Which reformer is associated with prison issues

These efforts to reform and standardize criminal justice thus constituted a larger project of rebuilding national solidarity. Even at the end of this century, however, reformers were still protesting the same overcrowded, mixed-gender, exploitative, and harsh conditions in prison.

He explains further that. In a very strange way, the history of imprisonment does not obey a chronology… There was in fact a telescoping or in any case a different distribution of these elements. And, just as the project of a corrective technique accompanied the principle of punitive detention, the critique of the prison and its methods appeared very early on, in those same years ; indeed, it was embodied in a number of formulations which— figures apart— are today repeated almost unchanged.

Foucault In a very real sense, reformers always situate themselves as the before to a speculative after. Their follow-up letter seeking further information, along with similar requests from authorities in Ohio and New York Governor DeWitt Clinton himself, prompted Gershom Powers as the agent and keeper to issue this report.

It outlines "the main principles and practice of this institution… in pamphlet form, suitable for general circulation," as well as to train newly appointed prison officers. Their letters are also included, revealing the questions that motivated prison reformers across the US Northeast: disciplinary methods, architectural design, general health and cleanliness, productivity and style of inmate labor, operating costs, recidivism rates, and convict population demographics.

Following these, Powers gives an account of the construction, management, and discipline of Auburn Prison; a compendium of criminal law; an abstract of the contracts first made with local manufacturers; a report on the trial of an officer for whipping a convict; as well as a plan of the prison.

Powers was a zealous advocate of the Auburn System, and his defense of it here illuminates key ideological differences with the Pennsylvania reformers. Be especially attentive to the rhetoric of subtle ridicule and self-aggrandizement in his report, a tone which is echoed back by the Pennsylvania System advocates in their Memorandum of a late visit to the Auburn penitentiary included later in this collection. Despite their irreconcilable differences, however, Powers identifies a certain consensus between both schools of reform.

Thomas J. The opinions of candid and enlightened men upon this grave question are much to be desired, and I shall be anxious to learn how far your sentiments correspond with those expressed in the report. Madison is especially concerned with reducing the cruelty of penitentiary discipline and with the potentially harmful effects of solitary confinement.

Recall that A brief account of… the New-York State Prison at Auburn includes a letter Wharton sent after his visit to Auburn Prison in , also commissioned by the Pennsylvania governor to revise the state criminal code. Wharton was just as concerned with the issue of solitary confinement then, telling Powers how this "question is so particularly interesting in this state, where we have a prison exclusively adapted to solitary confinement, without labor, and another that can be only changed from it, by altering the plan of the unfinished part, that we shall be much pleased by hearing from you fully on this subject.

But when several fell victims to physical and psychological maladies, the prison introduced the Auburn System of silent congregate labor in However, in Memorandum of a late visit to the Auburn penitentiary included later in this exhibit, Fred A. He argues further that both objections "are entirely abstract and theoretical. Not a particle of evidence has yet been furnished that would influence the mind of an impartial and well-informed inquirer on either of the points; while reason and analogy combine to establish this one great principle, viz.

Even after the construction frenzy of the ss, overcrowding was a constant struggle for prison reformers and officials alike. This was especially problematic for the Auburn System where silence and separation were already difficult enough to enforce. What a radical transformation had taken place over the previous half century, when congregate cells had once been the pre-Revolutionary norm! This document thus reveals how the major weaknesses of the Auburn System reinforced the growing bureaucratization of prison management.

As Foucault explains, "the prison had always been offered as its own remedy: the reactivation of the penitentiary techniques as the only means of overcoming their perpetual failure; the realization of the corrective project as the only method of overcoming the impossibility of implementing it" If overcrowding was a problem inherent to the penitentiary and especially injurious for the Auburn System, solutions were offered on a secondary policy level: redistribute prisoners or build more prisons.

The very same suggestion is offered two decades later in the Fourth annual report of the inspectors of State prisons of the State of New York , this time sending prisoners to Clinton. Finally, Memorial of the Prison Association to the Governor of the State of New York notes how some prisons like Sing Sing had an excess of prisoners by this time, while Auburn and Clinton had open cells.

Written by Fred A. Packard on behalf of the Philadelphia Society for the Alleviation of the Miseries of Public Prisons, this memorandum evaluates some key differences between the Auburn and Pennsylvania Systems. Foremost among them was the practice of solitary confinement which, as we have seen, entailed problems of overcrowding at Auburn. In this document we also see how the non-use of solitary confinement often led to communications between prisoners, which both groups believed injurious to criminal reform.

Packard goes so far as to say, "There is no concealment, or palliation of [this] defect which has ever been regarded as prominent in the Auburn system.

Wood that he once saw three men [who] were all in the Eastern Penitentiary at one and the same time— each of them recognized him as he passed them; and yet neither of them knew the other, and could not have had the remotest suspicion that they had ever been so closely associated!

