Dr. Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin were essential in conceptualizing the Eastern State Penitentiary. They…
Before his time as a professor at a university, Jeffrey Williams worked as guard at the New York State correctional prison. He spent most of his time working at Downstate Correction Facility in Fishkill, New York. The prison had a “campus” style in which cluster of cells were arranged in horseshoe shape, rather than long rows. This style seemingly permitted for a more pleasing environment with less chaos. Williams writes that most of the prisoners in Downstate Correction Facility are serving for a felony offense and therefore have lengthy sentences.…
Cohen, Andrew. " Creating Monsters: How Solitary Confinement Hurts the Rest of Us." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 18 Apr. 2014. Web.…
Throughout their sentence, prison inmates endured miserable life before and during the Prison Reform Movement of 1800’s, unlivable conditions, and physical abuse from the guards. “Men rarely become spiritually better by being made subject, through human discipline, to extreme bodily discomforts; these convicts are not made morally better by such treatment as they are subjected to here in the days of bodily weakness and pain” (Lightner 56). Prison Reform Movement from 1870-1930, greatly changed what type of treatment that was acceptable in prisons towards the inmates, much of these changes were due to the effort of Dorothy Dix and her efforts to investigate the prisons. When prisons first formed, people weren’t exactly sure how they should go…
The last five chapters of the book “The American Prison: Imagining a Different Future” written by Francis Cullen, Mary Stohr and Cheryl Johnson discuss some of the various prison systems that can be found in America, and the issues that surround them. The main focus of discussion for each chapter is the history of the prison, its effectiveness in running, its social context in modern day America, and the authors of the chapter’s personal thoughts on the importance of that specific prison type. The four types of prisons covered in chapters 9-12 are the private prison, the green prison, the small prison, and the accountable prison; chapter thirteen of the book talks about the lessons that should be learned from the book regarding the harm and…
Communications 111 Kendra Hietpas Informative Speech General Purpose: To inform Specific Purpose: To tell my audience how Dorothea Lynde Dix’s prison reform impacted the world. Central Idea: Dorothea viewed this issue as a major problem with our society and took matters into her own hands to change it. INTRODUCTION…
In the years following the Civil War and more specifically The Emancipation Proclamation, race relations were very complicated and tumultuous in the Southern United States, and would remain so for decades. There were many factors that delayed the progression of race relations in the South, but the one that is going to be addressed here is the practice of convict leasing. Following the emancipation of the slaves, there were very high incarceration rates among the freedmen, and soon the prisons were filling up. The states needed a way to make room in their prisons and they soon realized that they could lease out their prisoners to projects and constructions sites as a means of making a profit, providing cheap labor, and allowing for more imprisonments. This practice expanded rapidly over the following years, and soon became an integral part of the southern economy.…
Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Davis, explores the history of prisons in the United States of America, as well as their social, political, and cultural facets. Additionally, she makes the argument for the abolition of prisons within America. Throughout the book, Davis forms three main assumptions: racism is real and wrong, prisons are racist institutions, and prisons should be considered obsolete. To start, Davis argues that racism is real and wrong by examining the history of racism in the United States, and the way in which minority children are raised. Secondly, she points out that prisons are racist institutions due to the history of prisons themselves, as well as the way in which prisoners are treated.…
Golden Gulag 1. How does the text circulate? The material analyzed by Ruth Wilson Gilmore circulates in the form of a book that was originally published on December 9, 2006. The author’s intended audience consists of individuals who have been directly or indirectly affected by any form of social racism and in particular those individuals who continue to fight for human rights.…
Mass incarceration is ideally a part of American history. The increasing number of the prison population is alarming contrasting to the decrease of crime in the United States. The Caging of America depicts the relationship between mass incarceration and racism and mass incarceration and the crime rate. Gopnik shows that during the period of which incarceration rates were going up in the entire country, the crime rate was dropping, particularly in New York, therefore showing the cause of the crime fall had no linkage with prison over population. Gopnik sheds light to high rates of incarceration and the fact that incarceration should not be a method of crime control.…
In 1920, prohibition was declared by the government and it was chaos. Crime was a tornado that didn’t die. Criminals didn't have a care in the world. The government had little control over the madness and criminals still did their dirty work in jail. This led to an idea.…
The Yuma Territorial Prison has many particular traits that people who are interested in Yuma’s history should be informed about. The reason for this is because it has been around for many years, so there is a large amount of history involving it. Many events happened during the time that the prison was open, from 1875 to 1909, there were many changes made within the walls of the prison. The changes made were not just the appearance but also the rules and regulations. Throughout the years the Yuma Territorial Prison has been used for many different reasons such as a; prison for criminals, school for students, shelter for the homeless, and now a museum for people curious about our towns history.…
A prison that was built by its own inmates was the Yuma Territorial Prison. I will be writing about the history of the Yuma Territorial Prison, I will be describing in detail what the prison looked like and what the prisoners did, the prison was built in Yuma, Arizona because Yuma is really hot and dry and there is nothing surrounding it, my limitations to further research are that i 've never seen the prison in person and i don 't know what the prisoners did on a daily bases except for what picture show. The prison was first opened on july 1, 1876 after it was authorized by Legislature in 1875. The prison was a very modern prison for its time it gave prisoners comforts that other prisoners did not have. There was a few escapes and a number…
Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western a former Sociology Professor at Princeton University goes into great detail on the evolution of punishment in America and its overall affects. He expands on one of the most controversial topics in America the American penal system; and how it went from a rehabilitative, self-reflecting tool in the early 19th century to a deterrent and strict form of punishment in the mid 20th century. Western also touches base on racial inequality in regards to imprisonment in the United States and the overall effect it has on one group of people. Western begins his book with a brief history of American penitentiaries, naming two famous institutions, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia and Auburn State Prison in upstate New York.…
Correctional knowledge by the public is heavily based on media portrayals of the prison system. The media utilizes four main types of prison film narratives to tell the stories of inmates and the corrections system. The first type of prison narrative is the “nature of confinement” prison film (Surette, 2015). In this narrative, the prisoners are portrayed as victims of injustice, often have been framed for a crime they did not commit, a chance accident, or pushed into crime by forces beyond their control. Consequently, these films from 1929 to 1942 tend to highlight the corruption of the prison system and backwards laws.…