The History of Prisons in America

A Brief Historical Look Back

The idea of punishment for transgressing perceived societal norms could be extrapolated in
biblical proclamations calling for an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. The biblical era espoused
punishment as the principal response to crime; it was thought punishment would help to maintain
the distinction between right and wrong, thus promoting a more just/moral society (Bonomi,
1986, Kann, 2005). As society advanced, this underlying belief continued to influence Americas
approach towards crime and punishment. Criminal justice philosophers and scholars have
identified three main components relating to punishment over several centuries beginning with
the retributive (Post-Revolution), moving on to the utilitarian (Pre-Revolution), and finally the
rehabilitative (Reform Era) (Smith & Natalier, 2005). They all represent distinctly varying ideologies
regarding the response to crime; the reform era in particular would take on various
transformations in the way it responded to crime and prisoners, going from a clinical/medical
model of treatment, to a more antiquated approach (get-tough on crime). Yet despite the
purported proclamation of scientific and cultural enlightenment, the punitive ideology
representative of earlier responses to crime seems to have permeated the very fabric of the
criminal justice system in the United States.

RETRIBUTIVE: Pre-Revolutionary America

Prior to the American Revolution, American colonies relied on sanguinary punishment such as
public whippings, pillory, mutilations and even castrations in some cases (more in line with
England’s abominable “blood codes”) to address crimes and other acts of civil disobedience.
“Religion was clearly the salt that flavored colonial life and it permeated every aspect of life”…so it
was no surprise that crime and sin were viewed synonymously (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p.13).
The lack of distinction between crime and sin, informed and perpetuated a belief that it was thus
the work of the devil and not worthy of further exploration. The answers were to be found in the
religious paradigm that permeated life in the early colonies (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).

Specific emphasis was placed on public displays of punishment as a means to thus deter further
commission of crime in the mostly homogeneous colonies. Communities were self-contained with
little turnover or change within the population. Thus the response and impetus of punishment
served more as a deterrent and means of conformance, hoping to draw deviant individuals back
into the fold (Hirsch, 1992). It was said that colonial authorities and their brand of punishment
often mirrored that of “a stern father seeking to mend the ways of their wayward children” (p.5).
In a public confession prior to being executed in 1789 for robbery, Rachel Wall’s public confession
mirrored that of a disobedient child. She confessed not only guilt associated with the commission
of crimes, but she also confessed to lying and stealing to her family, as well as breaking various
religious verdicts such as holding Sabbath (Williams, 1993). Respecting the Sabbath during colonial
times was considered sacred and to be upheld at all times. Friedman (1993) elucidated accounts of
men being fined for being absent too frequently from church, or punished for behaviors deemed
inappropriate, such as report of a sailor returning from years at sea and kissing his wife in public.

Children didn’t fare much better. It was reported that those who did not obey their parents could
be “severely punished, or even executed (in rare cases). Respect for parental authority was
considered a precursor to religious discipline and civic responsibility (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).

Social control was loosely regulated by a few members within the colony who acted in a quasi law
enforcement capacity as the formulation of a systemized form of social control had yet to exist,
and really was not required given how close knit the towns were. In colonies considered
“backcountry”, it was not unusual however to have breakdowns in the systems of social control.
The response however was usually swift and severe by members within the colony upon the
perpetrators to thus preserve a sense of community. And if the perpetrators happened to be from
outside the community, the retribution would be exponentially more brutal (Blomberg & Lucken,
2010). In an act from 1792, it was stated that the punishment for those convicted of idleness
(willingly not working) be whippings and hard labor (Vale, 2000). Generally speaking, it was said
that there was a punishment or fine for just about anything-deemed offensive. Efforts to
rehabilitate “offenders” were inconceivable as colonists had no real expectations of eradicating
crime by curing or fixing offenders…the purpose was, in the end, primarily retributive” (Blomberg
& Lucken, 2010, p.18).

The word “prison” is probably one of the few words that no matter in what vernacular it is spoken,
it conjures up an axiomatic understanding or response in most people, yet its modern connotation
isn’t as antiquated as most of us think. Prisons up until the 18th century were used primarily as
holding institution for those accused of committing a crime or a public offense contrary to the
religious zeitgeist (such as not holding the Sabbath). These individuals were usually held for a short
term till a verdict such as public punishment or a fine was administered (Rotman, 1990). This
earlier (utilization or lack thereof of prisons) can be partially attributed to the agrarian nature of
society; People were needed to maximize productivity. Keeping large segments of the population
in prison would severely handicap levels of production and thus compromise survival in the
colonies; however, as the times were changing, so was the mindset regarding prisons.

By the late 1700’s a movement started to take root as a direct response to the shift in colonial way
of life, the scientific revolution and the period known simply as the “Age of Enlightenment,”
Fathers of the soon to be Republic were drawn to the work of French thinkers such as
Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot, and specifically the work of Italian Cesare Beccaria whose
initial anonymous essay on Crimes and Punishment, is considered the catalyst in birthing a new
paradigm in response to crime in early America (Allen & Simonsen, 1995). This period placed
greater emphasis on science verses religion, appropriateness of punishment in relation to crime,
and was specifically critical of the death penalty. Seeking to find a middle path, the old ways was
cast aside with its critics citing its barbaric and antiquated nature. “The rhetoric of the
enlightenment suggested that misguided individuals could be persuaded to exercise moral
restraint, good judgment, and self control” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p.29). Criminals were no
longer to be punished based on religious virtue or offenses deemed by the Bible to be against God,
instead they would be judged by the commission of acts that were contrary to the welfare of their
community.

Benjamin Rush, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States and known opponent of capital
and corporal punishment, initiated discourse with interested reformers to discuss a new
treatment of criminals and crime which had become more wide spread with means of production
shifting from agrarian, to industrial. These shifts resulted in the formations of cities and a
substantial increase in the population. Rush was quoted as saying, “distress of all kinds, when
seen, produces sympathy and a disposition to relive it” (Kann, 2005, p.101). There “discussion
resulted in the recommendation that criminals serve sentences as their punishment, rather than
being subjected to capital or corporal punishment, as was the established custom” (Williams,
2007, p.17).

UTILITARIAN: Post Revolution America

To the Builders of this nightmare Though you may never get to read these words I pity you; For the
cruelty of your minds have designed this hell; If men’s buildings are a reflection of what they are,
This one portraits the ugliness of all humanity.

IF ONLY YOU HAD SOME COMPASSION

—— Anonymous on a Prison Wall (Allen & Simonsen, 1995, p.32)

The Industrial Revolution and the numerous changes including the emancipation of slaves and the
influx of immigrants, was seen as an affront to the idealized nation that the early settlers had
sought to create. “While the beginnings of commercialism brought new conveniences and
luxuries, the nation was anti-urban at its core. Americans regarded London and other large
European cities as cesspools of greed, poverty, and material excess” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010,
p.37). In light of this belief, it appears that the birth of prison as a means of punishment was an
inevitability.
While many theories converged into the design of the new prisons, one would take precedence.
The “Panopticon”, or the perfect prison as it was known, was designed by Jeremy Bentham and
would become the model of prisons for the next century. Its design (a square wheel with cell
blocks arranged like spokes around the hub) enabled total separation of prisoners while allowing a
guard to be placed at a central location to thus observe all the prisoners in the various wings. The
separation, isolation, and design as a whole were considered integral for rehabilitation and thus its
intrinsic features were extensively argued amongst dueling reformers. Borrowing from Foucault, it
was said that:

The features of separation and surveillance were intended to divide time, space, and bodies in
such a way as to purify the pathological, prevent the spread of “disease”, and render each man
arbiter of his own monitoring and control (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p.50).

There is some dispute to where exactly the first prison under the new auspice of carceral
punishment was established, some have argued that the distinction belongs to a transformed
copper mine in Simsbury, Connecticut (it should be noted that the conditions were so horrendous,
riots ensued soon after its inception as a state prison), while others point to the Eastern State
Penitentiary in Philadelphia (Allen & Simonsen, 1995); as this is not the focus, I will juxtapose the
advent of the Auburn and Pennsylvania systems which in some ways captures the dueling zeitgeist
of the era.

Pennsylvania system, penal method based on the principle that solitary confinement fosters
penitence and encourages reformation. The Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of
Public Prisons, whose most active members were Quakers, advocated the idea. In 1829 the
Eastern State Penitentiary, on Cherry Hill in Philadelphia, applied this so-called separate
philosophy. Prisoners were kept in solitary confinement in cells 16 feet high, nearly 12 feet long,
and 7.5 feet wide (4.9 by 3.7 by 2.3 m). An exercise yard, completely enclosed to prevent contact
among prisoners, was attached to each cell. Prisoners saw no one except institution officers and an
occasional visitor. Solitary penitence, however, was soon modified to include the performance of
work such as shoemaking or weaving. The Pennsylvania system spread until it predominated in
European prisons. Critics in the United States argued that it was too costly and had deleterious
effects on the minds of the prisoners. The Pennsylvania system was superseded in the United
States by the Auburn system (Pennsylvania system, 2012).
Auburn system, was the penal method of the 19th century in which persons worked during the
day and were kept in solitary confinement at night, with enforced silence at all times. The silent
system evolved during the 1820s at Auburn Prison in Auburn, N.Y., as an alternative to and
modification of the Pennsylvania system of solitary confinement, which it gradually replaced in the
United States. Later innovations at Auburn were the lockstep (marching in single file, placing the
right hand on the shoulder of the man ahead, and facing toward the guard), the striped suit, two-
foot extensions of the walls between cells, and special seating arrangements at meals — all
designed to insure strict silence. The Auburn and Pennsylvania systems were both based on a
belief that criminal habits were learned from and reinforced by other criminals (Auburn system,
2012).

Auburn became known as the “congregate” system while Pennsylvania became known as the
“separate” system as it espoused silence and separateness of prisoners at all times. While the two
systems differed primarily regarding the time spent in solitary confinement, they maintained
numerous similarities. They both strove to maintain discipline by enforcing stringent rules, which
revolved around mandatory labor, silence and discipline (Rotman, 1990). “Convicts” were forced
to wake, eat and sleep at predetermined times. Food portions were similarly uniform consisting
primarily of bread, potatoes and “Indian meal” (a type of grain) made into mush or broth. It was
said, “a half-quart of molasses to every four prisoners was permitted on Tuesday, Thursday, and
Saturday” (Weld, 1839, p. 38). The mandated silence was thought to induce retrospection and
thus foster penance, which was considered a prerequisite for change.

In 1821, Prison administrators at Auburn designed an experiment to test the efficacy of the
Pennsylvania System. They took 80 of the men they felt were the most resistant to reform and
placed them in solitary confinement, enforcing idleness for a period ranging from Christmas 1821
to Christmas 1823. While the design was criticized as certain facets did not accurately match that
of the Pennsylvania system, the results were however conclusive. Most of the men became
mentally or physically sick leading to the early termination of the experiment (Allen & Simonsen,
1995). Proponents of the Auburn system would also site its ability to produce income via its
utilization of prison labor, and its classification of prisoners according to their crimes as factors to
favor that model.

With its ability to produce income via industry, most states would make Auburn the prison model
over the next half century. From 1825 to 1869, 35 prisons would be built from the North to the
South with Auburn as the prototype. It was said that “bigger and cheaper” was the motto. The
medieval design and share enormity, coupled with the discipline enforced, was said to foster
despair by making people feel small and insignificant, thus serving as a deterrent to future crime
(Allen & Simonsen, 1995).
The advent of these two systems is credited with such innovations as separation and classification
of individuals according to the nature of their crimes, sex, and age (specifically separation of
children from adults) among others. Yet even in this new paradigm of responding to crime, the
sheer violence of the “bloody codes” was not forgotten. It was said that every brutality imagined
in the early colonial days outside of “mutilations” were utilized to maintain prison order (Blomberg
& Lucken, 2010). Various reports over the following few years served to illuminate conditions of
what had been deemed an “advance system.” In some institutions it was reported that as a form
of discipline, offenders were suspended in the “air by their toes or thumbs.” An investigation into
Pennsylvania prison practices found that water was allowed to freeze on the heads, hands and
feet of individuals as punishment during the winter months (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p.54).

The level of brutality being carried out in the prisons had reached a new level of low. After visiting
the Pennsylvania prison, Charles Dickens (1842) wrote:

In its intention, I am well convinced that it is kind, humane and meant for reformation; but I am
persuaded that those who devised this system of prison discipline, do not know what it is that they
are doing. I believe that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture
and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the suffers; and in
guessing at it myself, and in reasoning from what I have seen written upon their faces, and what to
my certain knowledge what they feel within, I am only the more convinced that there is a depth of
terrible endurance in it which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow creature (p.124)

As the economy and idealism that precipitated the period of “enlightenment” began to wane, the
south began to adopt a new perspective regarding the penal system, basically disregarding the
Auburn model:

The South adopted a punishment philosophy based on impending economic needs. Their system
was based not on philanthropic ideas, but on the idea that the “possession of a convict’s person is
an opportunity for the state to make money; that the amount to be made is whatever can be
wrung from him” (Cable, 1884: 586). This philosophy took the form of the convict lease system,
which served as a slavery model for rebuilding a war-ravaged economy and infrastructure (e.g.,
railroads). (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p.57)

There existed less oversight in the leasing system; “inmates” were sent anywhere in the United
States that demanded their labor. Vagrancy laws and ambiguous ones such as insulting gestures
(such as a Black man holding up his face as he passes a White person) were enforced primarily
against poor Blacks leading to what some consider the first prison boom (Alexander, 2010,
Oshinsky, 1996). Their treatment and living conditions were deplorable. The working conditions
arguably worse, led Friedman (1993) to conclude that inmates were treated more like insects than
human beings. Mortality rates were significantly higher than that of regular incarceration…
especially that of the “negro” prisoner. “A large portion of the prison population in the South was
composed of plantation blacks who had no influence or resources, and they were treated with no
mercy” (Allen & Abril , p.42). This prompted Tannenbaum (1938), writing an expose of prison
conditions in the South to preface her writing with this caveat: “please reader, do not read this
chapter unless you can steal your heart against pain” (p.74). This would be one of many exposes
that sought to illuminate the conditions of the prison system in the south in hopes of changing the
conditions, but it was not to be.

While the pain was great, the profit was greater. Companies flocked to utilize this new cheap
mostly “negro” labor (Alexander, 2010; Todd, 2005,). McKelvey (1936) noted that “while prisoners
of the North may have grown pale and anemic gazing through the bars in a tower, the southern
counterparts dragged his chains through long years of hard labor, driven by brutal torture, often
times to his grave” (p.172)

The voice of dissent and outrage regarding the system began to grow, as did the levels of crime.
The euphemism that blanketed the new Republic post Revolution began to shred amidst the harsh
realities that accompanied such rapid social, economic, industrial and population growth. This was
especially apparent for soldiers who served in the Revolutionary war (and wars to come), many
turned to crime in an effort to sustain, the economy that was unable to provide adequate jobs and
other levels of support (Hirsch, 1992).

