Eastern State

Yesterday, I had a sudden craving for Orange Chicken from Panda Express. So good, and so bad for you. So I hopped in my trusty car and drove over to the local PE. On the way, I was listening to Talk of the Nation on NPR. The few minutes that I heard were discussing Eastern State Penitentiary. I remember when we lived in Philadelphia, once in awhile we would drive past this prison, and I knew a little bit of its history, but not a lot. They have tours of the prison, which are supposed to be pretty amazing, but I was unaware of that at the time. And I’m not sure I would have gone if I had known. I still haven’t been to Alcatraz, even though I’ve lived pretty close for all but 7 years of my life. Prisons creep me out. Before the program I heard on the radio, I knew that Eastern State Penitentiary was based on a plan by the Quakers, as a way to take criminals and have them separated, thus giving them a chance to repent for their sins; in other words, to be Penitent. The interesting thing to me about this prison was that the group that founded it was trying to alleviate the miseries of prisons…trying to bring around prison reform in such a way that they would be more effective in deterring crime. From the website:

Many leaders believe that crime is the result of environment, and that solitude will make the criminal regretful and penitent (hence the new word, Penitentiary). This correctional theory, as practiced in Philadelphia, will become known as the Pennsylvania System.

Masks are fabricated to keep the inmates from communicating during rare trips outside their cells. Cells are equipped with feed doors and individual exercise yards to prevent contact between inmates, and minimize contact between inmates and guards.

Given our current understanding of psychology, we can see that the idea of putting prisoners into solitary confinement is fairly barbaric (of course, we still do it, but it is the most extreme punishment, and not one that anyone would consider a way of alleviating suffering.)

Views of the humanity and effectiveness of this system varied dramatically. Again, from the website:

Alexis de Tocqueville visited Eastern State Penitentiary in 1831 with Gustave de Beaumont. They wrote in their report to the French government:

“Thrown into solitude… [the prisoner] reflects. Placed alone, in view of his crime, he learns to hate it; and if his soul be not yet surfeited with crime, and thus have lost all taste for any thing better, it is in solitude, where remorse will come to assail him…. Can there be a combination more powerful for reformation than that of a prison which hands over the prisoner to all the trials of solitude, leads him through reflection to remorse, through religion to hope; makes him industrious by the burden of idleness..”

Charles Dickens did not agree. He recounts his 1842 visit to Eastern State Penitentiary Chapter Seven in his travel journal, American Notes for General Circulation. The chapter is 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.”

This prison was the first in this new model, and it was copied all over the world. More than 300 prisons in South America, Europe, Russia, China, Japan, and across the British Empire were based on its plan.

Hearing about this drastic, cruel, though well intentioned practice, it made me wonder what prisons were like prior to this model. Yet again, from the website:

Most eighteenth century prisons were simply large holding pens. Groups of adults and children, men and women, and petty thieves and murderers, sorted out their own affairs behind locked doors. Physical punishment and mutilation were common, and abuse of the prisoners by the guards and overseers was assumed.

So, from a lofty goal of relieving the horrible conditions under which prisoners were forced to live, the inhuman practice of solitary confinement, so strict that inmates wore hoods to cover their faces when in common areas, so that they might not glimpse another human face, was born. I still enjoyed my orange chicken, but it was with a very sober heart that I did so.