In the previous post, I showed how the number of people
incarcerated and the incarceration rate has grown at a pace that is
unsustainable. More importantly I
pointed to the implacable social problem of using mass incarceration as an
acceptable form of punishment and also eluded to how fiscally irresponsible
this policy is. In this post I will
explore the history of incarceration and show how incarceration, as a form of
punishment, was designed as a post-Enlightenment form of punishment that filled
the void created by the vacancy of immoral treatment and punishments.
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| The Breaking Wheel |
Historically jails only served as a holding facility
designed to coerce people into paying his or her debt, awaiting trail, or awaiting corporal punishments. Jail terms
were often short, usually less than 24 hours because it was expensive and took
members out of the colonial workforce.
Before 1750 mutilation and other forms of punishment were more common
than imprisonment and incarceration was quite rare (Roth, 2005; p.65).
It was the Enlightenment of the 18th century that called for
marked changes in humanitarian treatment.
Treatment that seems almost incomprehensible today were common place,
for example “the catalogue of brutalities waged against the body of the
offender in the name of punishment was extensive-flesh being torn with red-hot
pincers, limbs being scorched with boiling sulphurs, and bodies being
tortuously dismembered and burned” (Draper, 2000).
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| Cesare Beccaria |
Cesare Beccaria an 18th Century Italian philosopher wrote a
treatise in 1764 called Dei delitti e delle pene, or On Crime and
Punishment. This work was fundamental
and representative of the Enlightenment and called for penal reform and the
abolishment of capital punishment and torturous forms of punishment.
Incarceration rates grew modestly from the late 1700s until
1980. In 1850 one in 29 Americans were
incarcerated and that grew gradually up to one in 133 in 1980 (Calahan, 1986). The rate of incarceration was actually declining in the 1960s until an
increase in the crime rate of the 1970s and politicians became “tough on crime”
and that the focus of incarceration shifted from rehabilitation to just exclusion (Foner, 2012; p. 1070).
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| Historic Incarceration Rate |
The data supports my theory that the philosophical shifts in
punishment opened the door for a more humane treatment of criminals. The advocating for the elimination of capital
punishment placed the states into a conundrum.
Previously these people were disposed of and were no longer threats or
problems to the state. With the shift
away from capital punishment the question remained-what are we to do with these
criminal? The logical step was to move
toward incarceration. I understand this
post-Enlightenment philosophy and I think it was a drastic step in the right
direction but now we are placed in another conundrum.
Is mass incarceration the most effective way to handle crime
and criminals?
Is society ready to focus again on rehabilitation?
Are there more effective ways of reducing recidivism? Are there humane programs that benefit the
human beings that are incarcerated that may have little effect on recidivism
but still hold value to society?
In the next installment of this blog I will introduce this
issue of racial disparity in the justice system. And if you think this is not an issue, I will
leave you with this thought-African American males are incarcerated at a rate
of 6.5 times that of white males and 1 in 9 African American males aged twenty
to thirty-four are imprisoned.
Works
Cited
Cahalan, M. W.
(1986). Historical Corrections Statistics in the United States, 1850-1984.
Rockville, Md.: Westat, Inc.
Draper, A. J. (2000). Cesare
Beccaria's influences on English discussion of punishment, 1764-1789. History
of European Ideas, 177-199.
Foner, E. (2012). Give Me
Liberty; an American History. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Roth, M. P. (2005). Crime
and Punishment; a History of the Criminal Justice System. Belmont:
Wadsworth.