Various oversight reporting agencies and commissions began to report that the system was
actually increasing recidivism rates. “It was concluded that the likelihood of recidivism was far
greater than the odds of reform” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 54). Many questioned the rational
of prisons, including David Rothman (1990) who has researched the history of prisons extensively
in the United States. He was quoted as saying: “if nothing else, penal institutions were convenient
because they housed the strange alien hordes” such as “negroes”, immigrants and other
challenges to the status quo (p. 59). Advocates of the early penitentiary defended it as a “human
enterprise” able to turn men and women who would offer nothing to society, into a financial gain
for the state (Hirsch, 1992). While the latter was a palatable explanation for many, a change was
again on the horizon. The new nation struggled with the age-old question of punishment or
rehabilitation for those that violated its sanctuary.

THE REHABILITATIVE ERA

The growth of America in light of the Industrial Revolution (and later mechanization) was
unparalleled, but unfortunately, so was the high levels of crime (and subsequent prison
overcrowding). Progressivism started to take root, many argued as to what extent government
should play in addressing these new societal ills (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010). At its core,
“Progressivism embraced the notion that government would be the outstretched hand that made
rehabilitation possible” (p.61). A Social-Structural paradigm inclusive of biological and
psychological theories became the dominant lens in viewing crime. The unequal distribution of
wealth, and the realization that one third of the nation lived beneath the poverty level in 1900
became more prominent in discourse as it pertained to crime (Bok, 1992).

Robert Hunter was a leader in the fields of social work and charities in the early part of the 20th
century. He in 1904 published a book titled Poverty, in which he explored social conditions in the
inner cities. He concluded that many of the perpetrators of crime are nothing more that the
exploited mass of capitalism, and their trajectory towards crime is nothing more than
opportunistic in the face of poverty. Irrespective of the perceived epistemology that lead one to
crime, it was generally agreed by penologists that individuals should be reformed while
incarcerated. A new system was thus needed, the old system once again appeared flawed, and ill
equipped to facilitate the required change (Hunter, 1904).

A pillar associated with early republicanism and the foundation of distributive justice is the ideal of
individual meritocracy (Hirsch, 1992). It is an ideology that called for individual advancement
based on merits. This ideology led to an embrace of a new system credited to Alexander
Maconochie and Sir Walter Crofton (Putney & Putney, 1962). Maconochie while in charge of a
British Penal Colony designed a system that would be later refined by Crofton. This system initially
called the “mark system,” allowed individuals to earn their freedom if they worked hard and
demonstrated good behavior, in stark contrast to the determinate (fixed) sentence of the time
which many argued gave no incentive for “convicts” to change or abide by rules and regulations.
Crofton further expanded this system by necessitating certain stages be completed as a
prerequisite to release:

The first stage was composed of solitary confinement and monotonous work. The second stage
was assignment through public works and a progression through various grades, each grade
shortening the length of the stay. The last stage was assignment to an intermediate prison where
the prisoner worked without supervision and moved in and out of the free community. If the
prisoner’s conduct continued to be good and if he or she was able to find employment, then the
offender retuned to the community on a conditional pardon or “ticket-of-leave.” This ticket could
be revoked at any time within the span of the original fixed sentence if the prisoner’s conduct was
not up to those standards established by those who supervised the conditional pardon. (Allen &
Simonsen, 1995, p.51)

This new system gave birth to the idea of parole, and was adopted during the American Prison
Congress of 1870. This gathering featured over 130 representatives from various countries, and
representation from most states within the United States (McKelvey, 1977). It was noted “the
conspicuous absence of the Eastern Pennsylvania freed the convention from the usual
acrimonious debate over the rivalries of the fathers” (p. 89). It nonetheless remained acrimonious,
as various presenters jockeyed for their ideas to be the prototype for which all others would
follow. One such proposal did just that in lighting the path for the others. The New York delegation
was represented by

Zebulon Brockway, his speech was titled “Ideal for a True Prison System for a State”. Brockway had
a long and respected career in the prisons and was considered somewhat of a visionary (Allen &
Simonsen, 1995). His revolutionary speech proposed:

That a nonpolitical commission, such as that recommended in New York, be created and given full
power to build and control juvenile reform schools, district reformatories or houses of correction,
reception prisons for male adults in which each convict would be examined and the incorrigibles
retained for life while the others would be transferred to industrial or intermediate reformatories,
and lastly reformatories for women. He recommended that discipline be by grades and marks and
that these be administered in connection with indeterminate sentences so as to release each
prisoner as soon as he was reformed. Brockway’s paper, with its inspiring ideals full of
revolutionary significance, soon became the center of a stormy discussion; in the end the
declaration of principles approved most of his recommendations (McKelvey, 1977, p.90).

The Declaration of Principles at its core was the adaption of the scientific treatment of offenders
based on the medical model. Instead of focusing on the nature of the offense, this new paradigm
would instead focus on the nature of the offender. This archetype switch would serve as a catalyst
for the reform movement, and its reformatory built in upstate New York (Allen & Simonsen, 1995).
Elmira as it would be known would become the model for the reform movement. When it opened:

It rejected 19th century penology’s holy trinity of silence, obedience and labor. Elmira’s goal would
be reform of the convict, and its methods would be psychological rather than physical. Instead of
coercing with the lash, Elmira would encourage with rewards. Mass regimentation would yield to
classification and individualized treatment. Instead of fixed sentences to fit the crime, the
indeterminate sentence would be adjustable to fit the criminal. Rather than outright release after
the offender “paid his debt to society,” the new parole procedure would assure he did not begin
running up a new tab (Garcia, 2011, p. 122).

Its first superintendent Zebulon Brockway led Elmira Reformatory and the path that followed.
Brockway experimented with privileges for good conduct as an attempt to maintain inmate
compliance and discipline. Sending inmates to halfway type housing was utilized as a prelude to
release; this was an attempt to reorient the individual to society after their incarceration. Greater
emphasis was also placed on preparing the inmate for release by providing educational and
vocational trades (McKelvey, 1977). Brockway reasoned that the old way relied on a “mystic
morality” which was not quantifiable, and was thus un-measureable in regards to accessing the
efficacy of punitive and retributive approaches in penology (Petersilia & Reitz, 2011). Brockway
stated the following:

To treat a prisoner as a patient, to study his symptoms and make the applications they require, to
punish him for what demands punishment, to teach him, to reform him, to raise him, and to cure
him — these are all parts of a system which has any promise of success (p. 346).

This new scientific application was primarily intended for first time male “offenders” incarcerated
between the ages of 16 and 30. It was thought that this age range was less hardened in criminal
behavior and thus more susceptible to reform. The new medical model approach, “assumed that
offenders were sick and attempted to “cure” them (Rotman, 1990). The female population at the
time was largely overlooked due to their relatively small numbers; it would be over a decade after
the establishment of Elmira that female reformatories such as “the Hudson house of refuge for
women convicted of certain misdemeanors, chiefly those involving sex morality”, and later
succeeded by Albion and Bedford Hills would open their doors (McKelvey, 1977, p.165).

“In these proposed “prison science” laboratories, offenders were not to be referred to as
“prisoners” or “convicts”, but instead as “inmates” (Towner, 1886, cited in Blomberg & Lucken,
2010, p.72). It was believed that the new “inmate” designation would instill greater character and
accountability in these individuals. The vernacular and work of the staff was to also mirror that of
the medical profession. Daily activities were quantified and thus measured allowing staff to track
and reward each satisfactory stage completed. “Once satisfactory progress had been
demonstrated (primarily in educational, vocational, work and compliance with the rules and
regulations), the offender would be released to enter into a period of community supervision
known as parole” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 73).
Parole coupled with the indeterminate sentence, was the carrot on the stick that penologists
envisioned would lead individuals to the well of reform while incarcerated. The application
however failed to replicate the theoretical expectations. Guidelines for intermediate sentencing
were either non-existent or not followed. What was intended to create uniformity and thus
eliminate disparities in sentencing did the opposite. “Indeterminate sentencing without guidelines
fueled sentencing disparities, with offenders of identical legal status serving sentences of different
lengths” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 80). Calculating prison wardens who were constantly in
search of new ways to control their increasing populations and the ensuing violence as a result of
overcrowding, began to utilize the threat of denying early parole or release as a means of
maintaining control in their prisons.

The process for releasing individuals on parole was also severely flawed (Blomberg & Lucken,
2010; Rothman, 1980; Simon, 1993). Parole’s original conception, involved a team of behavioral
experts who would serve as a parole board. Their duties were to appropriately review facets of the
offender’s institutional record, as well as the offender’s insight into the crime and plans for the
future, including job prospects. However, the parole boards were comprised mainly of politicians,
friends of politicians and various other individuals without the envisioned established criteria
(Rothman, 1980). This hotchpotch group would become responsible for determining the fates of
hundreds of individuals each year. The parole board would meet a few times a year with the actual
interview lasting no more than 5 minutes (Rothman, 1980). With no formal guidelines to follow,
the meetings would focus on factors ranging from “the physical appearance of the offender”, to
whether they had secured employment, or “questions seeking to elicit verbal assurances of good
behavior from the offender” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 81). Once individuals were released in
this arbitrary and capricious manner, they were mandated by parole stipulations that warranted
work, honest conduct, and avoidance of unsavory characters (Pisciotta, 1994).

Individuals once released were mandated by parole officers to stay away from individuals or
communities that were held in criminal repute, this was an almost insurmountable task as many of
the individuals once released had no choice but to go back to the poor crime ridden communities
of which they came (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010). The fallacy inherent within this stipulation would
result in high levels of revocations and violations resulting in the “offender” being sent back to
prison. Mays and Winfree (2005) classified these early years of parole as essentially a merry go
round which always returned prisoners to the starting point, which unfortunately for them was
prison.

The idea of probation would meet a fate similar to that of parole. Probation was intended as an
alternative to prison for crimes not considered to be too egregious. The theory was that the
individual would be better served with community rehabilitation rather than placement in a
prison, which had the potential of nurturing criminal tendencies (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).
Unfortunately like its sister agency parole, probation officers were under skilled, underpaid and
overworked. Documents show that probation officers were sometimes responsible for caseloads
totaling almost 300 individuals (Rothman, 1980). “The ability of probation officers to provide
informed decisions to judges and supervision to offenders was predictably impeded” (Blomberg &
Lucken, 2010, p. 82). Contact between probation officers and offenders, were mandated as much
as once weekly depending on risk factors. However, in many cases the contact “was rare and, in
some jurisdictions, amounted to no more than ten minutes a year…Consequently, pre-sentence
investigations were compromised of few facts and much speculation and were described as
dossiers of gossip” (p. 82)

Even in light of the less than glowing reports, certain facets of the reform ideology, chiefly the
concept of indeterminate sentencing, education, and parole, soon transitioned to State Prisons.
They would go on to be staples (some would argue more in theory than practice) of penology in
and outside of America to this current day, yet the reformatory period is generally considered a
failure. Some attributed this failure to:

The same physical environment and the same underpaid and poorly qualified personnel found in
prisons were also found in reformatories, those institutions were soon reduced to the junior
prisons with the usual routine. The same old “prison discipline” was still the most dominant
feature in any penal program (Allen & Simonsen, 1995, p. 53).

The same old “prison discipline” mirrored some of the past brutalities that the reform movement
wanted to distance itself from. Reports began to surface condemning the reform movement as
using science to mask inhumane practices/torture. It was concluded from a study of reformatories
in three states that: “the reformatory offered little more than scientific jargon and justification for
practices that were neither new nor humane (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 78). Enoch Wines
(1880), a prominent reformer of the time, condemned the movement for it’s over incarceration
and unfair sentencing of Blacks compared to Whites. Leaders of the reform movement were not
spared, an article detailing prison abuses called out reform leaders for lacking the ability to discern
“between punishment and abuse.” It also condemned their practices as a disgrace to society and
further condemned the states that allowed such horrific practices (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010).
These reports only began to scratch the surface of what was to come.

Word surfaced that Zebulon Brockway, the man that many considered the face of the reformatory
movement, was also vigorously administering a type of paternal discipline indicative of earlier
penal times. “Paddler Brockway” as he became known in the prisons amongst his victims, became
infamous for administering beatings using “twenty-two by three inch wide leather strap that
weighed more than one pound wet” (Blomberg & Lucken, 2010, p. 79) “Euphemisms, such as
spanking of the patients, positive extraneous assistance, or harmless parental discipline,
essentially gave scientific credibility to beatings and cruelty” (p.79). Prisoners who were not in the
line with the rules and regulations of the reformatory were subjected to a diet consisting of
nothing more than bread and water for months. Others would be subjected to the horror of a
bathroom stall like cell with no windows, no bathroom; forced to endure the indignity of having to
defecate and urinate in the same space one was forced to sleep, eat, and carry out whatever daily
activities one does in the solitary confinement to survive (McKelvey, 1977). While these
illuminations would give most pause, this was not the case as the reform ideology took root in
American penology, precipitating the era that some would term “clinical penology.”

The Clinical Approach

Reform era influence are still present to this day in the form of parole and probation, juvenile
courts and indeterminate sentencing (Pratt, 2009), but the era also spawned an ideological ethos
leading to varying clinical approaches to understanding and addressing crimes that have also
withstood the test of time.

While the “medical model” became synonymous with the early mechanisms of the reform
movement, the psychiatric invasion would soon gain momentum. Fueled by the advent of
Freudian thought in Western Society (Rotman, 1990), The early part of the twentieth century
would bear witness, as psychoanalysis would breathe new life into the therapeutic model of
rehabilitation. McKelvey (1977) reported that by 1926 most prisons had a psychiatrist or
psychologist. Social psychiatry would influence a more inclusive view of the offender. So the
ideology of causation and subsequent treatment, once again shifted from a myopic viewpoint that
perceived the criminal perpetrator as sick and need of healing, to a more holistic approach which
considered various factors in assessment and subsequent treatment (Rotman, 1990). In theory,
this new approach appeared to be the right one in addressing the paradox that existed between
crime, causation and appropriate punishment/treatment that penologist had grappled with over
the past two centuries. Implementation of practice that fully incorporated theory would prove to
be another story.

The paradigm shift in criminal causation prompted greater attention towards a social learning
model inclusive of not only the social milieu of the “offender” prior to prison (which most viewed
as negative), but also of the “offender” and his/her current environment. As a result, greater
emphasis was placed on creating within the prison an environment that would serve to mitigate
the negative aspects of their prior socialization, while also allowing for greater control. Prisons
began to utilize sports and various other forms of recreation initiatives to attain this dual goal. In
the winter months, musicals and theatre productions would be introduced, followed in later years
by the introduction of movies and radio to prison life (McKelvey, 1977).
Thomas Mott Osborne was a man with many titles; chief among them was prison reformer and
[former] Mayor of Auburn New York. He was also known to have a flair for the dramatic. As a
young man from a privileged social and economic background, he often dressed as a vagrant to
experience social conditions that would otherwise elude him (Tannebuam, 1933). Prior to his
appointment as chairman of a state reform commission, he read a book by a former prisoner
named Donald Laurie, which chronicled his experiences in prison. He was so moved by this book
that he convinced prison authorizes to let him live for a week in Auburn Prison. He also demanded
to be treated like all the inmates (McKelvey, 1977). His request was met with ridicule and cynicism
by guards, inmates, and especially the press. Yet he was granted permission and would soon begin
his quest to gain an inside perspective on the nuances of the prison and prison life.

