While most Americans still
revel in "America is a Light
to the world" narrative, in fact, it is the formation of the penitentiary on the separate confinement model that was the "almost" unprecedented Revolution.
The formation of a democratic
republic was a noble ideal and pursuit
but it was not as fundamentally revolutionary as was the penitentiary
which was a penal practice striving to rehabilitate and make whole,
not just punish, its citizens.
True, inmates were urged to practice Christian virtues—even, obviously, to convert to Christianity in
one of its then current modes: evangelical, deistic, or one of the
mainstream
denominations of the visiting PPS members. But, for a brief
moment,
the criminal, outsider, Other's intimacy was honored and
valued.
The PPS members expected that the penitentiary
experience would terrorize the inmate, but it was
the internal voice of the Loving God or the Benevolent Deity
who howled—howled with parental anguish and longing for the
converted soul, for the inmate made whole as child of
God and as good citizen.
"Separate confinement
with mild punishments"
What
an amazing, creatively imagined concept of the
Other—not as
Intimate Enemy.
Continue—PPS
