Part II - History of Incarceration

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.

 

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). 

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).

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.