A few days in prison garb, walking from cell to mess hall to work shop, and performing the routine
task and role of an inmate, quickly won this warmly dynamic man the respect and confidence of
his fellows. Among the host of suggestions he received, was that of trusting the prisoners to
assume a share of the discipline and management of life within the walls… (McKelvey, 1977, p.
262)

Osborne’s unorthodox attempts at reform by voluntarily choosing to experience prison conditions

firsthand concluded in the formation of the Mutual Welfare League. Osborne believed that prisons
should be democratized, allowing for an easier transition upon release. He borrowed a motto from
Gladstone in that it is “liberty alone that fits men for liberty” (Chamberlain, 1935). The League was
thus established, espousing democratic principles. A leadership committee was established
amongst the prisoners via secret ballot. The committee became active and controlled various
facets of their own rehabilitation ranging from recreational to rehabilitative activities. Grievance
committees composed entirely of prisoners were also created to address institutional and inmate
grievances. Osborne however created numerous enemies by his attempts to democratize the
prisons and empower men to take responsibility in their reform. Copious fallacious scandals, and
various challenges from politicians and correction officers, would eventually bring about Osborne’s
departure and the collapse of his Mutual Welfare League in 1929 (Chamberlain, 1935).

The following decades during and preceding the great depression bore witness to substantial
increases in prisoners and prisons. The number of inmates in the U.S. prisons increased almost two
hundred percent. More than ten prisons were also built, with most utilizing Auburn as the model
(Allen & Simonsen, 1995). This period was also classified as the “Industrial Era” of prisons, which
had its early roots in Pennsylvania’s Eastern Penitentiary and the production of “handicrafts”
during solitary. Utilizing various facets of industry, prisons had essentially become self-sufficient
entities. With no labor or commercial laws to restrict them, prisons maintained carte-blanch
authority to produce and sell the products generated from their free labor force. Opposition
though had been mounting beginning with the convict leasing system of the south, which many
had argued created a disadvantage to those in the labor market. Things came to a head with the
great depression, and the push for greater labor regulation witnessed under the Presidency of
Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Hawes-Cooper Act of 1929 and the Ashurst-Summers Act of 1935,
essentially crippled prison industries by regulating prison products in relation to sale and
distribution. As the economy worsened during the depression, thirty-three states would pass laws
essentially prohibiting the sale of prison products on the open market, thus dealing a further blow
to prison industries (Allen & Simonsen, 1995).

As the money once generated by the industries began to wane, so did the euphoria and attempts
at prison reform. It was said that prisons during this era often mirrored the cold and hardened
nature of the prisoners it intended to change (Rotman, 1990). The Depression also affected the
public and political perception of crime and the efforts of reform. No doubt influenced by such
notorious criminals of the era like Bonnie and Clyde, “Ma” Barker and John Dillinger who reaped
havoc across the Midwest robbing and stealing. Americans developed an exaggerated fear of
lawbreakers some would title “convict bogey” (Allen & Simonsen, 1995). This would force Director
of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI) Edgar Hoover, to declare war on what he termed the
“hoity-toity professors, and the cream puff school of criminology” (Allen & Simonsen, 1995, p. 49).
Within this new era of “convict bogey” which would be further reinforced decades later by neo-
conservative policies, it was concluded that prison inmates “could be dealt with only by locking
and relocking, counting and recounting” (p.50).

Tough on Crime

The “get tough on crime” approach again ushered in a new (or some would say old) way of
business witnessed by the birth of the super maximum-security prison Alcatraz in San Francisco
Bay. Alcatraz epitomized more than any prison of its era the prevailing zeitgeist. It was to be a
prison that in every capacity suggested punishment. It was isolated (an island in the bay), and out
of sight in contrast to other infamous prisons, which often sat in the middle of towns. Visitors
were not permitted, which further added to its allure. Alcatraz was supposedly impossible to
escape, which was certainly reassuring to a society suffering from “convict bogey” (Wellman,
2008).

The lack of income generated by the former industries coupled with the rising prison population
(exacerbated no doubt by the Depression), reduced the meager attempts at reform behind prison
walls even further; thus, resulting in a period of unprecedented prison riots starting in 1929 before
curtailing shortly during World War 2. It would literally explode again as prisoners became
increasingly less tolerant of the less than humane prison conditions throughout the country.
Alcatraz would have its first riot in 1946 setting the tone for almost 200 more riots between 1950
and 1966 (Wellman, 2008). In a report by the American Prison Society on the riots, it reported the
main causes as:
· Inadequate financial support and official and public indifference

· Substandard personnel

· Enforced idleness

· Lack of professional leadership and professional programs

· Excessive size and overcrowding of institutions

Political domination and motivation of management

· Unwise sentencing and parole practices (Allen & Simonsen, 1995, p. 60)

The violence that precipitated America’s prisons in the fifties and sixties was arguably a microcosm
of the turmoil that shook America’s fabric as millions of people oppressed and marginalized
throughout the country stood up and demanded equality. McKelvey (1977) stated:

As in the larger society, these uprisings not only protested deficiencies in housing, sanitation…but
also challenged basic aspects of the system. Confronted by demands that they could not satisfy…
officials hastened to suppress the protestors with force. The crescendo of violence however
brought a series of investigations and prompted citizens and legal scholars alike to look again at
the basic philosophy of the system (p. 350).

The American Prison Association essentially proclaimed the reform era a failure and thus began to
reshape its charter and purpose. In 1954 it changed its name to the “American Correctional
Association” and encouraged states to rename their prisons “Correctional Institutions” or facilities.
A revised manual of correctional standards was also issued, “it suggested that prison officials
administer discipline in adjustment centers, but most convicts continued to describe such centers
as the hole” (McKelvey, 1977, p.327). The inherent brutality of the period “prompted fifty convicts
to cut the tendons in their heels in order to escape labor assignments in the swamps’” (p. 323).
The prison pipeline was the information highway before the dawn of the Internet. News of riots
and brutality in other prisons would serve as a unifying force and catalyst for further riots. Yet
even with the turmoil of the period, official and public indifference remained, that is until two
distinct events, albeit bi-coastal, created the perfect storm; Best extrapolated in the storied
intersection of George Jackson, The San Quentin State Massacre, and the Attica Riots.

The Demand for Prison Rights

George Jackson for the better half of the 60’s had become a symbol of the deviant prisoner, and
the revolutionary conscience and voice of prisoners from the West to the East. Jackson had been
literally and figuratively shot into the spotlight after being charged along with two other prisoners
(later collectively known as the Soledad Brothers) for the killing of a white guard at Soledad Prison
in California. Even confined, his legend would continue to grow (Liberatore, 1996)

Jonathan Jackson the 17 year old ‘man-child” and younger brother of George Jackson, disillusioned
with the justice system, would stage a “raid on the Marin County Courthouse, kidnapping Judge
Harold Haley and several jurors while demanding the freedom of his brother George (he was not
in court) and the “Soledad Brothers” (McKelvey, 1977, p. 354). Jonathan’s attempt would be
thwarted, as he would be killed along with the Judge and two companions during a shoot out as he
attempted to escape. The story made national headlines and George became the symbol of the
prisoner revolutionary spirit of the 60’s and 70’s, no doubt enhanced by his advocacy of Black
Nationalism and affiliation with the Black Panther Party (Liberatore, 1996)

The inherent lack of homogeneity in prisons, added to the mounting tension between mostly Black
prisoners and their White prison guards. Many Black prisoners began to consider themselves
“political prisoners”, victims of capitalism and racism. A belief that was further exacerbated as
numerous civil rights and anti-war activists were incarcerated leading to more educated and
politicized prisons. This belief was further fueled by nationalistic organizations such as the Black
Panthers and Black Muslims, whose membership rose exponentially under the mounting racial
tensions (McKelvey, 1977). George Jackson (Black Panther Party member) with his defiance and
eloquence became the paragon of a political prisoner. Sentenced to a minor charge at 18, he
would spend over a decade in prison “aggravated by numerous disciplinary infractions” resulting
from his protest of prison conditions. His final protest would come on August 21, 1971 as he “was
shot down, allegedly in a frantic dash across the yard for freedom” (p. 354). The circumstances of
his death remain questionable to this day, but “the death of George Jackson provided a dramatic
symbol of penal revolt…and was the most widely publicized incident of the mounting resistance
that frustrated the correctional objectives of the American prisons” (p. 354).
The American Correctional Society had often regarded the lack of public knowledge, and the
general indifference most Americans shared regarding prisons, as primary reasons for a lack of
public support in their quest to improve prison conditions. That would change as the San Quentin
Massacre culminating with the death of George Jackson, served to put the issues of prisons back
into the consciousness of Americans. As also evident by past prison riots in America, it would serve
to create a ripple effect from the West to the East Coast.[1]

Attica State Prison while located thousands of miles away from San Quentin, mirrored its
conditions and was thus fertile soil for the Black Muslims, the Black Panthers and its Puerto Rican
equivalent, the Young Lords. These organizations had aligned themselves together after
“participating in an inmate-led sociology class in the summer of 1971” (McKelvey, 1977, p.355).
They declared “We are Men” and not animals to be beaten and tortured for pleasure (James,
2005). Their mission as exemplified by their manifesto declaration: “to change forever the ruthless
brutalization and disregard for the lives of prisoners here and throughout the United States”
(Levinson, 2008, p.1232). The Attica Brotherhood echoed the sentiments of George Jackson; his
death would serve as a catalyst for change.

The revolution there was triggered in part as a response to George Jackson’s murder at San
Quentin because he was idolized by many of the Black inmates. They organized an all day fast and
silence in his honor, which helped to create a new solidarity among prisoners from all the various
racial factions. Emboldened by this mass cohesion, the leaders among the prisoners began to seek
reform of the “barbaric conditions” that existed at Attica. When none of their recommended
reforms was even considered by the administration, the prisoners took over the entire prison. For
five days from September 9th to the 13th, 1971, more than 1200 prisoners rebelled and seized
control of the prison, burning some of its buildings, and taking 39 hostages, both guards and
civilian prison staff. The “Attica Manifesto” focused on prisoner oppression and dehumanization.
“We are men. We are not beasts, and we do not intend to be beaten or driven as such,” was the
call to arms by one of the rebellion leaders, L. D. Barkely. Their price for releasing the hostages was
negotiated daily, as were national media alerts concerning the negotiations. This notoriety was in
part the consequence of 27 high profile celebrities who came to Attica as “neutral observers” …
(Zimbardo, 2007, p.224)

The subsequent massacre at Attica of prisoners and correctional officers by the State Police,[2] and
the numerous illuminative reports that preceded it, served to further jolt the consciousness of the
American people and Congress to the problem of prisons in the nation (Zimbardo, 2007).
Numerous commissions and hearing would take place as a result of the confluence of violence at
San Quentin and Attica; the hearings would further illuminate inhumane practices and conditions
that festered and grew in prisons (Rotman, 1990). The subsequent reports produced by the
various commissioned enquires, would lead to a renewed attempt at prison rights, improved
prison conditions, and programming that could be substantiated through evaluative methods
(Selke, 1993). Yet as the supposedly “modern” era of prisons advanced, the call for justice and
humanity that was witnessed since the genesis of prisons in early colonial America would still echo
loudly more than ever from within the “belly of the beast”; succinctly summarized best by the
these lines of the Attica Manifesto:

We, the inmates of Attica Prison, have grown to recognize beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
because of our posture as prisoners and branded characters as alleged criminals, the
administration and prison employees no longer consider or respect us as human beings, but rather
as domesticated animals selected to do their bidding in slave labor and furnished as a personal
whipping dog for their sadistic, psychopathic hate . . . (James, 2005, p.305)

Conclusion

The Pre and Post Revolutionary response to crime while theoretically different mirrored of a lot of
the retributive and punitive paradigms associated with biblical times (Grasmick & McGill, 1994;
Evans & Adams, 2003). These punitive paradigms permeated and impeded the various attempts at
establishing a criminal justice system that would indeed reform its inhabitants. Numerous reports
would highlight the “inhumane treatment” of prisoners particularly in the South. The
industrialization of prisons, and the over incarceration of blacks led many social activist to
question the true impetus behind the criminal justice system. Yet, the American public would
remain largely oblivious to this peculiar institution for nearly 200 years. It would take the massacre
of George Jackson and the San Quentin riots to truly elicit a public response. The subsequent
Attica Riots would serve as a literal and metaphoric window into the “belly of the beast”, igniting
various public and private debates on the effectiveness of prisons.

The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals recommended in a
report preceding Attica that no new prison facilities be built. The Commission also strongly
recommended closing all Juvenile facilities. The report would go on to state “the prisons, the
reformatory, and the jails have achieved only a shocking record of failure. There is overwhelming
evidence that these institutions create crime rather than prevent it. Their very nature insures
failure” (Miller, 2009, p.731). Yet those bloody months leading up and culminating with the Attica
riots, would change and in some sense humanize prison conditions. College programs would come
into existence, and access to vocational and educational opportunities would also be made
available. On the surface it appeared that the conditions that the reform movement envisioned
necessary to foster rehabilitation was finally becoming a reality, yet beneath the surface social and
political conditions were about to converge to create a period titled “mass incarceration”.

WOMEN'S PRISON HISTORY: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY

Michelle Jones | Feb 1, 2015

The Indiana Women’s Prison (IWP), founded in 1873 in Indianapolis, is often described as the first
separate prison for women in the United States. For the past 18 months, students in the college
program at the prison have been researching and writing a book on the history of our prison’s first
15 years. Our class has been fortunate to obtain original sources for our research from the
Indianapolis Public Library, the Indiana State Archives, and IWP itself, including detailed prisoner
demographic data from 19th-century prison registries that we have digitized.

This project is unusually collaborative. Students are organized into groups that discuss, research,
and study a particular area of the prison’s history that will be covered in the book. Our professor,
Kelsey Kauffman, facilitates meta-discussions in which singular topics are interwoven, providing a
cohesive look into our prison’s past.

After reading many of the historical and contemporary accounts available to us, we initially
believed we were writing a feel-good story about two Quaker women banding together with other
Quakers and the state to create a safe and rehabilitative environment for “fallen” women. The
social and economic climate at the end of the Civil War was abysmal for women. Prostitution,
theft, and fraud, the only alternatives to destitution and death for many marginalized women,
often led to their incarceration. In Indiana, Rhoda Coffin and her husband, Charles, both Quakers,
exposed the sexual abuse and exploitation of women held in the men’s state prison in
Jeffersonville. This exposure ultimately compelled Governor Conrad Baker and the state legislature
to create the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls (now known as the Indiana
Women’s Prison).

