Understanding Prisons: Definition, Types, and Purpose

Prison

Introduction to Prison

Prison, a public institution where criminals and other offenders are held in confinement as a form of punishment. A prison is a penal institution (from the Latin for “punishment"). Prisons in the United States are also called penitentiaries (places where wrongdoers may repent), correctional institutions, and correctional facilities. Municipal and county prisons are called jails. A jail serves also as a place of detention for persons awaiting trial or execution of sentence, or being held in protective custody. When a jail is a place of detention rather than a penal institution, it may be referred to as a lockup.

Prisons in which adolescents or young adults are confined are often called reformatories. Young offenders are also sent to penal institutions called industrial schools or training schools. Municipal and county penal institutions may be called houses of correction or workhouses.

The traditional prison is designed for close confinement, or maximum security. Many prisoners, however, do not need close confinement, and medium- or minimum-security institutions such as farms and labor camps are found in connection with various prison systems. There are also special institutions for criminals who are mentally ill, addicted to drugs, or who for other reasons need separate confinement.

Prison buildings in the United States reflect the constantly changing attitudes in the field of penology (treatment of criminals). The 19th-century style of penitentiary, a massive structure housing hundreds or thousands of prisoners in cells (small single or double compartments), is still prevalent. Modern prisons tend toward smaller units, with emphasis on cheerful surroundings and exercise and recreation facilities. County and municipal penal quarters are often antiquated and inadequate.

Prison Systems In the United States

Federal

Federal prisons are used to confine persons convicted of violating federal laws, and are operated by the Bureau of Prisons of the Department of Justice. The federal system designates its facilities as follows: penitentiaries, for male inmates with long-term sentences; correctional institutions, for male inmates with intermediate or short-term sentences and for female inmates; camps, for male prisoners needing only minimum security; halfway houses to ease the transition back into society for those who have served their sentences; correctional centers, for persons on trial or awaiting trial or sentencing; detention centers, for aliens awaiting deportation; and a medical center.

State

The quality of state prison systems varies greatly, and even those considered the most progressive suffer from overcrowding. Most states emphasize rehabilitation and have designed their facilities with this goal in mind. In some states, a prison is considered solely a place of confinement and punishment.

County and Municipal

Jails are found in nearly every county, city, and town in the United States. As penal institutions they are commonly used for the confinement of persons serving sentences of one year or less. Many jails are operated on the fee system, under which the jailer is paid a stipulated amount to keep and feed a prisoner. He may make a profit from this arrangement by providing poor and meager food. Prisoners often work in parks and on roads. Large jails may have a farm where food for the jail is grown by inmates.

How Prisons Operate

A prison is headed by a warden, who is responsible for maintaining discipline. Abusive treatment of the prisoners is not allowed by the federal government or by the states, but may occur in spite of rules. Such treatment is usually a factor in causing prison riots. In return for good behavior, most prison systems offer a reduction of the prisoner's sentence. Another means of control is to deny privileges such as recreational activities to unruly prisoners. Solitary confinement and reduced diet are usual forms of punishment.

Classification of Prisoners

The modern trend is to separate prisoners as to age, type of crime, and probability of rehabilitation. Such classification, which has been adopted in the federal system and in some states, determines to which institution each convict should be sent. There may be further study in the prison to determine proper treatment for the prisoner. The goal of the penologist is to return the prisoner to society, when his sentence is served, as a useful citizen.

Prison Labor

In theory, labor serves as the center of daily routine and discipline in penal institutions. Prisoners commonly do maintenance work at the prison and farm work at the prison farm. In order to protect free labor, federal and state laws usually exclude prison-made goods from the open market. As a consequence, there is insufficient productive labor in many prisons to keep the inmates occupied.

Many states have adopted the state-use system, under which goods produced at the prison are sold only to state agencies. Wages, which at most amount to a few dollars a day, are paid in most states. Prison labor is often used in the construction of roads and public buildings, maintenance of recreation areas, and reforestation projects. Camps for men engaged in such work away from the prison are usually operated on a minimum-security basis. The chain gang, in which prisoners were chained to each other while doing work outside prison walls, no longer exists. Road gangs under guard, however, are still used in some Southern states.

Services and Activities

Most prisons provide complete medical care for prisoners. Some offer psychiatric assistance. Every prison has at least one chaplain, who conducts religious services and offers spiritual counsel. Recreational activities include various team sports. Arts and crafts are encouraged, and musical, literary, and dramatic activities are often available.

Federal and most state penal institutions make it possible for prisoners to advance their educations. Elementary school and high school courses are generally given at the prison, and college courses by correspondence are made available. Vocational training is given to most prisoners.

