((NOTE: THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS!! IT *IS NOT* COMPLETE! But,
the sketch might be useful to illustrate some of the class themes)
The Roots of the Faith-Based Prison System: A Revisionist View
Jim Thomas and Joshua Stone
Northern Illinois University
(Paper prepared for the American Society of Criminology, November, 2006)
Sometimes, papers begin not so much with a profound question or a
dominant theoretical issue as from a mundane puzzle arising from
a chance comment or query. This is one of those papers.
We begin with a simple question posed to us by a reviewer who challenged
how we teach and talk about early prisons in the U.S. Our goal here,
a small beginning segment of a larger project on faith-based prison
programming, is to respond to
a few sentences by a manuscript reviewer on which our discussion of the
history of faith-based programming was based.
In the same way that anthropologists stumble upon an odd-shaped mound of dirt,
extract from it a few old bones, and then attempt to extrapolate something
meaningful from it all that likely has little immediate practical, or even
intellectual relevance, outside of a small circle of like-minded peers, so do
we approach this topic. We do so for the same reason as do anthropologists:
With luck, we might cast a bit more light on the origins or our topic
that--if not earth-shaking--at least provide a richer sense of detail
to the current knowledge of our roots. In the best case, we find something
worthwhile. Worst case? We have fun digging up the terrain, even if all
we do is rediscover the wheel.
At stake is simply where the early prisons came from and how they came to
be that way. Despite the "revisionist" subtitle of our paper, we're not
so much revising history as we are filling in some gaps that, to us,
enrich, just a bit more, our understanding of the complexity and chaos
of those early foundations that seem a bit more opaque than we generally
remember.
This paper began with the intent of reviewing the origins of the early Auburn
and and Eastern State Penitentiary (Philadelphia) as a way to critique
current concerns about current faith-based in the context of recent federal
legislation and court decisions.
Cautiously, we were going to conclude by suggesting that, ironically,
faith-based programming serves to expand civil rights and openness rather than
impose any particular religious doctrine on a captive population.
However, we became ensnared by some confusion about the origins of the
early prisons. Because those origins were the basis of our proposed paper,
we began digging into the odd-shaped mound.
Our starting point begins with a pre-publication comment by a sympathetic
reviewer of a recent manuscript on faith-based religious programming.
Drawing partially from Max Weber, our article suggested that the early Auburn
penitentiary of the 1820s was based on the view of the malleability of human
nature and the belief that behaviors cold be changed by instilling discipline
and including religious instruction (Thomas and Zaitzow, 2006). The reviewer
disagreed, citing Beaumont and de Tocqueville (1833), who interviewed
Elam Lynds, often referred to as the first warden of Auburn:
...I believe there is a statement somewhere from Tocqueville and
Beaumont from Warden Lynds to the effect that he didn't believe reform
was possible. The Protestant ethic mentioned by the authors was intended
to make possible an economically self-sufficient prison and a belief
that everyone should work hard. The rationale here is at least
once-removed from the aim of moral regeneration and religion.
(Anonymous manuscript reviewer, The Prison Journal, 2005).
Although a seemingly simple comment, it raised a not-so-simple question:
If Auburn was founded primarily on a view of disciplined labor ais an instrument
for generating profit rather than for redemption where did we go wrong?
What WERE the ideological and philosopical foundations of the early
penitentiaries in the U.S., and what role did religion play in them?
At stake was whether our own current understandings--derived from
contemporary sources, was accurate: The Auburn model, guided at least
in principle by the Protestant ethic, orginated on the principle of
redemption through labor, or whether it arose out of pragmatic expediency
intended to turn a profit for the prisoner masters; and whether the
unquestioned belief that the Eastern model arose from the Quaker belief
in redemption through reflection and penitence.
PRISON HISTORY AS WE LEARNED IT
Drawing from various texts and prison histories, we learned that the
term should be attributed to the Quakers for their belief in redemption
through penance, implemented in ESP, which gave us the term "penitentiary."