We learned that another Quaker, Sarah J. Smith, had opened a Home for the Friendless in 1865,
using her own money to “develop a wonderful facility for reforming the abandoned.”1 Smith was
handpicked to serve as the superintendent for the newly opened female prison on the strength of
her work and dedication at the Home for the Friendless. Rhoda Coffin initially chaired the Board of
Visitors at the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and Girls until she led a coup against
the all-male Board of Managers, after which she chaired that board. Together, Coffin, Smith, and
others associated with the prison extolled their great successes in the reformation of the women
and girls incarcerated there. Smith said, “What, it will be asked, has been the result of all this
improvement in prison life? We answer: In most cases restored womanhood, to enter again in life
able to care for themselves and not a terror or an expense to society.”2 In 1878, the Board of
Managers reported an 82 percent success rate for women and girls reentering society, measured
by Smith’s visits and correspondence. According to the report, this social experiment in the
rehabilitation of women and girls in the sole charge of women was working. The first women’s
prison in the United States was saving “fallen” women.
At the time, women who were forced or consented to engage in prostitution were considered
fallen and remained fallen by the standards of the day. As a journalist for The Fort Wayne News
put it succinctly in 1897, “. . . in the minds of legislators and public men generally, a woman fallen
is down forever. That an unfortunate or criminal woman or girl is so much worse than a criminal
man or boy, that there is no hope for her reformation.”

But here is where it gets interesting. When we started to analyze crimes recorded in the prison
registry for the first 15 years, we stumbled upon a glaring omission. Not one woman was
incarcerated for prostitution or any sexual offense. Indeed, not until October 27, 1897—24 years
after the prison’s founding—did Estella Koup arrive at the prison as the first woman sent there for
prostitution. Hadn’t the prison been created for all the “fallen” women? If they weren’t at IWP,
where were they?

A clue came in a 1967 article from the Terre Haute Tribune mentioning that the Sisters of the
Good Shepherd had come to Indianapolis in “1873 to operate a correctional institution for women
prisoners.” That was the same year that the Indiana Reformatory for Women and Girls had
opened, but we knew that none of the women working there in the 19th century were nuns. Sarah
Smith and Rhoda Coffin were Quakers, and as far as we can tell, all others associated with the
prison were Protestants. Could there have been two prisons for women started in Indianapolis in
the same year? If so, where was the other prison, and what was the relationship between the
two? Could there have been an agreement between the two prisons, such as “you get the
prostitutes and we get the murderers and thieves”? This hypothesis led to our discovery that the
Sisters of the Good Shepherd had indeed established a House of the Good Shepherd in
Indianapolis in 1873—five months before the founding of IWP—that operated much like a prison,
even receiving convicted felons from county courts. Our current theory is that in the earliest years
of the Indiana Women’s Prison, the most “fallen” of women—prostitutes—were not admitted
there but were sentenced to the HGS instead. Moreover, we have now found 15 Catholic prisons
for women in the United States that predate IWP, all modeled on the infamous Irish Magdalene
laundries. Magdalene laundries led by Catholic nuns were institutions where women committed
by family, priests, or courts performed arduous physical labor washing the clothing of others. The
work was punitive and was figuratively and literally a means by which women could turn from
their “sin” and “cleanse” themselves. Commitment to a Magdalene laundry was often
indeterminate and, at least in Ireland, some women spent their lives “washing” away their sins.

As a different picture of our prison began to form, we came to understand that its self-proclaimed
successes in reformation would have to be tempered against a dramatic legislative investigation in
1881 into physical abuse of inmates by Superintendent Smith and her staff at the prison. We
learned of allegations of water-boarding or “dunking,” of outright physical abuse, of women
stripped naked and put in solitary confinement. These acts against women in prison often were
perpetrated by Sarah Smith herself. Imagine our shock. We had been completely convinced by the
angelic picture of Smith and Coffin that had been painted for us via primary and secondary
historical sources, only to find this.

Further, we discovered that an acclaimed doctor who cared for the women and girls at the prison
from 1873 to 1883 advocated female circumcision and removal of women’s ovaries to cure
nymphomania and masturbation. As revealed in the 1881 legislative investigation, Theophilus
Parvin performed operations on the women for reasons not always clear to the inmates. During
each of the 10 years that Parvin worked at IWP, he had nearly unfettered access to an average of
25 women and 100 girls. Only three years after leaving, he published one of the most extensively
illustrated and detailed textbooks on gynecology and obstetrics of his time, which established him
as an internationally recognized authority in the field of gynecology. Did he use his 10 years of
employment at the women’s prison to study and experiment on the women prisoners as he
cataloged female anatomy, diseases, and treatments? Thus far, we have positively identified three
incarcerated women Parvin used as study subjects in one peer-reviewed article in a medical
journal.

Our initial questions are leading to additional ones about the real origins of women’s prisons in the
United States, about the evolving relationship between IWP and the House of the Good Shepherd,
and about Smith, Coffin, and Parvin. A possible fallout from the 1881 investigation was the
subsequent resignations of Coffin in 1881 and of Smith and Parvin in 1883. Mary Humphries, a
white federal prisoner from Ohio, pled for another investigation into cruelty at IWP in 1887. What
was happening at IWP, the bastion of reform and female management? What happens when
pressure to depict ideals of perfect management, measurable reformation, and above-reproach
Christian principles creates representations that come apart under the onslaught of reality? Are
there correlations today in our prisons?

As new historians, we are trying to answer some really difficult questions. Others have written
histories of the Indiana Women’s Prison, but except for passing reference to the 1881
investigation, none have uncovered this material or put it together to develop a full history. We
are committed to gaining a true contextual insight into our primary sources, while using our
secondary sources to form strong compelling arguments. Having incarcerated women write the
history of their own prisons is significant because we know the right questions to ask. As we
proceed with our joint venture, we feel more and more like great explorers in undiscovered
country.

Michelle Jones is a graduate of Ball State University and a teaching assistant in the Martin College
program at the Indiana Women’s Prison. She has been incarcerated since 1997.

Notes
1. “A Model Female Prison,” Greencastle Press, December 22, 1875.

2. Superintendant’s Report, Fourth Report of the Indiana Reformatory Institution for Women and
Girls, Year Ending December 31, 1875, 11.

Doing Historical Research in Prison

Incarcerated historians don’t have access to the Internet; our library is minuscule and primarily
stocked with romance novels; interlibrary loan takes months if it works at all; and, of course, we
can’t search archives or other repositories ourselves. We faced extreme challenges in researching
our book on the first separate prison for women.

Our professor and others invested countless hours at the Indiana State Library and the Indiana
State Archives and on the Internet gathering materials for us and spent hundreds of dollars
photocopying them. Because we couldn’t directly sift through available materials, our research
requests were filtered through another person’s judgment of what would be valuable to us. As our
topic developed, following up on leads took weeks and sometimes months; some students
received more information than others; and sometimes the research provided wasn’t particularly
useful.

Expediting our research meant asking pointed questions. For example, after we digitized and
analyzed the prison registries and studied Indiana history, we realized that women convicted of
crimes of a sexual nature like prostitution weren’t at the prison. Yet our reading of contemporary
accounts of postbellum Indianapolis convinced us that they should have been. We asked our
professor and state librarians to search county jail records for prostitutes; when that failed to yield
results, we pressed them to keep searching. It was only then that a state librarian found a critical
article stating that the Sisters of the Good Shepherd had opened a facility for women prisoners in
1873, the same year our facility had opened. This discovery sparked a new field of inquiry for us
that led to the heretofore-unknown role of a Magdalene laundry in Indianapolis as a prison.

As incarcerated students we are often frustrated by the unusual methods we are compelled to
adopt, but we have come to weigh such difficulties against the riches of discovery, the expansion
of our ideas and viewpoints, and the development of a clearer view of history.

PRISONS: PRISONS FOR WOMEN

Understanding the contemporary prison for women requires an examination of the historical
development of this system of social control and the critical issues relating to the imprisonment of
women in the modern era. These issues include the development of distinct subcultures within
these institutions, the enormous rise in the numbers of women in prison beginning in the late
1980s, the characteristics of women prisoners, and the gender-specific concerns such as physical
and sexual abuse, separation from children, substance abuse, and unmet program needs.

History

Throughout history, the female criminal has been cast as a "double-deviant"; first, because she
violated the criminal or moral law and, second, perhaps more importantly, because she has
violated the narrow moral strictures of the female role within society. In almost every Western
society, women have been cast as second-class citizens, subservient to the will and wishes of men.
Women who violated the law, then, also violated their subservient position and were seen as
morally suspect as well as criminal. Prior to the development of prisons in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, punishment for women and men took a variety of forms: Serious offenders
were put to death by hanging or burning, or banished from their community or sold as slaves.
Belknap notes that in the Middle Ages, for example, women who committed adultery or killed
their spouses were commonly burned to death. Less serious offenders were subjected to physical
punishments such as whippings, stocks and pillories, or branding; and social punishments including
public humiliation and shame. For women, mask-like devices, called the brank or bridle, were used
in England up until the 1800s and were designed to punish and control outspoken women who
gossiped or disobeyed their husbands.

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Although death and physical torture remained in use, Western society began to consider
alternatives to them in the nineteenth century. Houses of correction, workhouses, and
transportation to colonies were precursors of modern confinement and served to bridge the gap
between the death penalty and the contemporary prison. The house of correction and the
workhouse were designed to address the moral failings of the underclass. In their various forms,
these institutions were used to confine less serious offenders, including penniless women and
prostitutes. Women could also be sent to bride-wells, poorhouses, or nunneries by fathers or
husbands who wanted to punish the unruly, disobedient, or unchaste woman. These early modes
of imprisonment attempted to combine punishment for past wrongdoing with attempts at
reforming future behavior. Transportation developed in western Europe, most notably in England,
as another alternative to the death penalty. In the 1700s, England transported over 60 percent of
the convicted offenders to work as indentured servants in the colonies in America and Australia.
Historians estimate that between 12 and 20 percent of those transported were women, who were
typically convicted of crimes relating to poverty or sexual behavior. Ironically, women were
transported to the colonies were often used as prostitutes or mistresses to meet the demand for
sexual partners—willing or not—in these rough new worlds. Those escaping forced prostitution
were indentured servants to the managerial class. About 24,000 women were transported to
Australia between 1788 and 1852.

The penitentiary was the next step in the evolution of the prison. Dungeons, castles, and the like
had been used for centuries to confine wrongdoers until physical punishment could be delivered.
The penitentiary, however, was the first attempt to use confinement as the punishment itself. In
England, one of the first models for the modern prison was intended to provide a place of penance
for prostitutes. This radical experiment was based on principles of separation from the moral
contagion of their former lives, religious contemplation, and rigid structure. Up until the late
1800s, women, men, and children were confined together in these attempts at correction, often
with no provision for food, clothing, or bedding. Those without families or other means of support
lived in brutal and unsanitary conditions. Women often resorted to prostitution with more
propertied inmates or officials to survive. However noble in principle, most of these attempts at
correction failed. Overcrowding, lack of adequate funding, a corrupt and untrained guard force,
and little real commitment to the ideal of reforming the underclass contributed to this failure.

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The history of prisons took a new turn in the American colonies. At the end of the American
Revolution (1783), incarceration was relatively uncommon. The crimes committed by women were
—and continue to be—fewer and less serious than those committed by men. For the female minor
offender, public humiliations, such as the ducking stool, the stocks, and the "Scarlet Letter," were
delivered to those behaving outside the authority of men as well as those breaking the law.
Corporal and capital punishment continued to be the primary forms of punishment for serious
crimes but new ideas about punishment and reform gained a foothold in the American colonies.
By the 1820s, the American solution to crime was the American penitentiary. Based on the
principles articulated in England, the American penitentiary flowered during the Jacksonian era.
Two similar models took root between 1820 and 1840—the silent and the congregate systems.
Both models used work, discipline, religious contemplation, and separation from the free world to
attempt change in the convicted criminal.

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Few women were confined in the emerging penitentiary system. While only about 4 percent of the
U.S. prison population was female by 1950, most scholars agree that these few imprisoned women
did not benefit from this experiment in reform. Robert Johnson states that women and minorities
were "barely considered human" (p. 32), and thus not fit candidates for the penitentiary's regime.
The few women imprisoned in the early 1880s were confined to traditional prisons that offered no
plan for reform. Pollock-Byrne (1986) describes these places of confinement as having little regard
for the safety and health of the woman prisoner. Like the first houses of correction, prisons for
women in America were dirty, crowded, unsupervised, and without adequate bedding, food, and
other provisions. Women were often locked away in rooms above the guardhouse or mess hall of
the male prison with little access to workshops and exercise yards. Often left without supervision,
women were vulnerable to attacks by one another and the male guards. Male staff and prisoners
alike sexually abused women in these early prisons. Freedman argued that women were subjected
to the "worst debasement at the hands of prison officials and guards" (p. 60) and that sadistic
beatings, rape, and illegitimate births combined to make the prison experience even more
terrifying. Dobash, Dobash, and Gutteridge conclude that, "From the very beginning, women in
prison were treated very differently from men, considered more morally depraved and in need of
special, closer forms of control and confinement" (p. 1).

While Elizabeth Fry began her work to reform the conditions of English women's prisons in 1816,
the reformatory movement in the United States developed later in the mid-nineteenth century.
Prisons for women then diverged into two directions, custodial institutions and the reformatory
(Rafter, 1986). The custodial model was the traditional prison, adopting the retributive purpose,
high-security architecture, male-dominated authority and harsh discipline of the male prison
(Rafter, 1985, p. 21). Many women remained confined to the male prison, with little regard to
their gendered needs. The reformatory, in contrast, was a new form of punishment designed
specifically to house women in entirely separate institutions, with female matrons and programs
planned to reform women by promoting appropriate gender roles. Training in cooking, sewing,
laundry, and other domestic arts were designed to return the woman prisoner to free society as
either a well-trained wife or a domestic servant. The unwalled reformatories were built on large
parcels of land, usually in rural areas with small cottages instead of cellblock structures. Rafter
(1985) offers evidence that minority women were more likely to be sent to the more brutal
custodial prison, whereas white women, particularly young, white women who had committed
minor offenses, were more likely to be seen as ideal candidates for redemption in the reformatory.
Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia and the California Institute for Women represent the
reformatory model and were still in use at the end of the 1990s.

Ending in the 1930s, the reformatory movement established separate women's facilities with
some recognition of the gendered needs of women. After the 1930s, the custodial and reform
models merged, combining elements of their two styles with differing results throughout the
United States. The legacy of these movements continues to shape prisons for women. First, with
the exception of a relatively few "cocorrections" experiments that housed women and men
together with common programming, most prisons in the 1990s were single sex. Second,
vocational programming tends to reinforce gender stereotypes, although some innovative
programs that offer training in welding, woodworking, and other male-identified trades are found
in the contemporary prison. Third, women in prison continue to be subjected to the neglect that
characterizes their history from the early houses of correction to the modern prison.

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By the 1940s and 1950s, the medical model of corrections emerged as a new philosophy of
punishment. Called "correctional institutions," these prisons moved away from the harsh discipline
and work orientation of the custodial prison and instead attempted to introduce treatment to a
newly defined inmate—rather than convict—population. "Correctional officers" replaced prison
guards, and the inmates were introduced to a treatment regime that attempted to diagnose,
classify, and treat the inmate prior to release. An indeterminate sentencing system rewarded
those who appeared to conform to this treatment by release on parole. There is little evidence
that this approach had any more success in rehabilitating women—or men—than other prior
forms of punishment.

