Over the period of time, the idea of prison has evolved from just punishment to rehabilitation of criminals. The reason behind the rehabilitation was to prevent the convicts from repeating the crime.
One such attempt was made in 1787 when a group of influential Philadelphians met at the house of Benjamin Franklin. They considered that the environment of a shared cell by male, female, children and prisoners convicted of heinous crime resulted in bad influence on each other. Thus, they came with an innovative idea of creating an environment that supported repentance by the convicts.
They built Eastern State Prison, in which each prisoner was offered a separate cell containing a flush-toilet, central heating and an outdoor exercise yard covered by a 10 feet wall. The skylit room and the hallway that resembled the church like appearance, made the prison a perfect place for spiritual repentance. The prisoners would be left in silence and solitude to reflect upon their mistake. The Eastern state building was usually referred to as Penitentiary because the criminals were expected to become penitent during their stay in that building.
But when the convicts were brought to this building they experienced a different realm. Charles Dickens, an English author, upon his visit to the Eastern State Prison says the following in his travel journal, chapter seven titled “Philadelphia and its Solitary Prison:”
“In its intention I am well convinced that it is kind, humane, and meant for reformation; but I am persuaded that those who designed this system of Prison Discipline, and those benevolent gentleman who carry it into execution, do not know what it is that they are doing….I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body; and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye,… and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment in which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay.”
Most of the inmates in the cell expressed anxiety and despair about their solitude. They were pushed to the limits of solitude in that cell where they hardly heard or saw anyone except the guard. The guards too don socks over their shoes to dampen the sound and even the slightest of sounds from adjacent cells were barred by the cell architecture. This solitude was never met remorse rather considered as mental torture that killed all the hope of living for a prisoner. The prison which was supposed to give back a better person to society, was sending soulless corpses instead. Another excerpt from Charles travel journal says the following,
“Better to have hanged him in the beginning than bring him to this pass, and send him forth to mingle with his kind, who are his kind no more”
The above words reflect the reflection of prisoners witnessed by Charles Dickens. The inmates usually lost all their hope for a prospective living before leaving the Penitentiary. It is hard for us to expect them to adapt to the outside world after spending years with their only companion which never provoked or got provoked by them. When Charles Dickens asks his companion about the prisoners conduct of themselves when they are going out of the prison while hinting his presumption about trembling , he says the following,
“Well, it’s not so much a trembling,”
“though they do quiver — as a complete derangement of the nervous system. They can’t sign their names to the book; sometimes can’t even hold the pen; look about ’em without appearing to know why, or where they are; and sometimes get up and sit down again, twenty times in a minute. This is when they’re in the office, where they are taken with the hood on, as they were brought in. When they get outside the gate, they stop, and look first one way and then the other; not knowing which to take. Sometimes they stagger as if they were drunk, and sometimes are forced to lean against the fence, they’re so bad: — but they clear off in course of time.”
This explains the extent of mental distress the inmates might have experienced during their stay in the penitentiary. What is more shocking is that representatives of many countries around the world flocked to witness the penitentiary only to adopt this model later in their country. Though this penitentiary, after its commissioning in 1829 was closed in 1971 for the reasons of overcrowding. The painstricken screams of the inmates which never crossed their mouth can still be witnessed by the words of Charles Dickens.
But the modern world prisons have got rid of those systems for imprisonment and use them only as punishment. The fear of this type of punishment helps the guards to maintain the social behaviour of inmates.
Source:- 1. Charles Dickens excerpt. 2. Eastern state prison
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