The online etymology dictionary (OED, 2001) dates the origins as early
as 1421 being a "place of punishment for offenses against the church,"
but identies the first meaning as a "house of correction" as dating
from 1806. However, the Oxford English Dictionary notes that the term, as a
place for correction and penance, emerged as early as 1592, and the
term was in common use in mid-18th century England, and the English
Penitentiary Act(s) of the 1770s indicates that ESP was not the source
of the term.
The view that some early U.S. prisons were founded on religious
principles is hardly original. Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania,
opened in 1829, was shaped by Quaker principles of malleable human nature
and redemption through solitary reflection (Eastern State Penitentiary, n.d.).
The Auburn (New York) prison, by contrast, was built on the philosophy of
harsh discipline, an ascetic environment, and intense labor, all consistent
with the Protestant ethic of the backgrounds of its founders (**cite).
Clear, Cole and Reisig (2006: 45) provided one source for our own views,
when they described Auburn's congretate system as based on "Redemption
of the offener through the well-orded routine of the prison."
However, there remains some dissensus on whether Auburn's early policies
were intended as a means of reform, or whether it arose as the more
instrumental strategy of providing labor-for-profit. Here, we defend
the view that the origins of Auburn began on the premise that Auburn's early
origins were based in the Protestent ethic. Only later did it, like Eastern
Penitentiary, depart from the spiritually based foundations.
There has been no shortage of studies describing the early history of prisons,
so our intent is not to repeat what others have done. Eastern Penitentiary,
especially, is covered in depth by historians with ample primary source data.
However, what we've
found in trying to answer our original question about Auburn is that many of
these histories are recursive, tending to cite a small batch of limited
memoirs, and then producing iterative citations of second hand
sources. By modestly focusing on Auburn, we examine the religious foundations
of the early U.S. carcerals as a way of clarifying conventional histories,
and as a way of assessing the contemporary development of faith based
influences that are slowly creeping back into prison programs and policies.
AUBURN: REDEMPTION OR INSTRUMENTAL LABOR?
We began digging back into Beaumont and Tocqueville's "On the Penitentiary
System in America" to find their interview with Lynds. The reviewer's
recollection of Lynds' rejection of rehabilitation was correct.
Elam Lynds was labeled by contemporaries and subsequent scholars as a
sadist and profiteer. He believed in hiring out prisoner labor, as long
as the director retained full control of the prisoners and their time.
Prisoners, Lynds believed, should make money for the prison (and, according
to preliminary reports, for himself), and prison administration should
be dominated by "one man" at the top who controlled all, being
constantly merciless and just (de Beaumont de Tocqueville, 1830).
The reviewer's recollections were correct, as a question and answer session
between de Ceaumont and de Tocqueville reveal in their interview with
Lynds after he assumed control of Sing Sing:
Q. Do you think one can manage without corporal punishment?
A. I am completely convinced of the opposite. I regard punishment by the
whip as the most effective and at the same time as the most humane, for it
never makes a man ill and compels the prisoners to lead an essentially
healthy life. Solitary confinement on the other hand is often ineffective
and almost always dangerous. I have seen many prisoners who could not be
brought to reason this way, and who only left their cells to go to the
hospital. I do not think you can control a large prison without the
use of the whip whatever those may think who only know human nature from
books.
A. I should rather govern a prison where that system prevailed than one
where it did not. In a closed prison one cannot get the same supervision
or the same care from the wardens. Once the prisoners have been thoroughly
broken in to the yoke of discipline, one can set them to what work one
thinks most useful and in the places one chooses. In that way the State
can use criminals for various purposes, once it has improved the
discipline of prisons.
Q. Do you decidedly believe in the reform of a great number of the
prisoners?
A. We must understand each other. I do not believe in complete reform
(except in the case of young offenders), that is to say I do not
think one often sees a criminal of mature age turn into a religious
and virtuous man. I put no faith in the saintliness of those who
leave prison, and I do not think that either the chaplain's
exhortations or the prisoners' own reflections ever make a good
Christian. But my view is that a great number of former prisoners do
not become recidivists and do even become useful citizens, having
learnt a job in prison and formed a constant habit of work.