During this time, the social sciences "discovered" the prison and began investigating the way
prisoners adjusted to and lived their lives in prison. While most of these studies of the prison
focused on men, some of the classic work on the subcultures of women's prisons was conducted in
the 1960s and early 1970s (Owen; Ward and Kassebaum; Giallombardo; and Heffernan).

The contemporary prison

Beginning in the 1970s, prison systems began to return to a custodial or "warehouse" model, with
few prisons offering rehabilitative programs. This trend continued into the 1980s and 1990s. In this
period, the numbers of women in prison began to skyrocket, due primarily to enhanced and
punitive sanctions against drug offenders. Prisons for women then became increasingly crowded
as women were hard hit by this national trend. The female prison population increased
disproportionately to the increase in women's involvement in serious crime (Immarigeon and
Chesney-Lind). Some states began to build new prisons for women, again using designs based on
male prisons. Many of the reformatory prisons remain in use, but the majority of modern prisons
for women are now run as custodial rather than as rehabilitative institutions.

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Most states have a relatively small number of prisons for women and thus house women prisoners
at one or two geographically isolated locations. California, with the largest prison population in the
United States (at almost 12,000 in 1999), is the exception with five prisons for women. Women are
often housed far from home, friends, and their families and are distant from services more
available in urban communities. While male prisoners are assigned to the more numerous facilities
with a wider range of security levels, the majority of women in the United States are confined to
prisons that encompass all classification and security levels in one facility. In the contemporary
prison, security procedures often interfere with privacy. While privacy is eroded by crowded
conditions, shared housing units, and the need for surveillance, the presence of male staff
undermines a woman's ability to attend to personal hygiene and grooming without the scrutiny of
men. In most prisons, between 50 and 80 percent of the custody staff is male. Male staff supervise
housing units, monitoring women in showers, toilets, and in the rooms or cells where they dress.
Most prison systems prohibit male staff from performing strip searches.

With the exception of newly arrived prisoners and the small number held in the more restrictive
special housing units (such as administrative segregation or security housing units), most women
prisoners remain in the general population. Most women prisoners work, attend school, and
participate in other programs with all prisoners, whose classification may range from minimum to
maximum custody. A very small number of women are housed in administrative segregation or
security housing units. Movement within the institution, program participation, and other
privileges are severely restricted in these housing units. Women in these units are confined to
their cells an average of 23 hours a day, eat their meals in their cells, and are allowed very limited
recreation and visiting privileges (Owens, 1998). Only a small percentage of all the women in
prison are confined to special housing units but these conditions are often severe.

Co-corrections

Although most states began to build separate institutions for women during the reformatory era,
some proportion of women remain confined to prisons with men. By the late 1980s, about 25
percent of the female prison population were held in "co-correctional" facilities. The Federal
Bureau of Prisons pioneered the use of cocorrectional facilities, but nationwide the number of co-
correctional facilities dwindled in the 1990s. Most scholars agree that placing women in an
environment with male prisoners creates a distinct disadvantage. While a sexually integrated
prison appears to approximate "real world" social conditions and may offer more programs than
found in female-only institutions, the research shows that women are more often subjected to
more restrictive security and are less likely to take advantage of the increased program
opportunities. In light of the move toward "gender-responsive" programming, the use of
cocorrectional facilities seems to have run its course.

Prison subcultures

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The study of prison subcultures investigates the way prisoners adjust to prison, the way they learn
to "do their time," and the resulting prison social structure. By the 1960s and 1970s, scholars
began to study the subculture of women's prisons and found that it was much different than life in
male prisons. The first two of theses important works (Ward and Kassebaum; Giallombardo)
discussed a prison social structure based on family, traditional sex-roles, and same-sex relations. In
Women's Prison: Sex and Social Structure, Ward and Kassebaum found the women in prison felt a
loss of control over their lives and anxiety over the course of their prison term. In order to alleviate
these feelings, women participated in a prisoner social system to regain a sense of control and
belonging while in prison. Included in these feelings of loss were "affectional starvation" resulting
from their loss of family and male partners. Ward and Kassebaum suggested women prisoners
developed the "pseudo family" and relationships with other prisoners to make up for this loss.
Giallombardo's Society of Women also described the world of imprisoned women based on sex-
role adaptation and family or kinship structures. She stated that the social order of women's
prison is based on an adaptation of traditional feminine roles, such as mother, daughter, and wife.
Masculine sex roles find expression in the prison social roles of the "stud." Giallombardo argued
that the family or kinship structure of the women's prison is also based on this sex-role
framework.

In a third classic study, Making It in Prison: The Square, the Cool, and the Life, Heffernan described
how women prisoners organize their prison identities around two things: their preprison identities
and their differential adaptation to the prison subculture. Women who did not define themselves
as serious criminals prior to prison adopted "the Square" orientation to prison life, and continued
to hold conventional behaviors and attitudes during their imprisonment. In contrast, women who
adapted to prison life as "the Cool" became heavily invested in a prison-based identity and
developed a form of doing time that was based on prison values. Finally, some women retained
their street identity of the petty criminal and adopted "the Life" as their style of doing time. These
three studies found remarkable similarities: Prison culture among women was tied to gender
expectations of sexuality and family relationships and these expectations also shaped the way
women developed their lives within prison.

Decades later, In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women's Prison described the daily life of the
women's prison, with an emphasis on the gendered nature of its social structure, roles, and
normative frameworks. Owen also found that prison culture for women was tied directly to the
role of women in society as well as to a dynamic social structure that was shaped by the conditions
of women's lives in prison and in the "free world." Like Heffernan, In the Mix describes the lives of
women before prison and suggests that these lives shape their adaptation to prison culture. Owen
found that economic marginalization, histories of personal and substance abuse, and self-
destructive behavior are defining features of inmate's lives prior to prison. She also saw that the
amount of time women have to serve and their kinds of work and housing assignments affect the
way women in prison "program," developing a pattern to their daily life and relationships that
determines the way women adapt to prison. Since about 80 percent of the women in prison are
mothers, great importance was placed on relationships with their children. Finally, Owen
described "the mix" as part of prison culture that supported the rule-breaking behavior that
propels women into prison. This study concluded that prison subcultures for women are very
different from the violent and predatory structure of the contemporary male prison. Owen did not
find the presence of gangs—a central feature of the contemporary male prison—at the prison she
studied. Women experience "pains of imprisonment" but their prison culture offers them other
ways to survive and adapt to these deprivations.

Population increases

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Enormous increases in population characterize prisons for women since the mid-1980s. In 1980,
12,300 women were imprisoned in state and federal institutions, rising to 44,065 in 1990 and to
75,000 women in 1996. By 1998, this number had risen to 84,427, an almost fourfold increase in
just under twenty years. In addition, approximately 64,000 women were incarcerated in local jails
and over 700,000 were on probation, parole, or community supervision. In total, nearly 850,000
women were under some form of criminal justice supervision in the United States (Bureau of
Justice Statistics 1999a, 1999b). In California alone, the female prison population rose dramatically
from 1,316 in 1980, to almost 12,000 in 1999. During 1998, Texas incarcerated over 10,000
women, New York prisons held just under 4,000, and Florida over 3,500. In the federal system, the
women's prison population almost doubled from 5,011 in 1990 to 9,186 in 1998. Between 1990
and 1998, the number of women in U.S. prisons increased 92 percent compared to 67 percent
increase in the number of men (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1999a).

This explosion in the women's prison population cannot be explained by looking at the crime rate
of women only. Compared to men, women generally commit fewer crimes and their offenses tend
to be less serious. A major gender difference is the low rate of violent crime committed by women.
The offenses for which women are arrested and incarcerated are primarily nonviolent property
and drug offenses. When women do commit acts of violence, it is most likely against a spouse or
partner and in the context of self-defense. In analyzing data from the 1970–1995 Uniform Crime
Reports, Steffensmeir and Allan found that drug offenses have had the most significant impact on
female arrest rates. Sharp increases in the numbers of women arrested for minor property crimes,
like larceny, fraud, and forgery, have also contributed to the explosion in women's imprisonment.
Many women resort to minor property crime in order to support their drug use. In addition to
increased prosecution of drug offenses, the lack of viable treatment and alternative community
sanctions for women has contributed to this unprecedented increase in women's population
(Bloom, Chesney-Lind, and Owen). Most criminologists see that the war on drugs, a drug control
policy started at the federal level in the 1980s, accounts for the unprecedented rise in the
imprisonment of women.
The composition of women's prisons

The profile of women in prison has remained consistent: Female prisoners are primarily low
income, disproportionately African American and Hispanic, undereducated, unskilled, and
unemployed. They are mostly young and heads of households with an average of two children. At
least two-thirds of incarcerated women have children under the age of eighteen. Substance abuse,
compounded by poverty, unemployment, physical and mental illness, physical and sexual abuse,
and homelessness also characterize the women's prison population (Owen and Bloom). Surveys
conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (1991b, 1994), the American Correctional Association
(1990), and the Federal Bureau of Prisons (Klein), as well as individual state profiles (Owen and
Bloom) provide information about the demographic characteristics of women in prison. These
descriptions remain accurate even as the numbers of women in prison continue to surge upward.
The following factors characterize this population.

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Race and ethnicity. In addition to gender differences between male and female crime, women's
arrest and incarceration rates vary by race (Chesney-Lind). Minority women are disproportionately
represented in the U.S. prison population, with the percentage of African American women who
are incarcerated growing at increasing rates. In 1991, African American women made up about 40
percent of the female prison population; by 1995, this population had grown to 48 percent. The
percentage of Hispanic and Latina women is also growing at a somewhat slower rate (Bureau of
Justice Statistics, 1997, 1994).

In spite of this disproportionate racial and ethnic composition, racial conflict has not been a
primary feature of the social order of female prisons. While racial and ethnic identity is
predominant in male prison culture, these conflicts do not shape the way women do their prison
time. Women in prison generally live and work in an integrated environment and form personal
relationships that often cross racial lines. Racial and ethnic gangs have not yet appeared in
women's prisons to the extent they are found in male prisons. While a small number of women
may enter the prison with some street gang or clique affiliation, the subculture of the women's
prison offers little support for these pre-prison identities. Women seeking the personal and
community ties found in street gangs are likely to find substitutes within the prison families or
other personal relationships (Owen).

Race relations with staff, however, are potentially more antagonistic. The majority of correctional
staff is both white and male in most U.S. prisons for women. Minority women prisoners have
reported race-based instances of name-calling, job and program discrimination, and unfair
disciplinary practices (Owen; Bloom). Faily and Roundtree (1979) found that African-American
prisoners are more likely than other women to be cited for disciplinary infractions.
Age at first arrest and criminal history. The American Correctional Association (ACA) survey found
that most women in prison were first arrested at a young age. One-third of those interviewed
were first arrested between fifteen and nineteen years of age, and another quarter between
twenty and twenty-four years old. Just over 9 percent were arrested prior to their fourteenth
birthday and just over 10 percent were arrested after age thirty-five. According to the 1994 Bureau
of Justice Statistics report, over half of the women in prison were serving their first prison term.
This survey also found that most women serving a second term had been convicted in the past for
only nonviolent offenses. Nearly two-thirds of all female inmates had two or fewer prior
convictions. Almost three-quarters of all state female prisoners had served a prior sentence to
probation or incarceration, including 20 percent who had served a sentence as a juvenile.

Drug use and drug arrests. In the 1990s, substance abuse played a key role in the imprisonment of
women and contributed dramatically to the increasing numbers of women prisoners. Women are
more likely to use drugs, use more serious drugs more frequently, and be under the influence of
drugs at the time of their crime than males (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). In the national
studies, over one-third of all female prisoners interviewed in 1991 reported being under the
influence of some drug at the time of their offense. Around 40 percent reported daily drug use in
the month before their offense. Almost one-quarter of the 1991 sample reported committing their
crime to get money to buy drugs (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994).

Victimization. Women in prison have extensive histories of sexual and physical abuse. In the 1991
national surveys, an estimated 43 percent of women in prison reported previous physical or sexual
abuse. Others found higher rates of abuse among women in prison (Owen and Bloom). Violent
offenders were most likely to have previously experienced this abuse (Bureau of Crime Statistics,
1994). An estimated 50 percent of women in prison who reported abuse said they had
experienced abuse at the hands of an intimate, compared to three percent of men. More than
three-quarters of the female inmates who had a history of abuse reported being sexually abused.
An estimates 56 percent of the abused women said that their abuse had involved a rape, and
another 13 percent reported an attempted rape (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994). The 1990 ACA
survey found that 50 percent of the women reported a history of physical abuse, with 35 percent
reporting sexual abuse. This abuse was likely to be at the hands of husbands or boyfriends.

Other demographic factors. According to surveys conducted in the early 1990s, just over half of
the women in prison at that time had been employed in the year prior to their arrest. Most were
unmarried; 45 percent of the women prisoners had never been married and another third of
female inmates were either separated or divorced. Just about 60 percent grew up in households
without both parents present. Almost half (47%) had an immediate family member incarcerated at
some time. About 35 percent had brothers and 10 percent had sisters who had been incarcerated.
Eighty percent of the prisoners interviewed in a national survey reported incomes at or below the
poverty level (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1994).
Problems and unmet needs in the contemporary women's prison

Women in the contemporary prison face many problems; some resulting from their lives prior to
imprisonment, others resulting from their imprisonment itself. Women in prison have experienced
victimization, unstable family life, school and work failure, and substance abuse and mental health
problems. Social factors that marginalize their participation in mainstream society and contribute
to the rising number of women in prison include poverty, minority group member, single
motherhood, and homelessness. While in U.S. prisons, women, like prisoners throughout the
world, face specific pains and deprivations arising directly from their imprisonment. Criminologists
have argued that the prison system is ill-equipped to deal with these problems and that theses
issues are better managed outside the punitive environment of the prison (Owen and Bloom;
Owen). Without attention to these issues, women are often released from prison unprepared to
manage their preexisting problems as well as those created by their imprisonment. There are
several critical problems faced by women in prison; most are unmet in the prison environment.

Separation from children and significant others. National surveys of women prisoners find that
three-fourths of them were mothers, with two-thirds having children under the age of eighteen.
Bloom and Chesney-Lind argue that mothers in prison face multiple problems in maintaining
relationships with their children and encounter obstacles created both by the correctional system
and child welfare agencies. The distance between the prison and the children's homes, lack of
transportation, and limited economic resources compromise a woman prisoner's ability to
maintain these relationships. Children of women in prison experience many hardships. Children
may be traumatized by the arrest of their mother and the sudden, forced separation
imprisonment brings. Emotional reactions such as anger, anxiety, depression, and aggression have
been found in the children of incarcerated mothers. While most children of imprisoned mothers
live with relatives—typically grandparents—a small percentage of these children are placed in the
child welfare system. These conditions compound the problem of maintaining contact with
children. Over half of the women responding to Bloom and Steinhart's 1993 survey of imprisoned
mothers reported never receiving visits from their children.