In the very beginning of his memorandum, Packard notes how immediate supervision over Auburn Prison "is entrusted to two general officers, viz. His son, Colonel William Powers, was such an enthusiastic supporter of the Auburn System that he moved to Upper Canada now Ontario where he supervised the construction of Kingston Penitentiary and served as deputy warden from until he was dismissed in after professional conflict with Warden Henry Smith.

Their dispute concerned one of the central features of the Auburn System: the use of convict labor, which Smith blamed for greater communications between prisoners in his report.

The dispute primarily regarded prison management and the hierarchy of power; Nickalls felt that the divisions in governance were so severe as to "imperil the best interests of the system" qtd. The division of powers Packard praises here was likely instituted because of these conflicts at Kingston and other prisons modeled on Auburn. These debates over the distribution of power and styles of management would continue again and again over the following decades as revealed in the next two documents, Fourth annual report of the inspectors of State prisons and Memorial of the Prison Association The fluctuation which must prevail in the policy and management of public institutions, where each political or party revolution gives them a new supply of officers or a new set of regulations, must be clearly injurious to the interests of all concerned.

On the one hand, public transparency and government intervention were thought important to prevent the tyranny of wardens. On the other hand, consistency and total authority were thought necessary for the very project of penal discipline. Moreover, unlike the separation of powers between agent and keeper at Auburn, the Pennsylvania System combined both roles in the position of warden.

In fact, the early release of inmates for good behavior constitutes another point of contention between the Auburn and Pennsylvania Systems. Around this time Auburn introduced the manufacture of silk as a form of convict labor. Packard observes how the "success which has attended the experiment thus far is very encouraging… and there is every reason to believe that the whole operation of spinning, weaving and dying, will be completely successful.

This memorandum also points to how conflicts between the Auburn and Pennsylvania Systems could lead to consensus, as reformers attempted to correct the criticisms each posed. Perhaps it may be safe to affirm, that the infliction of stripes is a species of punishment which cannot well fail, of itself, to lead to cruelty.

It is in its very nature an incentive to cruelty. In lieu of this… they have adopted the cold shower bath , and find it, thus far, fully adequate to all punitive purposes.

A tin tunnel, with a large or small tube, as may be expedient, is held at a proper distance above the head; and water, of the ordinary temperature, is poured through it in a steady stream directly on the top of the head.

The quantity of water is regulated by its effect on the convict. Cases occurred in which considerable fortitude was displayed through the use of a gallon or two of water; but not an instance has been known in which it was not, after a few minutes, utterly subduing to the most stubborn.

While many of us will now cry out against waterboarding and its antecedent, the cold shower bath, some will still join Packard in believing that its substitution "for the cruel, degrading, and exasperating use of the cat-o'-nine tails is a most happy improvement. So much superiority has been uniformly claimed for this system over the other, in this point especially, that I anticipated a very obvious peculiarity. To my surprise, I learned that only one service is observed on Sunday During the Sabbath, the chaplain may visit the convicts, but as he is not admitted to the interior of the cell, and can only converse with them at their cell-doors, it is difficult to make a visit, under such circumstances, either pleasant or useful.

The prisoner on each side can overhear what is said, and this, of itself, would greatly embarrass the interview.

Eastern State Penitentiary. When Auburn was opened in , State Commissioners on construction transferred powers to a local Board of Inspectors appointed by the Legislature. They have no compensation, and are forbidden, by law, to make any contracts for the purchase or sale of any articles with the Agent of the Prison.

They appoint the Agent and Keeper, Deputy Keeper, and all subordinate officers, who are removable at their pleasure. They are authorized and required, by several acts of the Legislature, to make and establish such rules and regulations, from time to time, for the government of the Prison, as they may deem necessary, and which the officers are bound to enforce and observe; all of whom are required to take an oath prescribed by law.

The amendment also abandoned the "former system of a separate government for each prison," explains the next document in this archive. This amendment held that three inspectors would hold office semi-sequentially for three years, with an election occurring every year for one seat. Their role was also to appoint wardens and keepers, supervising prison administration.

This was called "moral suasion. Many reformers, then, abandoned "moral suasion" as their leading strategy and accepted often, at first, grudgingly the need for "associated" effort, meaning in the beginning, efforts to organize associations to advance their causes through political action of various kinds. When even this was not found to bring about the desired reform, advocates of these causes—most particularly, of course, anti-slavery activists—began to accept the rightness of using coercive means by the state, including military and police force, to initiate and enforce the reform.

The reformers were often nourished by Anabaptist roots—especially Baptist or Quaker—or by a form of faith that was essentially a moralizing Puritanism stood on its head, which is to say, Unitarianism, whose forebears were strict Puritans, but who had concluded to reform its doctrine of "endless misery," into an optimistic one of a progressively more joyful heaven on earth.

This introduced a utopian, millenialist, perfectionist strand into the reform movement, and was responsible for the innumerable small and large efforts to "come out" of the larger society and set up smaller enclaves or utopian communities, such as the well-known Brook Farm community in Massachusetts.