That is the only reform that I have ever hoped to achieve, and I
think that is all that society can ask.
Lynds' guiding view was not based on redemption or rehabilitation, but on
submission, control, and compliance, as de Beaumond and de Tocqueville
concluded with their final observations:
During the whole conversation which, with intervals, lasted several
hours, Mr. Elam Lynds came continually back to the idea that it was most
important of all to break the prisoner in to a state of passive obedience.
That point gained, the rest became easy no matter how the prison was
built,and whatever the type or place of work.
This should have satisfied us, but subsequent attempts to track down Lynds'
early views, and those of others, to see how they shaped Auburn began raising
more questions than answers. Did Lynds philosophy, one he attempted to
implement at Auburn and later successfully implement at Sing Sing mean
that our belief that Auburn was founded on some variant of the Protestant
ethic was mistaken? It would seem so, but we were not yet convinced
that Auburn was founded on such an austere, ascetic foundation, and still
had hope that our original view of work-as-redemption held some merit.
The Early History: Auburn
We return to our central question: What drove the underlying foundations of
early U.S. prisons? It's not that we are suggesting that the conventional
histories are wrong, but rather that they are incomplete in a way that
distorts our understanding by applying and perhaps imposing contemporary
concepts and labels that give a unified coherence to a multiplicity of
events and processes that didn't actually exist.
Although most scholars acknowledge the predecessors of the Auburn and
Eastern predecessors, at least in passing, the acknowledgments tend to be
a cursory side-note rather than a more substantial grounding.
They provide the image of ESP and Auburn as arising almost sui generis from
the efforts of reform and the ashes of failed policies.
The early histories weren't quite so simple, and a better claim to
progenitors could probably be made by Newgate (New York City) and
Allegheny/Western Prison (Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh), neither of which
seem credited for their influence. In fact, Perhaps with disappointment, one
observer noted: "Newgate, New York's first state prison, is unremembered
today. Unlike Auburn and Sing Sing, it planted no seeds for the correctional
future" ("New York State Correctional Officer Informational Page, 2001).
Both Eastern and Auburn, at the time of their construction, seem to have been
the reconstruction and implemention of policies in Philadelphia and
New York respectively, and at the time--other than architecture--mirrored
Newgate and Allegheny, although at Auburn far more than at Eastern.
In New York, Newgate Prison was built in what is now Greenwich Village
in 1797, and Western Penitentiary, in Allegheny County (Pittsburgh), opened
in 1818.
Western/Allegheny was torn down barely seven years after it opened, labeled a
"complete failure" (Johnson, 2000: 29) because of poor ventilation,
poor heating, and unsanitary conditions. Both were built primarily for
secure confinement, neither has been judged to be driven by any underlying
philosophy, and neither left their mark on the development of prisons
in the U.S. For this reason, most scholars mark Auburn and Eastern the
progenitor of U.S. prisons. However, Auburn was built on the Newgate
model, and it was the architecture and design of Allegheny that failed,
not the underlying philosophy, which was reproduced in large part in ESP.
NEWGATE:
In 1796, the New York legislature authorized funds for building Newgate
prison in what is now Greenwich Village in New York.
Newgate was intended as a reform institution to alleviate the deleterious
conditions of New York jails.
Completed and
admitting its first prisoners in in 1797, just one year later, Newgate
was a fairly conventional fortress-style structure. The structure was a
four-wall (granite? limestone? brick?) enclosure with the northern boundary
reportedly on the current Charles Lane, between Washington and West Streets.
Designed for about 450 prisoners, it was overcrowded within five years.
The practice of pardoning prisoners to release overcrowding led to
public and political outcry, and perhaps because of the aftermath of
soldiers returning home after the war of 1812, overcrowding and
discipline reached a crisis.