An estimated 4 to 9 percent of women come to prison pregnant. Women who give birth while
incarcerated are rarely allowed to spend time with their child after birth. Mother-infant bonding is
severely undermined by this lack of contact after birth. Bedford Hills, a women's prison in New
York, is the only program in the U.S. that allows women to keep their newborns with them in a
special prison program. This humane response is more common in Britain and other European
nations.

Most correctional systems do not take into account the importance of the mother-child
relationship in designing policy for women in prison. Some states, such as New York and California,
have begun innovative programs to address these problems. Coordinating visits to the prison and
support services with child welfare agencies, providing special visiting areas, developing effective
parenting classes, and developing community corrections programs for mothers and their children
are examples of these innovations. Termination of parental rights also affect prison mothers.
About half the states have policies that address the termination of parental rights of incarcerated
parents. Advocates of women in prison and their children argue that family reunification, rather
than termination of the mother's parental rights, should be a priority of correctional policy for
women prisoners.

Lack of substance abuse treatment. Although women offenders are very likely to have an
extensive history of drug and alcohol use, a relatively small percentage of women receive any
treatment within the justice system. Insufficient individual assessment, limited treatment for
pregnant, mentally ill, and violent women offenders, and a lack of appropriate treatment and
vocational training limit the effectiveness of the few programs that exist (Wellisch et al.). These
findings are supported by a 1998 study released by the National Center on Addition and Substance
Abuse. The report found that women substance abusers are more prone to intense emotional
distress, psychosomatic symptoms, and low self-esteem than male inmates.

Physical and mental health care. In addition to requiring basic health care, women offenders often
have specific health needs related to their risky sexual and drug-using behavior prior to
imprisonment. Acoca has argued that the enormity of health care issues may in fact eclipse other
correctional concerns as the female inmate population continues to grow. Women in prison are
also at risk for infectious diseases, including HIV, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted diseases, and
hepatitis B and C infections. Pregnancy and reproductive health needs are another neglected area
of health care. Problems of pregnant inmates include lack of prenatal and postnatal care,
inadequate education regarding childbirth and parenting, and little or no preparation for the
mother's separation from the infant after delivery.

Mental health disorders are equally neglected in U.S. prisons. While the prevalence and incidence
of these needs are still to be determined, estimates suggest that 25 percent to 60 percent of the
female prison population require mental health services. Teplin, Abraham, and McClelland found
that over 60 percent of female jail inmates had symptoms of drug abuse, over 30 percent had
signs of alcohol dependence, and another third had post-traumatic stress disorder. Few prisons
have adequate assessment or mental health treatment programs and often "overmedicate"
women inmates in need of more intensive treatment.

The impact of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse found in the experience of women offenders
also creates a significant need for counseling and therapy (Pollock). This abuse has implications for
their emotional and physical well-being and may be tied to drug-abusing and offending behaviors.
Vocation and educational programs. In addition to insufficient substance abuse and mental health
services, educational and vocational programs are also in short supply. Several studies (Pollock-
Byrne; Morash, Haarr, and Rucker) found that female prisons offered fewer vocational and
education program opportunities when compared to those offered in male institutions. In general,
women across the country lack training needed to obtain jobs that pay a living wage. One aspect
of this inadequacy is that, like the training offered in the reformatories of the early 1990s, many
vocational programs for female inmates emphasize traditional roles for women and work.

Sexual abuse. The patterns of sexual abuse and coercion established in the early days of women's
imprisonment continue in the contemporary era. Human Rights Watch examined this serious
problem in their review of sexual abuse in selected U.S. prisons. The damage of the abuse itself is
compounded by four specific issues: (1) the inability to escape one's abuser; (2) ineffectual or
nonexistent investigative and grievance procedures; (3) lack of employee accountability (either
criminally or administratively); and (4) little or no public concern. The report bluntly states that the
"findings indicate that being a woman in U.S. state prisons can be a terrifying experience" (p. 1).

Disparate disciplinary practices. Although male prisons typically hold a much greater percentage of
violent offenders, women tend to receive disciplinary action at a greater rate than men. Research
has found that women prisoners were cited more frequently and punished more severely than
males. These infractions committed by women in prison tend to be petty when compared to the
more serious infractions committed by male prisoners (McClelland).

Gender-specific treatment. Bloom and Covington have charged that the criminal justice system
often fails to develop a diversity of options for dealing with the gender and culturally specific
problems of female offenders. Gender-specific services should incorporate physical, psychological,
emotional, spiritual, and sociopolitical issues in addressing these needs. Gender-responsive
supervision and program approaches must focus on issues such as cross-gender supervision,
appropriate relationships between staff and offenders, parity in programming, and appropriate
interventions for women offenders. There is also a need for gender-responsive (and culturally
relevant) classification tools, assessment instruments, treatment plans, and aftercare. Based on
the characteristics of women offenders, their pathways to crime, how they differ from male
offenders, and how the system responds to them differently, the need for gender-responsive
treatment and services seems clear.

Conclusion

Women in prison are typically young, poor, from minority communities, and have experienced
significant problems in their life prior to imprisonment. More simply, women in prison have been
triply marginalized by race, class, and gender (Bloom).
Throughout history, women have been sent to prison for offenses that differ dramatically from
those of male prisoners. While the increasingly harsh treatment of the drug offender leads to the
incarceration of thousands of women and men into the contemporary prison, women have been
sent to prison in rates far surpassing those of men. Women are usually incarcerated for nonviolent
property and drug offenses and are very often serving their first prison term. Women also "do
their time" in ways different from men: The "play family" and other personalized relationships
structure prison culture for women; racial and ethnic differences are less pronounced; and
children remain an important part of women's lives, even while imprisoned.

While scholarship in the 1990s provided more detailed description of women's prisons and those
confined to them, significant gaps in our knowledge about women's prisons remain. There is
insufficient information about programs and policies that address the gender-specific needs of
women in prison (Bloom and Covington) and little criminological theory that explains why women
come to prisons (Chesney-Lind). McQuiade and Ehrenreich have also argued that we know
virtually nothing about the characteristics of women prisoners across racial and ethnic groupings.

From the beginning, prisons in the United States were designed to punish men, with little
consideration for women and their specific needs. Although the numbers of women in U.S. prisons
continue to grow, programs and policies responsive to the needs of women prisoners has not kept
pace. This lack of policy and research attention only continues the tradition of neglect and
inattention that characterizes the history of prisons for women.

California Institution for Women trades San Quentin’s cells for cottages

By Don Chaddock, InsideCDCR editor

Historic photos compiled by Eric Owens, CDCR Staff Photographer

(Editor’s note: This is part of an ongoing series exploring the history of the California Department
of Corrections and Rehabilitation.)

A prison nestled at the base of the mountains near Tehachapi has gone through many changes,
including names, over the decades since the Department’s third institution was constructed in
1932. Today, the facility is known as the California Correctional Institution and houses men, but its
original purpose was to rehabilitate women.

This artist's rendering is believed to depict the Waban.

This artist’s rendering is believed to depict the Waban.

The history of women in State prisons goes back to the original floating prison ship the Waban, the
predecessor of San Quentin State Prison.

According to the San Quentin Prison Museum, from the first day in 1852 until 1927, women were
housed the same as men. “In early days (women) lived aboard the (prison ship Waban) and
performed the chores of washing, laundering and preparing the meals while men went to shore to
build and develop the prison site,” museum literature states.

As reported in an earlier story on San Quentin, according to folklore, the Waban arrived at Point
Quentin in July 1852 with about 50 convicts. On Oct. 12, 1852, a “contract was let for the first cell
building,” according to reports. The cell building was completed in 1854. Inmates slept on the ship
at night and worked to construct the prison during the day.

In 1859, the building commonly referred to as the old Captain’s Porch and Women’s Department
was constructed and the women occupied the second floor of this building, according to the San
Quentin Prison Museum. This continued until a new building was finished in 1927, which
contained 104 cells.

The Women's Department at San Quentin was eventually moved to a branch facility in Tehachapi
in 1933.

The Women’s Department at San Quentin was eventually moved to a branch facility in Tehachapi
in 1933. This photo most likely dates to the mid-to-late 1920s.

Women inmates transition out of San Quentin

By the 1920s, attitudes toward housing female inmates changed and a 1929 legislative bill
approved a separate women’s facility.

Rose Wallace, chair of the board of trustees for the California Institution for Women, praised state
senators on their site selection in a May 29, 1931, edition of Sausalito News.

“The committee left the ranch praising the property and Senator Duval expressed himself as of the
opinion that we purchased the property (from the Brite family) for less than it was worth,” she
wrote in an open letter. “This committee reported to the Senator on May 5th and, quoting from
the Senate Journal of that day, they said, among other things … ‘By reason of the conformation of
the surrounding country, the site is secluded from intrusion and away from highways (and) no
better site could be selected in the State.'”

The Tehachapi women’s prison was built and opened in 1932, but the inmates weren’t transferred
for almost another year-and-a-half. Since the women had been sentenced to serve time at San
Quentin State Prison, they couldn’t legally be transferred to the new institution.

“The buildings stood, ready but unused,” according to a CDCR document on the history of
California Institution for Women. “Finally, the Legislature passed a bill making the new institution
a branch of San Quentin Prison.”

Warden James B. Holohan and Dr. Leo Stanley escorted the first busload of 30 women to
Tehachapi. The last of the San Quentin women were transferred in November 1933.

A look inside Tehachapi

The women were housed in cottages at Tehachapi, rather than traditional cells. The three cottages
were all two-story buildings. The two smaller cottages, called Davis and Willard, were complete
living units. Each had its own kitchen, dining room, living room, bathrooms and supervisor’s
quarters, according to the CDCR document on the history of CIW.

“While the cottages were made as home-like and comfortable as possible, and were a far cry from
San Quentin, the women were under a very strict set of rules,” the document states. “The
supervisor lived in the cottage, controlled movement in and out the front door and watched over
each woman’s behavior. Bed time was at 9 p.m. and most women were locked in their rooms at
night.”

In 1935, Agness “Aggie” Underwood, a longtime reporter in the Los Angeles area, penned a series
on life in the women’s prison.

The reporter referred to the Tehachapi facility as a “home for forgotten women.”

“Ruler of this city surrounded by a high wire fence is Miss Josephine Jackson, deputy warden, who
works directly under orders from the head of the state prison at San Quentin, Warden James B.
Holohan,” Underwood wrote at the time. “For 18 years she has been employed in California
prisons, and for 18 years she has been caring for women whom the state has tagged ‘bad’ and sent
away to do penance behind prison walls.”

Underwood described daily life in the state’s only female prison.

“Life runs smoothly, and quietly, as the days go by with the only break in a monotonous existence
being an occasional visit by some unexpected outsider. The buildings which comprise the prison
group are an administration building, detention building and two cottages.

A newspaper clipping shows how female inmates will be dressed.

A newspaper clipping shows how female inmates will be dressed.

“All work in the prison is volunteer – none compulsory – and each inmate is given an opportunity
to do the work she likes best. Many of them prefer garden work, many laundry, many cooking and
table serving, many secretarial and some even beauty work.

“There is no official chef at the state institution and the inmates have proven themselves splendid
cooks even to the extent of making all of the bread that is used by the inmates

“Work on the various necessary duties is started immediately after breakfast and groups may be
seen leaving the various buildings in which they are housed, (headed) for the rabbitry, the chicken
yard and the barn yard where there are several cows to be milked.

“Each (day) goes on in the same fashion, light tasks, few laughs – a drab life, for the 145 women
who must pay for their transgressions of the law, yet Tehachapi represents notable changes in the
American penal system and is being studied as a model.”

The book “Preparing Convicts for Law-Abiding Lives: The Pioneering Penology of Richard A.
McGee” also goes into some detail about Tehachapi.

“The original California Institution for Women at Tehachapi, at an isolated mountain site in Kern
County, was designed to hold 150 women in cottages instead of cell blocks, with each unit having
its own sleeping quarters, kitchen and dining room. After 1949, it averaged 300 prisoners, and by
1952 it had over 400,” writes author Daniel Glaser in the 1995 publication.
Tehachapi used a classification system in which the women worked their way up from
Probationary to Standard and finally to Honor status. The classification determined which
privileges were earned, the jobs available and how much commissary allowance they were
provided.

Regular jobs included laundry, grounds crew, farm crew, clothing factory, hospital, Administration
Building, food services and other places. Women with Honor or Standard classifications were
offered more choice jobs.

What’s in a name? Facility re-named CIW in 1937

Officially known as the Women’s Department at San Quentin at Tehachapi, the ties to San Quentin
were dropped in 1937 and the facility was renamed the California Institution for Women.

By then, Tehachapi became synonymous with female criminals.

The 1941 film, “The Maltese Falcon,” makes reference to the prison. Humphrey Bogart tells Mary
Astor, “Well, if you get a good break, you’ll be out of Tehachapi in 20 years and you can come back
to me then.”

The 1944 film, “Double Indemnity,” used the line, “Then there was a case of a guy that was found
shot. His wife said he was cleaning a gun and his stomach got in the way. All she collected was a
three-to-10 stretch in Tehachapi.”

In 1947, the film “Out of the Past” featured a character using the phrase, “Up there in the
women’s prison in Tehachapi.”

In 1949, the film “Criss Cross” found a female character saying, “That’s right. Send me to the
women’s prison at Tehachapi.”

Even a few episodes of the 1950s TV show “Perry Mason” mentioned the famous female prison.

Actress receives commuted sentence

Actress Madge Meredith was sentenced to five-years-to-life in prison for the alleged 1947
kidnapping and robbery of her manager, Nicholas Gianaclis.

Her Hollywood story began when she was discovered working behind a commissary counter in
1944, landing her first role in “Take it or Leave it.”
In 1946, she appeared in “The Falcon’s Adventure” and “Trail Street.” The following year, her
movie contract was cancelled and, in desperate need to secure her home, she borrowed money
from Gianaclis.

Madge Meredith was living the Hollywood dream when she found herself embroiled in an
ownership dispute over her home.

Madge Meredith was living the Hollywood dream when she found herself embroiled in an
ownership dispute over her home.

According to Meredith, her manager had her sign what he claimed were mortgage papers. Those
papers actually gave him ownership of the home. Feeling betrayed, she sued.

Gianaclis claimed the actress and two ruffians lured him to the house, then kidnapped him and a
friend. The victims claimed they were beaten and robbed, but were able to escape to a nearby
home and call police.

She was found guilty.

“I know in my own heart I’m innocent of any crime and someday, someone will believe the truth
about what I say,” she said after her conviction.

Meredith was sentenced to serve time at CIW but a followup investigation poked holes in the trial
testimony of Gianaclis.

In 1951, Gov. Earl Warren commuted her sentence to time served. He said he hoped Meredith
would be able to continue in her chosen profession as an actress.

After her release, Meredith successfully sued to reclaim her house and dove back into acting,
appearing in TV shows and films before retiring in the mid-1960s.

Gianaclis, an immigrant, was denied U.S. Citizenship, based partly on what authorities believed to
be perjured testimony at the Meredith trial.
A 1951 Los Angeles Times photo shows Madge Meredith celebrating her release outside the gates
of the California Institution for Women at Tehachapi.

A 1951 Los Angeles Times photo shows Madge Meredith celebrating her release outside the gates
of the California Institution for Women at Tehachapi.

