The justice system of 17th and early 18th century colonial America was unrecognizable when compared with today’s. Early “jails” were often squalid, dark, and rife with disease. Cellars, underground dungeons, and rusted cages served as some of the first enclosed cells. Detention was not a form of punishment, but rather a tool of necessity while awaiting trial or transport. Because the facilities were unsecured, detainees were often kept in irons to prevent their escape. When the time for punishment arrived, it took the form of physical abuse or societal shaming. The stocks, whipping, pillory, and the ducking stool were common State responses used for lesser offenses.
If someone was found guilty of thievery a letter “T” would be branded on their hand after completing their corporal punishment. Human character at that time was perceived as permanent and immutable; a brand ensured the public would always see this person for what they were, a thief. Public hanging was the preferred punishment for a broad range of more serious offenses.
The concept of redemption came later and represented progress; it spawned the first move away from permanent punishments such as branding and execution and moved towards punishments that “targeted the soul” instead of the body. With the opportunity for redemption came “penitentiaries,” or institutions to foster penitence. The US prison system was born. According to Foucault, punishment transformed from “an art of unbearable sensations” to “an economy of suspended rights.” This shift occurred around the time of the Revolutionary War and intensified in the early 1800s.
Early prisons offer case studies into the ethos of punishment in 19th century America, which marked a dramatic philosophical shift in the young republic. Opened in 1817, the Auburn Correctional Facility located in New York was hailed as a model worthy of replication, eponymously titled the “Auburn System.” It focused on so-called redemptive suffering. Auburn was a caricature of what comes to mind when thinking of early barbaric prisons: people in striped pajamas walking in lockstep, being beaten if they stepped out of line or were caught speaking to one another, and constantly forced to work hard labor in silence.
Earlier prisons were even harsher. Prior to 1821 the entire prison was composed of solitary confinement in single cells, with no communication permitted and only work suitable to be done in isolation in one’s cell. The governor of New York, upon discovering the “results so dire” those conditions had imposed, put an end to it, effectively creating the Auburn System that emphasized communal work and solitary cells for sleeping.