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Chapter 6

At the end of this chapter the student should be able to:

• Study the development of corrections;

• Defined how technical terms are being used;

SING SING PRISON

In full Sing Sing Correctional Facility, maximum-security prison located

in Ossining, New York. In use since 1826, it is one of the oldest penal
institutions in the United States. It is also among the most well-known
in the country, especially notable for its harsh conditions in the 19th
and 20th centuries.
Originally known as Mount
Pleasant Prison, it was constructed
in the village of Sing Sing on the
east bank of the Hudson River, some
30 miles (48 km) north of New York
City. It was designed to provide
additional prison space and to
replace Newgate Prison.
Construction was undertaken in
1825 by convict labourers under
the supervision of Elam Lynds,
warden of Auburn State Prison. He
officially became head of the new prison when
it opened in 1826, though it was not completed until 1828. The initial
facility had 800 cells. The prison population rose in the mid-19th
century, resulting in more construction. The four-story complex was soon

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six stories, and the prison eventually housed more than 1,600 inmates.
Because most of the early convicted criminals traveled by boat to Sing
Sing, the phrase “up the river” came to mean going to prison.

One of the notable visitors to the prison was Alexis de

Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America. The French government sent
him and Gustave de Beaumont to the United States in 1831 to gather
information about the American penal system. The two men were amazed at
the total subjugation under which prisoners worked and the administrative
power the warden wielded at Sing Sing.

Lynds resigned as warden of Sing Sing in 1830 and returned to

Auburn in 1838. He was asked to leave that prison a year later after the
death of a prisoner who was punished severely for feigning illness.
Despite this record, Sing Sing rehired Lynds in 1843.

Sing sing prison

Whippings and floggings were commonplace punishments at Sing Sing.

Frequently used was the cat-o’-nine-tails, a cruel whipping contraption whose
lashes were often tipped with metal or barbs; its use was finally abolished by
the New York State legislature in 1848. In addition, while Lynds was warden,
inmates were expected to refrain from making noise, which included talking.
With the advent of the electric chair in 1891, Sing Sing became notorious for
its executions. Although the electric chair was developed at neighbouring
Auburn, almost all executions within the state were carried out at Sing Sing
until 1963. The infamous “death chair” was later moved to Green Haven
prison.

Sing Sing was also the site of reforms that affected the national
penal system. Reformer Thomas Mott Osborne, who developed his penology
theories while voluntarily incarcerated for a year at Auburn, served as
Sing Sing’s warden in 1914–15 and 1916. But his immediate, sweeping
changes were assailed, and he resigned under intense political pressure.
During his tenure, however, the first psychological work with inmates
began. More reforms were instituted under Lewis Edward Lawes, who served
as warden from 1920 to 1941. He notably improved the living conditions
within the prison and allowed inmates to participate in sports.

In 1901 the residents of Sing Sing village changed its name to

Ossining. They wanted to distance, if not disassociate, the town from

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the notorious prison. For that same reason, in 1970 the state renamed
the prison Ossining Correctional Facility. The change did not stick,
however. Local merchants got the previous name restored in 1983, thinking
the cachet of “Sing Sing”—by then the prison was part of American
popular culture, frequently appearing in movies, TV shows, and books—
would translate into tourism.

AUBURN STATE PRISON

Auburn State Prison, prison located

in Auburn, New York. Opened in Elam Lynds, the first warden
1816, it established a disciplinary of the Auburn Penitentiary, is credited with
and administrative system based on creating the "Auburn (or Congregate) system."
silence, corporal punishment, and
“congregate” (group) labour. In architecture and routine, Auburn became
the model for prisons throughout the United States.

In the early 19th century, many Americans believed that industrialization

and dramatic demographic, economic, and political upheavals had
“conspired” against the traditional controls of family, church, and
community. From their perspective these moral guardians could no longer
adequately control disorder. They saw crime as the product of social
chaos. Necessary to its eradication was a structured environment in which
deviants could be separated from the disorder of society and the contagion
of one another. Their solution was to create the “penitentiary”—a new
institution for “reforming” offenders and, ultimately, restoring social
stability.

Auburn originally used congregate

cells, but in 1821 Warden William
Brittin borrowed the concept of
solitary cells from the so-called
Pennsylvania system. Brittin designed
a unique five-tiered cell-block of
two rows of single cells, placed
back to back in the centre of the
building. Cells measured only 3.5
feet (1.06 metres) wide, 7.5 feet
(2.3 metres) long, and 7 feet (2.1
metres) high; doors faced outer
walls lined with grated windows that provided
indirect light and air. This pattern of small inside cellblocks was later
adopted by most state prisons in the United States. Whereas the
Pennsylvania system’s inmates did handicraft work in their cells, Auburn
prisoners laboured in congregate workshops, offsetting imprisonment costs

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by fulfilling private-industry contracts. A hidden passageway with small
openings surrounded the work area, allowing inspectors and visitors to
surreptitiously monitor the inmates. Auburn briefly (1821–25) implemented
a three-level classification system. Under it, minor offenders laboured in
workshops during the day and retired to separate cells at night; serious
offenders alternated their days between solitary confinement and
congregate work. The most-hardened criminals were placed in solitary
confinement without work. After numerous suicides, instances of mental
illness, and attempted escapes, the governor of New York terminated the
classification system and the experiment in solitary confinement.