A shift in the entire prison system

An issue of California Law Review, dated September 1944, extensively examines the 1944
California Prison Reorganization Statute which established formation of the Department of
Corrections. The new department centralized the various functions of the state’s correctional
system, including the women’s prison at Tehachapi.

“The Board of Trustees of the California Institution for Women is made part of the Department of
Corrections, and two of its women members are placed upon the Board of Corrections,” per the
reorganization. “All powers … are transferred to the Department of Corrections (to) operate and
manage the women’s prison,” the Law Review publication states.

In 1944, prison population was at a low, but it began to steadily climb and then rise rapidly at
Tehachapi.

In 1947, the state Legislature authorized moving the institution to “a more suitable site,”
according to the 1964 issue of “Correctional Review.”

“A new larger institution was completed near Corona in 1952 and opened somewhat prematurely
when the Tehachapi institution was severely shaken by an earthquake, July 21, 1952,” the article
states. “After a period of living in tents, the women moved into their new quarters in August. On
the day of the quake, the population count was 417 in a plant originally built for 150.”

Female inmates at the original California Institution for Women were housed in tents following the
1952 earthquake.

Female inmates at the original California Institution for Women were housed in tents following the
1952 earthquake.

Tehachapi facility jolts to a stop

In 1952, after 20 years as a women’s prison, the facility came to a halt.

At 4:52 a.m. on July 21, 1952, a massive earthquake measuring an estimated 7.7 on the Richter
scale rocked the community and the prison. Some estimates peg the quake at 5.3 on the Richter.
Regardless of the intensity, it devastated the historic downtown area of Tehachapi and gave a hard
hit to the women’s prison.

The quake spelled the end of the Tehachapi facility as a women’s prison.

According to a 2012 Tehachapi News article commemorating the anniversary of the natural
disaster, “The … California Institution for Women … had about 417 inmates and they were moved
to the newly constructed prison … due to damage from the earthquake. Each inmate was later
given a month off her sentence as a ‘good conduct’ reward.”

Book author Glaser writes, “The new California Institution for Women opened … at Corona,
adjacent to Chino, and was architecturally similar to … Tehachapi but much larger.”

The original Tehachapi facility went through extensive rebuilding and became the California
Correctional Institution in 1954, housing men.

Historical timeline

1852: Waban, a state-contracted prison ship, sailed to Point San Quentin. State purchased 20
acres of land for construction of a permanent prison. Construction of first cell block began, using
inmate labor. The inmates slept on the ship at night and worked during the day.

1859: Women housed in second floor of old Captain’s Porch and Women’s Department at San
Quentin.

1927: New 104-cell women’s building constructed at San Quentin.

1929: Legislative bill approved a separate women’s department near Tehachapi for the San
Quentin branch of the Women’s Department.

1932: San Quentin branch of the Women’s Department at Tehachapi constructed.

1933: The last of the San Quentin female prisoners transferred to Tehachapi.

1937: The Women’s Department of San Quentin at Tehachapi was severed and it became the
California Institution for Women.
1944: Senate Bill No. 1 passed, establishing the Department of Corrections. Richard A. McGee
named Director of Corrections by California Governor Earl G. Warren. Bill placed the California
Institution for Women under the direction of the newly formed Department.

1952: Massive earthquake forced closure of facility, ending 20 years of service as a women’s
prison. The women are transferred to the new California Institution for Women in Corona the
same year.

1954: Facility rebuilt and repurposed as a branch of the California Institution for Men.

1964: Declared a separate facility from California Institution for Men and renamed California
Correctional Institution.

1967: A new medium security unit was opened.

Prisons: Prisons for Women - History

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punishment male reformatory correction

Throughout history, the female criminal has been cast as a "double-deviant"; first, because she
violated the criminal or moral law and, second, perhaps more importantly, because she has
violated the narrow moral strictures of the female role within society. In almost every Western
society, women have been cast as second-class citizens, subservient to the will and wishes of men.
Women who violated the law, then, also violated their subservient position and were seen as
morally suspect as well as criminal. Prior to the development of prisons in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, punishment for women and men took a variety of forms: Serious offenders
were put to death by hanging or burning, or banished from their community or sold as slaves.
Belknap notes that in the Middle Ages, for example, women who committed adultery or killed
their spouses were commonly burned to death. Less serious offenders were subjected to physical
punishments such as whippings, stocks and pillories, or branding; and social punishments including
public humiliation and shame. For women, mask-like devices, called the brank or bridle, were used
in England up until the 1800s and were designed to punish and control outspoken women who
gossiped or disobeyed their husbands.

Although death and physical torture remained in use, Western society began to consider
alternatives to them in the nineteenth century. Houses of correction, workhouses, and
transportation to colonies were precursors of modern confinement and served to bridge the gap
between the death penalty and the contemporary prison. The house of correction and the
workhouse were designed to address the moral failings of the underclass. In their various forms,
these institutions were used to confine less serious offenders, including penniless women and
prostitutes. Women could also be sent to bride-wells, poorhouses, or nunneries by fathers or
husbands who wanted to punish the unruly, disobedient, or unchaste woman. These early modes
of imprisonment attempted to combine punishment for past wrongdoing with attempts at
reforming future behavior. Transportation developed in western Europe, most notably in England,
as another alternative to the death penalty. In the 1700s, England transported over 60 percent of
the convicted offenders to work as indentured servants in the colonies in America and Australia.
Historians estimate that between 12 and 20 percent of those transported were women, who were
typically convicted of crimes relating to poverty or sexual behavior. Ironically, women were
transported to the colonies were often used as prostitutes or mistresses to meet the demand for
sexual partners—willing or not—in these rough new worlds. Those escaping forced prostitution
were indentured servants to the managerial class. About 24,000 women were transported to
Australia between 1788 and 1852.

The penitentiary was the next step in the evolution of the prison. Dungeons, castles, and the like
had been used for centuries to confine wrongdoers until physical punishment could be delivered.
The penitentiary, however, was the first attempt to use confinement as the punishment itself. In
England, one of the first models for the modern prison was intended to provide a place of penance
for prostitutes. This radical experiment was based on principles of separation from the moral
contagion of their former lives, religious contemplation, and rigid structure. Up until the late
1800s, women, men, and children were confined together in these attempts at correction, often
with no provision for food, clothing, or bedding. Those without families or other means of support
lived in brutal and unsanitary conditions. Women often resorted to prostitution with more
propertied inmates or officials to survive. However noble in principle, most of these attempts at
correction failed. Overcrowding, lack of adequate funding, a corrupt and untrained guard force,
and little real commitment to the ideal of reforming the underclass contributed to this failure.

The history of prisons took a new turn in the American colonies. At the end of the American
Revolution (1783), incarceration was relatively uncommon. The crimes committed by women were
—and continue to be—fewer and less serious than those committed by men. For the female minor
offender, public humiliations, such as the ducking stool, the stocks, and the "Scarlet Letter," were
delivered to those behaving outside the authority of men as well as those breaking the law.
Corporal and capital punishment continued to be the primary forms of punishment for serious
crimes but new ideas about punishment and reform gained a foothold in the American colonies.
By the 1820s, the American solution to crime was the American penitentiary. Based on the
principles articulated in England, the American penitentiary flowered during the Jacksonian era.
Two similar models took root between 1820 and 1840—the silent and the congregate systems.
Both models used work, discipline, religious contemplation, and separation from the free world to
attempt change in the convicted criminal.
Few women were confined in the emerging penitentiary system. While only about 4 percent of the
U.S. prison population was female by 1950, most scholars agree that these few imprisoned women
did not benefit from this experiment in reform. Robert Johnson states that women and minorities
were "barely considered human" (p. 32), and thus not fit candidates for the penitentiary's regime.
The few women imprisoned in the early 1880s were confined to traditional prisons that offered no
plan for reform. Pollock-Byrne (1986) describes these places of confinement as having little regard
for the safety and health of the woman prisoner. Like the first houses of correction, prisons for
women in America were dirty, crowded, unsupervised, and without adequate bedding, food, and
other provisions. Women were often locked away in rooms above the guardhouse or mess hall of
the male prison with little access to workshops and exercise yards. Often left without supervision,
women were vulnerable to attacks by one another and the male guards. Male staff and prisoners
alike sexually abused women in these early prisons. Freedman argued that women were subjected
to the "worst debasement at the hands of prison officials and guards" (p. 60) and that sadistic
beatings, rape, and illegitimate births combined to make the prison experience even more
terrifying. Dobash, Dobash, and Gutteridge conclude that, "From the very beginning, women in
prison were treated very differently from men, considered more morally depraved and in need of
special, closer forms of control and confinement" (p. 1).

While Elizabeth Fry began her work to reform the conditions of English women's prisons in 1816,
the reformatory movement in the United States developed later in the mid-nineteenth century.
Prisons for women then diverged into two directions, custodial institutions and the reformatory
(Rafter, 1986). The custodial model was the traditional prison, adopting the retributive purpose,
high-security architecture, male-dominated authority and harsh discipline of the male prison
(Rafter, 1985, p. 21). Many women remained confined to the male prison, with little regard to
their gendered needs. The reformatory, in contrast, was a new form of punishment designed
specifically to house women in entirely separate institutions, with female matrons and programs
planned to reform women by promoting appropriate gender roles. Training in cooking, sewing,
laundry, and other domestic arts were designed to return the woman prisoner to free society as
either a well-trained wife or a domestic servant. The unwalled reformatories were built on large
parcels of land, usually in rural areas with small cottages instead of cellblock structures. Rafter
(1985) offers evidence that minority women were more likely to be sent to the more brutal
custodial prison, whereas white women, particularly young, white women who had committed
minor offenses, were more likely to be seen as ideal candidates for redemption in the reformatory.
Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia and the California Institute for Women represent the
reformatory model and were still in use at the end of the 1990s.

Ending in the 1930s, the reformatory movement established separate women's facilities with
some recognition of the gendered needs of women. After the 1930s, the custodial and reform
models merged, combining elements of their two styles with differing results throughout the
United States. The legacy of these movements continues to shape prisons for women. First, with
the exception of a relatively few "cocorrections" experiments that housed women and men
together with common programming, most prisons in the 1990s were single sex. Second,
vocational programming tends to reinforce gender stereotypes, although some innovative
programs that offer training in welding, woodworking, and other male-identified trades are found
in the contemporary prison. Third, women in prison continue to be subjected to the neglect that
characterizes their history from the early houses of correction to the modern prison.

By the 1940s and 1950s, the medical model of corrections emerged as a new philosophy of
punishment. Called "correctional institutions," these prisons moved away from the harsh discipline
and work orientation of the custodial prison and instead attempted to introduce treatment to a
newly defined inmate—rather than convict—population. "Correctional officers" replaced prison
guards, and the inmates were introduced to a treatment regime that attempted to diagnose,
classify, and treat the inmate prior to release. An indeterminate sentencing system rewarded
those who appeared to conform to this treatment by release on parole. There is little evidence
that this approach had any more success in rehabilitating women—or men—than other prior
forms of punishment.

During this time, the social sciences "discovered" the prison and began investigating the way
prisoners adjusted to and lived their lives in prison. While most of these studies of the prison
focused on men, some of the classic work on the subcultures of women's prisons was conducted in
the 1960s and early 1970s (Owen; Ward and Kassebaum; Giallombardo; and Heffernan).

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Woman and her identity in the prison subculture in the 1950s Introduction

Klára Pinerová
Over the last 20 years, there have been many books written about the political processes,
methods of interrogation or about prisons and labor camps in communist Czechoslovakia. There
are dozens of books written by former political prisoners who were jailed even though they were
innocent. They survived with a free mind and bear no ill will. Among these innocent convicted,
there were unfortunately women as well. In this paper, I would like to introduce the idea of the
identity of a woman in prison and their adaptability to their surroundings in a totalitarian
institution such as a prison. My research is based on interviews with former political female
prisoners, made in the last three years.

All of these women were arrested at the beginning of the 1950s and were sentenced to 10-18
years. Their life stories share many similarities. At the beginning of their punishment, they were
imprisoned in small prisons and working camps with about 20-60 other female prisoners, but all of
them spent their last years of imprisonment in the women prison in Pardubice. Almost all of them
were released in the year 1959 or 1960 after the presidential amnesty of May 1959 which meant a
pardon for the majority of political prisoners. Just one woman was released 3 years later, in 1963.
All of the interviewed women were sentenced because of their political opinions. They were
involved in resistance activities against communism in different ways - in organizing the resistance
of army officers, in foreign resistance, helping people to emigrate or spreading leaflets.[1]

Female identity in prison

According to the prison statistic from January 1, 1951, there were less than 12 percent of female
prisoners.[2] When we look at the number of published memoirs, however, we find that most of
them were written by men. There are just about five books written by women.[3] The reason is
definitely not a need to displace painful memories: I have made about ten interviews with former
political female prisoners and all of them were willing to remember, they didn't feel any particular
difficulties or bitterness. They remembered the friendships and the atmosphere which developed
there. The reason why they do not write about their memories could be illustrated with words
written in the book by Božena Kuklová-Jíšová:
"We women are very often criticized for not writing about ourselves, about our fate. Perhaps it is
because there were some moments which were very humiliating for us; or because in comparison
to the many different brave acts of men, our acts seem so narrow-minded. But the main reason is
that we have difficulties presenting ourselves to the world."[4]

At the beginning, it is very important to stress that family is very important for women, while work
is important for men. The loss of employment is very significant for men; but the loss of family and
family relationships is very fundamental for women.[5] Some women were in difficult family
circumstances and sometimes this was the reason why they became informers. In any case,
imprisonment had a destabilizing impact on their family. The prisons of the 1950s took from
female prisoners not only their freedom or privacy, it attacked their very womanhood and their
identity as women as well. Men, on the other hand, did not lose their sexual identity in prison.

This is clearly reflected in the memoirs and interviews with women and men imprisoned in the era
of communism. The gender difference is apparent in a different attitude to life and its everyday
aspects. Women tell us or describe not only their life story, their dreams and wishes, humiliation
and cruel interrogation, but very often, they also share stories about their friends in the
interviews; they describe their destinies with full understanding and empathy. They value
friendship and human relationships. Men write and speak very well about everyday life in labor
camps, about the work, and about humiliation and hard interrogation as well. It seems that they
didn't know the situation and family relations of their co-prisoners as well as women did.

The attributes of womanhood are an important part of the life of women; they helped keep and
preserve their dignity in the prison surroundings. On the other hand, we can observe that this
woman identity was very often attacked by guards. It certainly cannot be said that it was a
systematic activity; I suppose that it was just a natural reaction of the guards who wanted to make
the life of female prisoners more difficult. Not only did the women in prison loose contact with
their family, children, husbands and relatives, it was also very difficult for them to adapt to the
new surroundings and things such as food, accommodation and life standard.
"After that the regime of tin spoons and tin dishes started and lasted for many years. It was a big
punishment for me, even bigger than correction, because we were given neither a knife to cut our
food, nor a fork." (Hana Truncová)[6]

One of the big changes was for example prison clothing. A woman had to dress in prison clothes
after her conviction, she had to hand over all of her possessions; it was not allowed to keep even a
ring, a necklace or earrings. When the woman lost all the attributes of her womanhood, she lost
her identity.

