Eastern State Prison Analysis

Eastern State Penitentiary Started with a small jail, then a “penitentiary house” was built on that had 16 rooms that were used to see how prisoners acted when they are confined day and or night. Since the jail was so small even with the new building, the decision was made to build a newer bigger penitentiary. The final decision was made in 1821 that the new penitentiary was going to be built. The new building was made to hold around 250 inmates at one time. John Haviland was the head architect on the job, and groundbreaking on the project started in 1822. Although Eastern State Penitentiary’s forms of punishment and way they ran their prison were thought of revolutionary, they have negatively affected how prisons are run today.
The idea for …show more content…
This can happen because some people are put away for crimes that don’t necessarily require prison time. This is the prison systems way of saying that they think that that prison is a good way to change a person. They view it as somewhat of a reform institution, instead of how those on the outside view it as punishment. Eastern State was a prime example of this. Parents would send their children little or adult to Eastern, because they no longer knew how or what to do with them. They viewed prison as some bizarre form or reform school, when that was not the case at all but the leaders at Eastern weren’t going to turn anyone away. When you put someone angry away for a long time with no connections to the outside world, you are playing a bad game. This game leads the people inside to have time to dwell on what or who got them to where they are. Sometimes when a person is put away let’s say for murder, they will fixate on what happened and the people involved. This fixation or over thinking and analyzing, can make a person crazy and upon release they tend to do things that will just land them right back in prison. There are many forms of punishment that were brought from Eastern. Solitary confinement and if not in there, little to no interaction with others not even guards, which was the idea …show more content…
First of its kind, Eastern State was the first penitentiary in the country. It is a place for people who have committed serious crimes, but that’s not all that they had there. Eastern also housed people with mental issues and those whose parents or guardians didn’t know how to deal with them anymore. The design was new and innovative and something no other prison had during this time. It had a center hub where there was a security station, then legs that protruded from that center area where the prisoners were kept. Then there was a large wall with watchtowers equidistance from each other to provide even more security that the prisoners would have no chance of