Prison Reform

Most penologists agree that prison reform is needed to make the corrections system more humane and to facilitate rehabilitation. Prisons, critics charge, are overcrowded, unsafe and unclean, and dehumanizing. Prison officials have been criticized for permitting bad food, brutality, and racism. Homosexual rape is also a common problem. Suggested changes include better-trained prison staffs, broadening of prisoners' rights, and individualized treatment. Among the reforms that have been instituted at various prisons are furloughs for family visits, work-release programs that allow convicts to hold daytime jobs, and the use of halfway houses, both as places for pre-release counseling and as facilities where nonviolent convicts can serve their full terms.

History of Prisons

Europe

The idea that depriving a person of his freedom could serve as punishment for a crime is comparatively new. Political offenders were often kept in prison for long lengths of time, but criminals would normally stay in jail only a short time before receiving capital or corporal punishment. The earliest prisons contained mainly paupers and debtors, but also some petty criminals as well. They were commonly called debtor's prisons or houses of correction. One of the earliest was Bridewell, opened in 1557 in London.

By the 18th century, houses of correction had developed into places where criminals were sent for lengthy terms as a means of punishment. They were housed with the poor without regard to sex, age, or type of crime. The houses of correction became notorious for foul conditions and vice.

In 1704 Pope Clement XI established in Rome a house of correction for juvenile offenders only, separating boys from hardened criminals. Cesare Beccaria (1738?-1794), an Italian criminologist, published a book in 1764 urging prison reform.

In 1771 a house of correction was built in Ghent, Belgium, that influenced architecture and management of prisons into the 20th century. The building was octagonal, with individual cells facing inward. Prisoners were classified and separated by sex and offense, and were given training in useful trades.

In Great Britain during the latter 18th and early 19th century, John Howard, Jeremy Bentham, and Elizabeth Gurney Fry were leaders in prison reform. Penitentiaries were built to house prisoners in separate cells. In 1869 Great Britain stopped imprisoning debtors and paupers.

After a policy of harsh treatment for prisoners had been followed from 1865 to 1895, a system emphasizing training was adopted. In 1908 Parliament established a system of treating youthful offenders outside the prisons in training institutions called Borstals after the village where the first one was located.

United States

In the colonial period the Quakers were in the forefront of progress in penology. In 1682 in Pennsylvania William Penn abandoned the death penalty for all offenses except murder. Imprisonment was adopted as the chief punishment for crime. In 1718, however, the British government imposed on Pennsylvania much of the harsh English penal code.

After independence was declared in 1776 Pennsylvania made a series of reforms. Imprisonment was again adopted as the punishment for crime. Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia became the first prison in the United States. Pennsylvania developed the solitary, or separate system. Each prisoner was locked up alone in a cell to meditate and to do penance for his or her sins—hence the name “penitentiary.”

In 1825 the Auburn Prison in New York adopted the silent system. Prisoners were confined in separate cells at night but worked together by day in a prison factory under enforced silence. With its prison factory Auburn became a profitable enterprise, and for this reason was widely copied in many states.

Another step was the founding in 1876 of the first state reformatory, in Elmira, New York. The early reformatories, however, were little different from prisons, and not until after 1925 were most such institutions designed and equipped for rehabilitation. At the same time reformatory principles began to be applied in some traditional prisons. After World War II the federal government and some states experimented with medium-and minimum-security prisons for convicts who did not need close confinement.

Until the 20th century the federal government arranged to have its prisoners confined in state prisons and county jails. The first two federal penitentiaries (at Leavenworth, Kansas, and Atlanta, Georgia) opened in 1905. The Bureau of Prisons was organized in 1930. In 1963 the famous federal prison on Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay, was closed and replaced by the new maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois.

In the 1970's, inmates rioted in institutions in many parts of the country protesting prison conditions and seeking expansion of prisoners' rights. In the late 1970's and early 1980's, after a series of federal court orders requiring the states to expand and upgrade their prison facilities, many of the worst abuses and conditions were eliminated.

Overcrowding continued to be a problem in most states throughout the 1980's. To handle the problem, lawmakers provided for shorter sentences for certain crimes, and prison authorities began releasing many prisoners before their terms expired. States also worked at providing alternatives to prison sentences, such as putting nonviolent criminals under house arrest in their own homes or placing them in halfway houses. For first-time offenders several states established “boot camps,” facilities in which prisoners serve 90-day terms with military-style discipline, marching drills, calisthenics, and hard labor.

To offset the rising costs of incarcerating prisoners, many states and counties passed laws in the 1990's that allowed prisons to charge inmates for some of these costs. Also during the 1990's there was an increase in the number of prison-work programs.