Essay: Theories of Punishment in the Pennsylvania System
Punishment can be justified through the means of five theories: restoration, rehabilitation, deterrence, incapacitation, and retribution. Which of these theories was actually implemented through the Pennsylvania system is up for debate. The Pennsylvania system was an 18th century prison which housed inmates in single cells, enforced constant silence, and did not require physical labor (Meskell, 854). Arguably, the only of these five theories that the Pennsylvania system truly executed in its beginnings was incapacitation and deterrence, though its stated purpose was rehabilitation.
Restoration has been a fairly foreign concept to the United States’ penal system. Miethe and Lu describe restorative justice as “the process of returning to their previous condition all parties involved in or affected by the original misconduct” such that the perpetrator of the crime takes responsibility for their actions and reaches out to the victim to make amends (24). There is no inclination that the Pennsylvania system was concerned with restoration. Those imprisoned at Pennsylvania were not required or even encouraged to reach out to those they had wronged.
Nor was the Pennsylvania system in any way rehabilitative. Rehabilitation refers to reforming criminals (Miethe & Lu, 22). The Pennsylvania system emerged with the ideals that solitary confinement would help to reform prisoners, as it was believed at the time that “society should be able to cure criminals by separating them from corrupting influences” (Meskell, 852). This was not the case. Not surprisingly, starving humans of social contact resulted in “negative mental effects” (Meskell, 855). Taking into consideration “that the Pennsylvania system induced ill health in the inmates, [and] that it tended to make inmates insane…” it is clear that the Pennsylvania system failed at being rehabilitative (Meskell, 857). Moreover, Rotham quoted a legislative report which clearly stated that if the purpose of prison was to ‘make [the prisoner] a better member of society” it was failing at its goal (125). Ultimately, rehabilitation is meant to ensure the criminal is returned to society as a reformed and functional member of it but solitary confinement ensures the opposite result.
Deterrence has been a goal and result of punishment throughout most punishment systems, Pennsylvania not excluded. Deterrence is described as reducing deviant behavior in society through the threat of punishment, though the actual effectiveness of deterrence is difficult to assess (Miethe & Lu, 20–22). Indeed, the Pennsylvania system emerged in a time when one goal of punishment was deterrence (Meskell, 852). Certainly it is conceivable that recidivism was reduced, at least somewhat, for persons who had committed crimes and endured the loneliness of the Pennsylvania system. Stopping perpetrators from committing a crime in the future is known as specific deterrence (Miethe & Lu, 21). Perhaps the awfulness of solitary confinement for months or even years ensured that prisoners never wanted to go back to prison, which in turn stopped them from committing crimes again. Whether or not the Pennsylvania system deterred the general public (general deterrence) from committing crimes is more difficult to determine. As Miethe and Lu discuss, people may simply have no interest or need to commit a crime and therefore do not; as such, the threat of imprisonment is not what stops people from deviant behavior (22). In this light, general deterrence in the Pennsylvania system was about as effective as today’s prison system. That is, though the threat of prison may stop some people from committing crimes, there are other reasons why a person does not engage in criminal activity. In short, the Pennsylvania system promoted some amount of deterrence for both former prisoners and the general populous as a whole.
Incapacitation is decreasing an individual’s ability to move, specifically in order to stop the person from committing a crime (Miethe & Lu, 17–18). Seeing as the Pennsylvania system was a prison and moreover one which (initially) housed inmates in single cells, incapacitation was certainly accomplished. The only harm that a prisoner could do to someone was himself, and even that option was limited. For instance, Rotham displays a picture of a prisoner restrained with his arms behind his back and an iron gag, writing that “[t]o maintain order and command obedience from inmates… prison officials were prepared to use cruel punishments” (123) and noted that “the prisons did serve to incapacitate the offender, preventing him from committing crimes during his stay” (125). Prisoners were readily restrained as need be in an already solitary state. This system was perhaps incapacitation at its most potent, having prisoners removed from society, restrained from physical and verbal contact with humans, and in some cases immobilized so as to stop them from causing harm to themselves.
Lastly, retribution is described by Miethe and Lu as the ‘eye for an eye’ schema, such that the prisoner gets what he or she deserves (16). In this sense, retribution helps the victim(s) feel a sense of justice or perhaps even revenge. However, the Pennsylvania system treated every prisoner virtually the same — solitude in imprisonment. Though some who had been wronged may have felt better knowing a criminal was temporarily no longer an active member of society, the Pennsylvania system did not allow for revenge and did not necessarily enforce punishments that ‘fit the crime.’ Rotham says it best when he explains:
It is likely that some among the deviant suffered less because of the prison, but some may have suffered more; a number of prisoners who previously would have been shamed before their neighbors and then left to resume their lives instead spent years in a cell. (129)
Ultimately, retribution was not a factor when punishing criminals in the Pennsylvania system. Most received some amount of solitary prison time, and concern was not with the victims.
Despite the stated goal of rehabilitation, the Pennsylvania prison system was less than what its creators hoped it would be. Incapacitating and a deterrent, certainly, but not rehabilitative. Nor was this system retributive or restorative. And this analysis is based on the early years of the Pennsylvania system. The prison system ultimately fell apart as the country’s population boomed, criminal activity increased, and overcrowding became the norm (Rotham, 125). Yet, despite these failures, this prison system (and its New York counterpart, Auburn) is what American society has based its current carceral system on (Meskell, 864–5).
Works Cited:
Meskell, Matthew W. “An American Resolution: The History of Prisons in the United States from 1777 to 1877.” Stanford Law Review, vol. 51, no. 4, 1999, pp. 839–865.
Miethe, Terance D., and Hong Lu. “Theories of Punishment.” Punishment: a Comparative Historical Perspective. Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Rotham, David J., “Perfecting the Prison: United States, 1789–1865.” The Oxford History of the Prison: The Practice of Punishment in Western Society, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 111–129.
