Wrongdoers In The 1800s

At the beginning of the 1800s, there were many debates about which type of punishment should be carried out on wrongdoers that cannot follow or abide by the law. The one thing that these debaters decided on was that the most criminals (with the exception of executions) needed to be sent to isolated facilities where their criminal behaviors could be corrected; these facilities are known as penitentiaries. In the 1800s, there were two main types of these penitentiaries – the Pennsylvania and the New York. Although the Pennsylvania and the New York systems were built on the same concept of reprimanding criminals, they both used different build blocks in which they used to correct criminals. The first main penitentiary system was the Pennsylvania …show more content…
This type of prison sought to teach wrongdoers through silence and isolation. In the 19th century, separate confinement was a strategy that was used to ensure the isolation of prisons. Through this theory, the Pennsylvania penitentiary system was thought to be able to fix criminals via the strict enforcement of silence, solitude, and hard work. The makers of this system also believed that wrongdoers knew that their criminal act was wrong at the time of the event, but did not allow their conscience to dictate their actions (which would have told them the right thing to do). Today, people know that there is more than a simple voice of reason in the back of one’s mind that goes into why a person commits a crime. However, because of these beliefs and the separate confinement theory, prisoners in a 1800s Pennsylvania penitentiary were never allowed to speak or see others unless it was a prison guard that had addressed said prisoner. Another exception in which an inmate was allowed the luxury to speak his or her …show more content…
The Pennsylvania system used separate confinement strategy where they kept inmates completely separate from each other and the rest of the world. The New York system used a congregate strategy or Auburn system in which they allowed prisoners to eat and work alongside each other, but they were still never allowed to interact. Both systems had their pros and cons, but eventually society decided that the cons outweighed the pros, so the systems were deserted. Although these systems have since been abandoned, the Pennsylvania and New York systems from the 1800s have had a tremendous impact/influence on the penitentiary system we have