The religious foundations of Newgate are found in the intents of its
primary influence, Thomas Eddy.
Eddy, a governor of the New York Hospital in the late 1790s, had a deep
interest in institutional reform, and was influenced by John Howard,
the former English Sheriff credited, not without some justification, as
being the the first signficiant prisoner reformer. Unlike Howard,
a Christian of uncertain affiliation, Eddy was a Quaker, although
the dogma of the New York Quakers seemed to differ significantly from
those of Pennsylvania, where he was born. With other Quakers, who dominated
the board of governors, Eddy led a two-pronged strategy of changing
New York's penal laws and in the establishment of the first New York
State Prison, Newgate, at which he was the first superintendant. Among
his then-innovating ideas included classification of prisons into three
groups: The most serious offenders, who would be initially placed in
solitary confinement with no work; The less-serious, who would be placed
in what we know call the congretate system of isolation at night, work
during the day; and the relatively minor offenders, who would work, but
not be isolated. He believed that corporal punishment should be abolished,
"industrious habits" should be instilled through religious training,
and religious instruction should be an integral part of the prison
regime. He also advocated early programming, suggesting that literacy
be taught through religious instruction.
Eddy was also ahead of his time in advocating separate institutions for
women and for juveniles. One of his most novel plans, one never realized,
was a facility for ex-convicts that would provide them with temporary
housing and employment on release as a way of easing their transition
into the community. This, he argues, was the epitome of Christian
charity as it would continue to reinforce the moral regeneration they
obtained in prison, and by applying discipline and hard work, they would
further their redemption.
Eddy's plan for Newgate included profitable labor based on humane, yet
firm, discipline and labor, and from the year of it's opening through 1803,
the last year in which Eddy was involved in its management, "the labor of the
convicts equalled the annual expense of the establishment
(Kent/Knapp, 1833: 11).
His "Christian faith, without a partical of bigotry or fanaticism" made
him, according to one contemporary colleague, "the enemy of every species
of doctrine that was lax in morals, or led to licentiousness in practice"
(Kent/Knapp, 1833: 11).
What led to the change from Eddy's vision to subsequent visions that
appear less than Christian?
The seeds of the demise of Eddy's vision began in 1800, when a change in
the political climate led to a dramatic shift in views of prisons and
prisoners. The newcomers to power removed the Quakers from most positions
of power and influence, including the Board of Directors:
.....Those who had effect the change thought their influence should be
felt every where (sic); and though there was no emolument annexed to the
office of governor of the prison, thee ere those of the dominant party,
whose ambition was to be graditifed by being put in the place of the
Friends who were mangers of the institution. The difference between the
government and those who took the office merely from from motive of
philanthropy, and who devloted themselves to the discharge of its duties,
and those who held it as an honorary distractiong, that deserved but
little sacrifice of their private busniess, was soon perceived. The new
management was so bad, that it had very nearly occasioned the failure of
this great experiment..." (Colden/Knoll, 1833: 19).
(BUILD ON THIS FROM 1800+ LEGISLATIVE DEBATES).
Because of the overcrowding and inablitity to meet the original intents
of reform and redemption in the early 1800s, the New York legislature
authorized the building of a larger prison at Auburn on land donated
by the city in the belief that it would be an economic benefit to the
community.
Construction was started in 1816, and the first prisoners entered in 1817.
Auburn was built on the fairly
conventional prison design of Newgate. It began with 80 prisoners in a mix
of "dormitory" and isolation cells, and prisoners were assigned to the
cell on the basis of their offense. However, there appeared to be little
legislature or administrative consensus on how to run the new prison,
and early policies were largely ad hoc and reactive. Auburn's original
Board of Directors, ironically, were also Quakers, who had regained
influence in matters of the carceral. However, lacked the power to
implement their original ideas, of which Christian redemption and reform
formed the cornerstone.
However, the lack of congruence between vision
and policy led, reminscent of Stateville in the 1970s (Jacobs, 1977),
led to chaos and anarchy. Assaults, violence, prisoner sabotage, and
arson led to a call to "take back the prison from the prisoners."