Many of these "come outers" soon "came out," not only of religious sectarianism, but of theistic belief altogether, becoming explicit "Free Thinkers" or atheists. Unsurprisingly, the center of the reform movement was New England especially Boston and areas further west, like Ohio and then Michigan, where New Englanders were resettling. Taken together, many of the reforms coalesced around the larger notion of changing society into a socialist paradise. This is not a later interpretation of what the self-declared reformers were up to, but was often expressed by the leading reformers themselves, who were individually attuned to philosophical and political trends in Europe, especially in France, Germany, and England, as they evolved after the radicalism of the French Revolution, and the resulting efforts there to abolish monarchies and long-established religious authorities.

Mass imprisonment produces a deep social transformation in families and communities. Taking into account the above considerations, it is essential to note that, when considering the cost of imprisonment, account needs to be taken not only of the actual funds spent on the upkeep of each prisoner, which is usually significantly higher than what is spent on a person sentenced to non-custodial sanctions, but also of the indirect costs, such as the social, economic and healthcare related costs, which are difficult to measure, but which are immense and long-term.

For further info: see "Compendium of United Nations standards and norms in crime prevention and criminal justice". It is of utmost importance that prison reform is not regarded in isolation from broader criminal justice reform.

UNODC believes that effective prison reform is dependent on the improvement and rationalisation of criminal justice policies, including crime prevention and sentencing policies, and on the care and treatment made available to vulnerable groups in the community.

Reform of the prison system should therefore always take into account the needs relating to the reform of the criminal justice system as a whole and employ an integrated, multi-disciplinary strategy to achieve sustainable impact. Thus, reform initiatives will usually need to also encompass criminal justice institutions other than the prison service, such as the judiciary prosecution and police service, as relevant.

An integrated approach also takes account of areas that are typically not regarded as part of the "criminal justice system". These include, for example, the development of substance dependence treatment programmes in the community or psycho-social counselling programmes, to which certain offenders may be diverted, rather than being imprisoned, thus ensuring that services in prison are not overstretched, trying to meet the needs of a growing number of prisoners with special needs.

The integrated strategy to prison reform can benefit immensely from the establishment and development of collaboration and partnerships with other UN agencies and other international and national organisations engaged in complementary programmes.

Read more There are three main issues that need to be taken into consideration in the context of pre-trial detention: firstly, pre-trial detention is overused in most countries worldwide and in many developing countries the size of the pre-trial prisoner population is larger than that of the convicted prisoner population.

This situation contradicts the provisions in international standards, including ICCPR, that provide for the limited use of pre-trial detention, only when certain conditions are present. Secondly, pre-trial detention is the period most open to abuse in the criminal justice process.

Recognizing the particular vulnerability of pre-trial detainees, international human rights instruments provide for a large number of very specific safeguards to ensure that the rights of detainees are not abused, that they are not ill-treated and their access to justice not hindered.

Thirdly, although pre-trial detainees should be presumed innocent until found guilty by a court of law, and treated as such, conditions in pre-trial detention are often much worse than those of prisons for convicted prisoners. Therefore, improving access to justice, supporting legal and paralegal aid programmes, improving information management and cooperation between courts and prisons, to speed up the processing of cases, as well as assisting with the development of safeguards for pre-trial detainees, such as independent monitoring and inspection mechanisms, comprise important elements of UNODC's work in the field of penal reform.

In order for a prison system to be managed in a fair and humane manner, national legislation, policies and practices must be guided by the international standards developed to protect the human rights of prisoners. Prison authorities have a responsibility to ensure that the supervision and treatment of prisoners is in line with the rule of law, with respect to individuals' human rights, and that the period of imprisonment is used to prepare individuals for life outside prison following release.

But often national legislation and rules relating to the management of prisons are outdated and in need of reform. In many countries the prison department is under the authority of police or military institutions and managers and staff have received no specific training regarding prison management. Staff morale is usually low and effective leadership to drive prison reform is lacking.

Information collection and management systems are also very inadequate or non-existent in many prison systems worldwide, hindering the development of sound policies and strategies based on reliable, factual data. UNODC can provide much assistance in reforming national legislation, developing training programmes for prison managers to improve their leadership role and staff to apply international standards and norms in their daily practice, and by contributing to the institutional capacity building of prison administrations.

Overcrowding is a key concern in almost all prison systems worldwide, while punitive criminal policies, as well as a shortage of social protection services in the community, continue to contribute to the rapid growth of the prison population in many countries.

As mentioned earlier, overcrowding is the root cause of many human rights violations in prisons. Solutions to overcrowding need to be explored and implemented in almost all countries in which UNODC is operational.

While overcrowding can be temporarily decreased by building new prisons, practice shows that trying to overcome the harmful effects of prison overcrowding through the construction of new prisons does not provide a sustainable solution.

In addition, building new prisons and maintaining them is expensive, putting pressure on valuable resources.