Three phases
of Memorials
During the period from 1787 to 1829 there are three
distinct phases of PPS Memorials. There are three memorials
covering the period
of 1787 to 1800 in which
the penitentiary theory was formulated and put into practice in the
Walnut St. Jail. The second period, 1800 to 1818 has three memorials
(all written by 1803) which are requests for a new jail. From 1803
to 1818
there is a lull in memorializing. The third phase is from 1818 to
1829 when the Society is memorializing a legislature which it knows
will
grant its requests. This period ends with the opening of the Eastern
State Penitentiary in Philadelphia during 1829.
The contents of the Memorials for the first period, 1787 1800 are
as follows:
I. January 29, 1788, addressed to the General
Assembly
The General Assembly is complimented for passing the code of 15
September 1786 which is "less sanguinary and more proportionate to crimes." However,
the Society finds itself at cross purposes about the method suggested
by the code. That is, that "hard labor" is to be "publicly
and disgracefully imposed."
The Society suggests "more private or even solitary
labor." The
reasons for this suggestion is that the latter method will be more
successful "to reclaim the unhappy objects." Furthermore,
1) this private punishment can be conducted more steadily and uniformly,
2) within a private space the kind and portion of labor can be better
adapted to the different abilities of the criminals,
3) the evils of familiarizing young minds to vicious characters will
be removed, via separation and classification,
4) the criminals would not be able to beg money.
From their observations the Society is firmly convinced that the great
error of Old World jails and of public punishment is the mingling of
sexes and of the various kinds of offenders: felons, vagrants, debtors,
servants, runaway slaves. Therefore, they suggest separation with various
levels of classification.
Their recommendations include the prohibition of liquor.
Because liquor "tends
to lessen the true sense of their situation and prevents those useful
reflections, which might be produced by solitary labor and strict temperance." The
Society concludes by stating that the code of 1787 had "good and
humane purposes", and that their suggestions will be implements
for achieving this stated goal. To insure the adoption of this Memorial
the Society appoints a committee of twenty-four to obtain signatures
and friends to attend the Assembly meetings which have this matter
on their agenda.
II. 12 January 1789, addressed to the Supreme Executive Council
This
Memorial is penned one year after the first memorial. Note that this
memorial was written on 15 December 1788, and de¬livered
to the Assembly on 16 December 1788.
The Memorial is primarily a response to a Supreme Council Minute about
the Walnut Street Jail. Thus, this report works from a description
of mundane prison matters to the proposal for an implementation of
the Society's prison discipline theory.
It is stated that the clothing of the condemned prisoners
is suitable, however, it is the pre-trial prisoners who suffer. The
pre-trial
prisoner is in legal limbo. The law restrains him, but it is not supposed
to
punish him. However, as the Assembly knows, imprisonment is punishment.
Thus, the Society notes that these offenders, usually not career
criminals, wait longer periods until the trial date. They wait so
long simply because they are strangers, and have no one to go their
bail,
nor supply their needs. Often their clothing gets stolen a jail practice
called "the garnish"—or they have to sell their clothing
for food and liquor. The Society suggests the supply of a standard
prison dress which cannot be sold.
As to diet, the law provides for
the convicted, but, alas, not for the pre-trial detainee. Furthermore,
after the trial,
this detainee
(who most often was a witness) has to pay for his detention costs.
This, often, leads to his being imprisoned for debt. While this
is a quixotic situation, the point the Society wants to make is
that such
absurd and unjust treatment is a well known fact, and a compelling
reason why many juries do not indict or even have a case calendared
for trial. As the Society sees it, this old system is not only
non-rational, but it works against proper protection of society.
They continue to comment on the condition of women, on the lodging
(here quoting the Englishman John Howard), on the need for stoves to
replace open chimneys (too much smoke), about paying the keeper a salary
(so he does not have to sell liquor to make ends meet), and about the
mingling of sexes (and the stated abuses that loose women get themselves
committed for fictitious debts so as to party with the male convicts).
These observations lead to the identification of "three great
evils": 1) the mixture of sexes, 2) liquor and 3) indiscriminate
confinement of various classes of offenders. One immediate remedy
is no visitors. Permitting outsiders to converse with the convicts
is
a sure cause of all types of prison evils.