Whipping, previously banned by the NY legislature, was re-introduced.
Concerned about the problems of the new prison, in April, 1819 the
legislature approved changing the original design of the structure and
created the north wing to provide for solitary confinement of prisoners
(Powers, 1829).
Completed in 1821, the new wing signified a new direction in prison
architecture that became what we now know as the Auburn model.
Beginning with 80 prisoners, the north wing consisted of
solitary, back-to-back cells situated on two tiers, allowing for prisoners
to be segregated in individual cells. Prisoners were, under New York law,
classified into one of three classifications:
The first classification, consisting of hardened and
vicious criminals, were sentenced to solitary confinement with no labor;
the second classification, a more corrigible group, alternated between
solitary confinement and labor; and the third and more favored
classification engaged in silent congregate labor by day and seclusion at
night (Lewis 1965).
Just as with later attempts at the WSP and ESP,
however, this classification system, especially the first classification,
produced unintended results, and was abolished by the governor eighteen months
after its implementation, with twenty-six prisoners granted pardons due to
the belief that they had suffered enough (Prison Discipline Society 1972).
((ANY SENSE OF WHAT THIS MEANS? SUFFER BYLABOR? BY ISOLATION? BY....??)
Nonetheless, this failure led to the greater development of the third
classification and the establishment of a system of silence, hard labor,
and rigid discipline, in which prisoners labored together in silence by
day and spent nights of solitude in reflection.
A letter written by Gersham Powers places Lynds's original comments in context.
As one of the five members of
the prison's board of directors, Powers appointed Lynds "agent" and John D.
Cray "deputy keeper". In these positions Lynds was responsible for
financial matters and Cray for "police and discipline" (it was Cray, not
Lynds, who developed the Auburn system). According to Powers, Lynds was
basically a self-promoter who could not resist taking credit for the
system when it began receiving public recognition (I'll expand on this
later).
For example, Warden Powers's stated labor as intended under the original
auburn model as correcting "idle, irregular, profane and intemperate habits,
subdues evil passions, and creates habits of serious though and
reflection, and of mild, respectful deportment. (Powers, 1829: **)
Through religious training,
He goes out from this prison, and returns to the world with totally new
views of himself, of his Maker, and of relative, moral and civil
obligations. He has a respectable and useful trade, which, with those
habits, and health, forms a sure capital for his future support and
independence (Powers, 1829: 25).
However, this changed after 1823 when Lynds assumed more control of Auburn
and later, in 1826, became warden of Sing Sing.
CONCLUDING FRAMEWORK
In grounding the relevance of our study, we draw a bit from Weber with a
touch of Foucault.
In exploring the impact of Protestantism on the English and German variants
of early capitalist development, Weber (1958: 89) suggested that it was
the power of religious influence, in part, that created the differences.
We examine the early development of U.S prisons through a similar lens
and search for influences of the old Protestant ethic in the philosophy
of
In describing how the anti-ludic nature of the "Protestant ethic"
created a culture that facilitated the growth of capitalism,
Weber argued that the underpinnings are best explored
in its religious characteristics and in the rational ethics of Protestant
life (Weber, 1958: 27, 45). The Calvinist-influenced doctrines of
the Puritans emphasized predestination, labor, and discipline, and
expunged worldly pleasures. This rigorous asceticism provided the basis
of a new testament vision of reform: Redemption and moral regeneration
requires compliance with a rigid program of sacrifice and labor-intensive
discipline. We tentatively suggest that, in the beginning, the plan for Auburn
was formulated on the foundations of a neo-Calvinist (Protestant?) doctrine
of asceticism and discliplined labor filtered through a Quaker doctrine
of redemption that builds on salvation, while rejecting predestination.
However, the New Testament vision based on forgiveness, redemption,
and moral/behavioral rehabilitation was challenged, often successfully,
by an Old Testament vision of punitive vengeance, submissive servitude,
and self-interest of the powerful, using the facade of religion to
promote venal ends.
