Note: Since
our Earthfolk insight into the role of the penitentiary is central and pivotal to
our understanding of "America," and since it is a theory,
event and system little
known by or taught to American students and citizens, consider this
one fact to grasp its significance.
In 1831, the famed Alexis de Tocqueville,
whose Democracy in America is still widely read, came
to the new country not to study the
democratic institutions of government (Congress, Presidency,
Supreme Court, etc.) but to study
how to apply the only democratic
institution that Europeans (here, the French) found so novel and
so promising.
He and Gustave de Beaumont wrote, “On
the Penitentiary System in the United States and Its Application
in France," (1833). After that, de
Tocqueville remained to further study America and penned
his famous Democracy in
America (1835).
While vast academic research stands
behind our Earthfolk analysis, in the main, the statements that follow
are based upon reading the Minutes of the Pennsylvania
Prison Society which are available at the Society today.
Continue—Penitentiary