Then, the Society mentions that many in the prison are unemployed. These latter convicts feel that it is a greater punishment to be detained
in prison than made to do hard labor in the streets. While the Society
does not develop a theory of labor as punishment in these memorials,
a later analysis of contemporary pamphlets will show that when they
mentioned this fact about labor on the inside as punishment, that they
were assuring their public that this system of mild punishments did
not lessen the emphasis on punishment.
Finally, for the well being, safety and peace of society,
as well as for the greatest importance to the criminals, the Society
recommends
(from attention to practical state and theory) solitary
confinement to hard labor, total abstinence, separation
of debtors from those committed to trial, and separation of the
sexes.
These recommendations are enacted by the Assembly in the main. The
modification effected is that hard labor and solitary are applied only
to hardened criminals. The Assembly also asks the Society to work with
them in a reconstruction of the prison system and the criminal code.
III. 21 December 1790, addressed to the General Assembly
This Memorial is aimed at improving an already improving situation.
The law of 15 April 1790 called for the separation of ordinary
convicts from the rest of the jail population, and for the use of solitary confinement
for the more hardened offenders. In the background, one must remember,
the Society is waging a campaign to have their prison discipline accepted.
They are beginning to win battles, but, as they see it, the war is
hardly over.
The main concern, here, is about the internal
government of the jail. Traditionally, jailors
obtain their support from a variety of sources.
Sometimes their methods border on extortion. The jailor's income
comes from a small salary provided by the local government, from donations,
and from selling food, liquor and other niceties to the inmates.
The
Society forwards an epoch making reform. It calls for supporting
the jailor through a state wide tax. This reform is linked to the Society's
goal of making the Walnut Street jail into a State use prison.
The
jailor will be dependent only upon these State funds for a living,
and the jail itself will become the State's prison.
The Society, then, recommends a set and sufficient
salary for the keeper. They state that the prison will, then, be
more efficiently
and humanely administered, and that the populace will be more secure.
Furthermore the keeper should be given official power to punish
recalcitrant
inmates with solitary confinement. However, if the keeper employs
this new power he must immediately inform a local justice and the jail
Inspectors
within twenty four hours of his actions.
The establishment of the office of the Inspectors is, also, a recommendation
of this Memorial. While the Society has been visiting the jail for
several years, they have not been granted official status. They request
that a committee of Inspectors be appointed who will have regular access
to the jail. At the moment, they are requesting access only to the
Debtor's Apartment.
The Memorial concludes with the statement that justice,
humanity, and sound policy dictate the above recommendations. Further,
if such
recommendations are employed, they "will rescue the
prisons of Pennsylvania from the just reproach that they tend to
confirm
depravity, instead of promoting the interests and honesty of virtue."
The Act of 23 September 1791 will be a partial implementation of the
above. The Act of 14 April 1792 will legally set the salary for the
keeper.
When the language of these Memorials is examined,
the terminology and sentiment is definitely not religious in the
traditional denominational Biblical sense. The Memorialists argue that they have paid "a
long and steady attention to the real practical state, as well as
theory of prisons." "That experience has convinced them "that
the issue has been "a matter of experiment" which has resulted
in a "humane and rational plan" which will result in a
prison discipline which they describe as “this benevolent design" and "This
truly benevolent system." What they request, time and again,
from the Assembly is "a full opportunity of trying the effects" of
this benevolent prison discipline.
The PPS Minutes shed no
light on the sources for the Society’s Memorials, e.g., as to who
was the main draftee of the memorials. Nor do they show us the sources for the reform principles
they forwarded. What the Minutes do show are the publications which
the Society approved of, and several of which they agreed to have
printed or reprinted. These approved publications, and all the publications
referred to by the Society in the Minutes of its 150 year history
and
in its own magazine the Journal of Philanthropy and Prison Discipline,
are listed in "Bibliography I" of the Memorials of
the Pennsylvania Prison Society in Negley K. Teeters, They Were In Prison (John
C. Winston Company, 1937) Appendix I, pp. 447-486.