==============
FROM FOUCAULT AS CONCLUSION - DEVELOP - SEE ARCH OF KNOWLEDGE:
To borrow from Foucault (1982: 209), we're not just looking at "facts" to
reinterpret them. Rather, we hope to tease out how a reified past becomes
objectified and taken for granted by iterative discourses that frame our
understanding of the present in order to create an historical awarness
of our present circumstances. As Foucault (1982: 209) argues, we want
to know who we are in order to reject reified abstractions and reveal
the economic and ideological state of what we'll call "symbolic violence"
that ruptures the past from the present. We want to see prisons not as
a set of organizational procedures that evolve over time, but to explore
the underlying genesis by looking at the processes from which "modern"
prisons arose (Foucault, 1978). Beginning with Auburn, we depart from
structuralist interpretations, which emphasize the idea of wholeness and
transformation, by casting doubt on the idea of an internal logic and
self-regulatory set of principles that guides institutions, by focusing
instead on the chaos, happenstance, and contradictions resulting from trial
and error, conflict, and unanticipated outcomes. It appears that how we
learned the history of early U.S. prisons perhapps too uncritically
views their origins as a cohesive model (or bi-polar models of ESP and
Auburn). Instead, it was the outcome of narratives and discourses for which,
in many ways, prison policies were were not just a battle of ideals, but were
a conduit reflecting competing
ideologies of religion; political economy; punishment, redemption, and
retribution, and changing conceptions of human nature and rights.
Punishments became recoded accordingly. Foucault, too, may miss this
when he sees the evolution of the carceral as based only on a military
military regime, although this certainly characterzied and dominated the
one trajectory of the primary model (Sing Sing, Allegheny) and elements of
others.
His point, however, is sound: Punishment and prisons are not simply an
outcome of justice processes, but of deeper structures, that, for whatever
reasons, aren't the ones we focus on in our discussion of the history
of prisons.
POINT: WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH REFORM TODAY?
1. How we conceptualize, form our objects of analysis, and create
bodies of knowledge based on these
2. How we explain (how we order our "facts" to correspond with our
concepts
3. How we talk about what we explain (our "discourse")
4. How we teach (pass on through institutional or other formal
practices) what we talk about
5. What the social implications of all this are.
In short, we are not so much examining the past as we are examining
how we use the past to understand ourselves in our present and in our
culture. By teasing out the nuances of the origins of prisons two
centuries ago, we can see not only where we have left silences, but
the gaps where we need to shed more light.
(WHY? WHO CARES SO WHAT?)
Provides the framework for examining the underlying philosophy of some
(but hardly all) of the faith-based initiatives, particularly
Evangelicals, in promoting religious programming.
CONCLUSION
The history of wars, it is said, is written by the winners. This holds
true for the history of lesser events as well: Those who control and dominate
the terrain dictate the prose and images by which we understand and build
on them.
The history of prisons, in many
ways, seems driven by recursive and iterative accounts of the past in ways
the present a coherent narrative and fairly unambiguous images of
the origins of the U.S. carceral. The primary images of the origins of the
universe of prisoners suggests a "divine creator,"
a master progenitor, who created the penal universe de novo.
Our view, while avoiding "big-bang" theory, nonetheless draws from it
to suggest that the origin of US prisons, while not exactly evolving
in the early days from primordial soup, nonethess did not emerge as
neatly and cleanly as it seems from some divine inspiration.
In an old, but still relevant, analysis of New York prositution laws,
Pamela Roby begins with the premise that too often we tend to understand
law, and by implication other events, by looking at outcome rather than
process. We have suggested that to see the origins of U.S. prisons
as arising out of two simple models--Auburn and Eastern State
Penitentiary--illustrates her point: The origins were a bit more complex,
and glossing over this complexity oversimplifies and distorts the
experiments, ideological disputes, administrative conflicts, false starts
in the three decades of 1790 to 1830.
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