Subsequently, all male inmates worked in

congregate shops by day, returning to
Females, first committed to individual cells at night. To ensure that
Auburn in 1825, were relegated to an inmates did not corrupt one another,
attic and excluded from regular work Brittin’s successor, Elam Lynds, enforced a
and exercise. quasi-military routine of absolute silence,
strict discipline, and economic
productivity. In response to bells, head-shaven inmates dressed in striped
clothing silently marched in lockstep formation to and from their cells
for meals and work assignments. Letters were banned, and the chaplain was
the only occasional visitor. Flogging and other forms of corporal
punishment enforced the rules. Such regimentation was thought necessary to
restrain the rebellious nature of the offenders.

Auburn state prison

Overcrowding made the silence system unenforceable, and Auburn’s system

of discipline deteriorated into corrupt and lax routines of harsh punishment.
After the Civil War, the spirit of reform withered, and contract labour was no
longer profitable. Despite the demise of the “ideal” system, Auburn remained
the model for nearly a century, primarily because it had been inexpensive to
construct and maintain.

Eastern State Penitentiary

In the early 19th century, a system of punishment was created that could
be traced back to the Quakers. Called the Pennsylvania system because it
was first used here, this method involved the use of solitary confinement
to rehabilitate criminals sent to prison. The underlying belief of the
Pennsylvania System was that solitary confinement would give prisoners

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time to reflect on their lives and change the wrongs within it. In other
words, if prisoners were forced to think about their crimes, they would
become penitent (this is also the origin of the word “penitentiary”).

By 1821, the Philadelphia Society for

Alleviating the Miseries of Public
America's Most Historic Prison
Prisons (founded in 1787 by Benjamin
Rush) had successfully lobbied the state
Eastern State Penitentiary was once the
legislature for funding to build Eastern
most famous and expensive prison in the
State Penitentiary, where this
world, but stands today in ruin, a haunting Pennsylvania System of treatment could be
world of crumbling cellblocks and empty tried. Here mingling among prisoners was
guard towers. Its vaulted, sky-lit cells once avoided, so much so that inmates were
held many of America's most notorious hooded when they went outside their
lawbreakers, including "Slick Willie" Sutton cells. The Pennsylvania System as it was
and "Scarface" Al Capone. enacted had some opponents however, who
believed this method of punishment caused
mental illness among the prisoners. One such opponent, Charles Dickens,
wrote: “I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the
brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body.”

Eastern State Penitentiary was built in 1829 to architect John Haviland’s

design. As it was originally built, the prison would hold 250 inmates.
Haviland chose a radial layout, finding inspiration in criminologist
Jeremy Bentham’s 1791 circular prism plan. He included many details that
made Eastern State one of the more secure prisons of its time. It was the
first to use a central rotunda as the prison’s “communications hub and
nerve center” (Haviland 8). By the time the prison closed in 1970, ESP had
expanded to provide for as many as 900 prisoners.

Eastern state penitentiary

Mathias Maccumsey is placed in an iron gag, a tortuous punishment device,

by prison administrators for trying to communicate with the prisoner in the
cell next to him. He dies later in the day, and prison administrators record his
official cause of death as “apoplexy,” an antiquated term for a stroke.

Finally, on October 23 1829, prisoner number one was admitted. Charles

Williams was sentenced to two years with labor for the crime of burglary.
Several infamous criminals would follow him to becoming inmates at ESP,
including Al Capone, bank robber Willie Sutton, and Pep “the Cat-Murdering
Dog.” Pep was allegedly sentenced to life in prison in August of 1924 by
then-governor Gifford Pinchot. The dog, inmate number C2559, was in for
murdering Pinchot’s wife’s cat.

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After its closure in 1970, Eastern State Penitentiary sat largely as a
ruin. However, in 1988 efforts to preserve the site began. The site was
also used as a set for movies such as “12 Monkeys.” Since 1996, efforts to
stabilize the site have been made to preserve the site as a ruin and to
ensure it may continue to be open for public tours.

References:

• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Sing-Sing
• https://www.britannica.com/topic/Auburn-State-Prison
• https://www.phillyhistory.org/blog/index.php/2007/06/ea
stern-state-penitentiary/

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