideology emerged that labor should function as punishment with the usage of workhouses to house those accused of criminal offenses. This experiment originated in the northern colonies and served as the precursor to jails in the 1700s. Within these workhouses overcrowding became problematic and prisoners were essentially fixated to their positions by iron collars and chains. The sight of this in the community made members fearful of the process and a spectacle of the inmates resulting in failure of the early experiments with public convict labor.

The eventual local jails that came after the workhouses were also inept at controlling inmates with inmates being housed in conditions that were conducive to for rioting and other disturbances. The public failures of these jails were exacerbated by the fact that they were run mostly for profit. Jailers would extort exorbitant sums form inmates for food, clothing, and vices such as alcohol and tobacco. In addition if the inmate was unable to pay their debt at the end of their original sentence, the jail could continue holding the prisoner until the debt was paid. Obviously this graft and corruption was an embarrassment publically and a failure resulting in reformers who sought to design prisons that would focus on private, cellular imprisonment.

- A summary of the history of state and federal prisons

The history of state and federal prisons emerged with the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating Miseries of Public Prisons. This agency began a movement to renovate the old jail in Philadelphia located on Walnut Street. In a report that the society submitted in 1788 the agency advocated for punishment of criminals ...