"What did you wear?"

"In Želiezovce we had skirts and white man shirts with no collars. When it was very hot in there we
pulled them out and we had a bit of air circulation around our bodies, but we weren't allowed to
wear bras. In Pardubice I got trousers, a coat, and a shirt and it was all made of itchy cloth. We all
had the same brown or grey-brown. We also had square black grey scarves. Our underwear was
provided by the prison as well. They changed it for us every week but I used to hand wash it to
have it clean. I put it over the frame of my bed and sometimes the other inmates got angry
because of that (highlighted by author)." (Květoslava Moravečková)[7]

From this answer, we can reach three very important conclusions about woman identity in prison
which are significant in all of the interviews. Firstly, we often hear of "white man shirts with no
collars" or "we received male clothing" or "a male shirt with a big neck without any buttons, then
male underpants" in the interviews and in the memoirs of former female political prisoners.
Women had to dress in prison clothes after their conviction. The sentences about male clothing
indicate the women's desire to keep their identity.
Also, clothing is more important for women than for men and the sentence "We all had the same
brown or grey-brown" shows that he women noticed that all of them look the same and that there
was no opportunity to express their own identity. The same, however, is also true for male
prisoners. What is different is the fact that women did try to look nicer in prison. They bought
perfumes for prison money in the canteen; they tried to iron their clothes in the poor prison
conditions, they curled their hair etc.

Very important for the identity of women was the maintenance of hygiene, especially for political
prisoners. Keeping clean was a distinctive sign distinguishing them from criminal prisoners. They
kept their clothes as clean as they could; they washed them every day, even though there was
only cold water. This significant point is apparent not only in the answers of Květoslava
Moravečková, but in other interviews as well. The importance of cleanliness is especially
important during periods and there was, naturally, a very short supply of toiletries in prison. There
was a big urgency to get hold of sanitary towels every month. If the women did not manage to
obtain them, they tore a sheet to pieces, for which they could, of course, be punished. The
absence of sanitary towels was the impulse for a hunger-strike in 1954. The situation changed a
little bit after this hunger-strike, but the women were given only 4 sanitary towels for one month!

Relations among co-prisoners

The stay in prison was very difficult for women. They did not only lose contact with their family,
but they had to meet an entirely new group of people - criminal prisoners who were sometimes
hostile to them. In the interviews women talked about their co-prisoners in different ways. Hana
Truncová told about her coexistence with criminal prisoners:
"I lived together with a murderer who adapted herself in all ways. When any of us had visitors and
brought something back to the cell she would divide it into parts and put one part on each
mattress. The murderer did the same. She was jealous of her husband and killed him, but the
whole family used to visit her. She always got sweets and shared them with us. I couldn't eat it
because she touched it with her hands, with hands that killed a man. I pretended that I had eaten
it and liked it." (Hana Truncová).[8]

Vlasta Jakubová, on the other hand, had a different experience:

"Usually we didn't share the same cell with them. We had good relationships. Especially murderers
told us "Don't you want to take my bread? I will stay here longer, but you will go home soon."
(Vlasta Jakubová)[9]

The situation in the Pardubice prison for women, where the interviewed women spent several
years, was rather specific. At the beginning of the 1950s, the prison was mostly used for political
female prisoners with sentences of ten years or more; around the year 1955 this rule changed and
politically imprisoned women had to share the same prison with murderers, prostitutes, and
thieves. There was a special department called "The Castle" where politically active women were
located. Among those were for example Růţena Vacková, a professor of the Charles University,
Dagmar Skálová, or Vlasta Charvátová. In total, there were sixty-four women in this department.
There was another department called "The Vatican" for nuns, and a department called "The
Underworld", where prostitutes, women with venereal diseases, women with mental problems
and habitual offenders were imprisoned. Political female prisoners were in the majority until the
presidential amnesty of 1960 and the rest of the prisoners adapted. After the amnesty, the moral
views of the criminal prisoners dominated. This had important consequences. Life became much
harder, violence among prisoners rose, there were fights every day, some women were even
raped and the first homosexual couples appeared in prison. The circumstances in the prison after
the big amnesty of May 1960 are not the topic of this paper, because only one of the interviewed
women was released after this year.
Hunger-strike in the Pardubice prison in 1955

There have been several strikes in the Pardubice prison; I would like to go through the details of
one of them, the hunger strike of September 1955. The estimated number of prisoners who
participated varies. Some estimates say there were about 520 women, other are more
conservative with 105 women participating in the hunger strike.

"The idea of a hunger strike first went around as a whispered rumor. At that time there was a new
guard in Pardubice. No one told us her name so we immediately gave her the nickname of Elsa
Koch, who was originally a guard of a concentration camp during WWII." (Hana Truncová)[10]

The majority of women I interviewed said the hunger strike started as a protest against the
bullying from guards and especially the one they called Elsa Koch. There are often other reasons
mentioned such as bad food and bad living conditions. Some people say that the exact reason for
the hunger strike was the putting of a political prisoner named Dagmar Tůmová into solitary
confinement.[11] The hunger strike lasted for a week and some women starved even longer, for
example Julie Hrušková:

"Afterwards all women stopped starving, but I decided to continue. There were three of us in one
cell and it had lasted for seven days and the guards made the decision that they would start
feeding us. The first was Boţka Tomášková who found out that the strike was over and she quit.
Then there was Vendula Švecová who tried to fight, but finally they fed her anyways. I was the last
one. They were trying to hold me, but I told them, "Look, it's below my dignity to fight here with
you. You have an order to feed me, so go ahead." So they put a tube in me and gave me broth, but
when they were taking the pipe out afterwards I vomited the food on the guard named Ruzyňák
who was always very meticulous about his appearance. They took me back to my cell; in total we
were on hunger strike for fourteen days and we were knocking morse codes. Vendula was already
writing me that she didn't feel well. They told us that the next day we would be taken to Pardubice
to be fed through the nose and not the mouth. I was anxious for this, because I thought I would
tell the doctors everything that was going on. Vendula kept writing me that she didn't feel fine so I
told her to start eating that I was fine and I would go to the hospital alone. However, she collapsed
in the evening and without me she refused to start eating, so I had to stop starving." (Julie
Hrušková)[12]

Women who were found to be the main initiators of the protest were transported to a secret
police department in Pardubice on December 15, 1955. There they were punished with ten days of
solitary confinement. Other women who joined the hunger strike could not write letters, receive
parcels, or have visitors.

Conclusion

The adaptability of women to the prison environment is different from that of men. According to
social and penology studies, the most important factor for women, other than the loss of freedom,
is the loss of the contact with their families. For a woman, imprisonment signifies an attack on her
womanhood and her female identity, and this has consequences on her psyche as well. She is
more stressed by the loss of her identity and by the change in food, accommodation and clothing.
In the 1950s, the attacks on the female identity of prisoners were more concentrated; from
archive materials, however, it is very hard to prove whether this was planned by the prison
management or not.

History and Development of Corrections from 1700 - Present

Early Punishments

1700

Early punishments included transportation, indentured servitude and economic sanctions, public
humiliation, pillory, stocks and ducking stools.

The Hospice of San Michele (Rome), Maison de Force (Ghent, Belgium)

1704
Two very famous prisons wereThe Hospice of San Michele and the Maison de Force in Ghent,
Belgium.

Inmates were whipped and had to adhere to the rule of silence. These prisons were considered to
be ideal models of the prison institution at the time.

Reform (John Howard)

1726

John Howard was a Christian activist who fought for prison reform. He inspected jails in order to
ensure that prisoners received humane treatment.

Gaols (England) Early Jails

1770

Gaols/Jails were very small with few inmates. These institutions operated on a fee system.

Philadelphia Prison Society (Benjamin Rush)

1787

With the help of Quakers, he worked to improve conditions for prisoners housed in in the "Walnut
Street Jail" in Philadelphia.

Inspection House (Panopticon)

1790

Jerry Bentham was founder of the British Utilitarianism movement which suggested that laws
should be evaluated to ensure that they are ethical and useful. He designed a model prison which
was referred to as the "Panopticon".

Parole

1800 - Present

Parole began at the end of the 1800s. When it was instituted, many prisoners were already
receiving clemency, pardons and early release for good behavior. Parole began with reformatories
but spread to all prisons.

Elizabeth Gurney Fry

1813

Fry worked to improve conditions for women who were imprisoned.

Eastern State Penitentiary

1822

Eastern State Penitentiary was built on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Prisoners were in solitary
confinement. This model was referred as an isolate system. The solitary confinement and penance
would lead to rehabilitation of prisoners. Prisoners were also given a work detail which consisted
of hanidcrafts.

Auburn and Sing Sing Penitentiary (Mass Prisons)

1825

A congregate system was used. A rule of silence was enforced to keep the prisoners from
corrupting one another.

Strict control and severed discipline was common.

Whipping was common.

The Indiana State Reformatory (First Separate Prison for Women)

1873

This was the first separate female prison. Before instituting the first female prison, women were
housed with men. They also received the same punishment as men. For that reason, women were
preyed upon by both inmates and prison guards. In the early female prisons, women were often
housed in cottages. The conditions for women in state prisons remained the same. They were
subject to abuse and often required to endure long hours of hard labor.

Reformatory (Elmira System)

1876

This was a prison system designed to house young men. It was believed that younger prisoners
were capable of rehabilitation. An academic program was put in place and athletics was
encouraged. The silent system was not used. A rewards system was used. Corporal punishment
was used to control behavior.

Probation (John Augustus)

1878 - Present

John Augustus was a humble shoemaker who advocated for fair treatment of criminals. He would
house offenders who were sentenced to prison. After helping them get back on their feet, he
would go to court with them. If their probationary program was satisfactory, the original sentence
was suspended. The acutal legal statute for probation was passed first by Massachussets in 1878.
Probation still exists today as a community based correction model.

The Industrial Prison

1890

In an effort to meet the demands of the increasing prison population, the industrial prisons
emerged. These prisons had heightend security via high brick walls and guard towers. Prisoners
worked with steel, made cabinets and other goods to be sold on the market.

Juvenile Court

1899

A special court for under age offenders was established. This type of court was informal and the
goal was for young offenders to be rehabilitated. Vocational and academic programs were
encouraged. Judges were expected to avoid custody if possible.

Ashburn Summers Act

1935

This law put limits on prison manufacturing. The interstate transportation of goods made in
prisons was prohibited. This resulted in a decrease of industrial prisons.

The Treatment Era

1945

The nation was economically secure. During this postwar boom, there was an interest to reform
prisons. After conducting research, it was determined that a "medical model" should be used in
the prison system. Prisoners were considered ill and the cure would be rehabilitation through
treatment.

The Community Based Era ("Deinstitutionalization"

1967
A more humanistic approch was invisioned. The community base approach would help the inmate
and it would help solve the problem of overcrowding prisons. Inmates took part in half-way
houses and job release programs. Some were even allowed week end furloughs to visit family and
loved ones.

The Warehousing Model

1980

After many studies showed that efforts to rehabilitate criminals were failing miserably, it was
evident that a new approach should be used. This led to the "nothing works" doctrine. The new
approach would be to simply put criminals away so they would no longer be a menace to society.
This is when the term "warehousing" began to surface. Prisoners were put away for determined
periods of time without the earlier frills of treatment and "coddling".

The "Just Deserts Era"

1995 - Present

The "just deserts" doctrine goes back to the basics. Prisoners are held responsible for their
actions.There is no attempt to explain away their criminality. If a person commits a crime, they will
pay. This plain and simple approach emerged because of the embarrising recidivism rates. One
study showed it was high as 70%.

Victorian women criminals' records show harsh justice of 19th century

Victorian justice records which show how the harsh punishments were given to women criminals –
such as five years in jail for stealing one rasher of bacon – have been published online for the first
time.

Victorian women criminals' records show harsh justice of 19th century

Elizabeth Murphy (left) was sentenced to 5 years hard labour for stealing an umbrella and Mary
Richards was jailed for 5 years for stealing 130 oysters Photo: PA

9:00AM GMT 25 Feb 2011

More than 4,400 parole records and 500 mug shots of Victorian criminals have been made
available by Ancestry.co.uk

They provide an astonishing insight into the way justice was imposed during the late 1800s.
Those convicted of lesser crimes such as theft, and 'domestic housebreaking' often felt the full
force of law.

Examples include Elizabeth Murphy, a19-year-old Elizabeth was sentenced to five years of hard
labour in prison and seven years of police supervision for stealing an umbrella. She served three
years of her sentence before receiving parole in 1887.

Dorcas Mary Snell, 45, was sentenced to five years of imprisonment with hard labour in 1883 for
the theft of a single piece of bacon. She was paroled two years later.

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Mary Richards was sentenced to five years in 1880 at age 59 for stealing 130 oysters valued at
eight shillings, which were the property of John Tyacke. Mary served almost all of sentence,
receiving parole in 1885.

The records also detail the lengthy, unforgiving sentences given to women who procured
abortions, including Mary Billingham who was sentenced to 20 years of imprisonment and hard
labour in 1875.

It would appear that age was not necessarily taken into consideration when sentences were
passed.

The youngest female in the records, 11-year-old Ann McQuillan, was convicted in Perth and
sentenced to four years in prison for 'theft by housebreaking'.

Ann is just one of 115 girls under the age of 18 who feature in the collection.

In contrast, the oldest convict in the records is 76-year-old Ann Dalton who was convicted for
stealing 'two sheets' in 1863.
She was sentenced to five years imprisonment and served three of those before receiving parole
in 1866.

Meanwhile, the records detail a number of violent crimes which women were convicted of.

Mary Morrison, a 40-year-old servant, threw sulphuric acid over her estranged husband for not
paying her weekly allowance, shouting 'take that – I'll make you worse than you are'. She received
five years in 1883 but served only three.

Elizabeth Ann Staunton, 29, was convicted of the murder of Harriet Staunton in 1877. Elizabeth
was spared the death penalty and instead sentenced to life. She was granted parole six years later.

While early criminals were often sentenced to transportation, later records, predominately those
post-1860, indicate a prison sentence had become the preferred punishment.

This was because Australian free settlers had become increasingly angry about having to compete
with convicts for jobs.

Those who did receive transportation often saw their sentences overturned and were instead
jailed and subsequently paroled.

This was the case for Mary Daly, who was sentenced to 15 years transportation for theft in 1855
but was instead incarcerated in Brixton prison until her parole in 1862.

In a world-first, Ancestry.co.uk, the family history website, today published the UK, Licences of
Parole for Female Convicts, 1853-1887 online.

The original records are held by The National Archives.

Dan Jones, International Content Director at Ancestry.co.uk, said: "Crime is more often associated
with men however these intriguing records shed light on some rather colourful female
lawbreakers of their day.
"Given the petty nature of many of their crimes, it also serves as a reminder of how harsh our
judicial system was not so very long ago."

"With so many historical records – including criminal records – now available online, it has never
been a better time to start exploring your family's history."

The collection was unveiled today at 'Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE' – the world's largest family
history event, which is being held at London's Olympia from the February 25 – 27.