Prisons Before The 1800s

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Being a prisoner before the 1800s was not humane, each prisoner was treated like an animal which lessened their human minds. They were made to correct the wrongs that they had committed either through "physical pain applied in degrading, often ferociously cruel ways, and endured mutilation, or was branded, tortured, put to death; he was mulcted in fines, deprived of liberty, or adjudged as a slave" (Griffiths 157) Prisons were not meant for a place to grieve their actions; it was portrayed to be a cruel punishment no matter the depth of one’s crime. While the design was not organized in the 1700s prisons failed to make an effort to contribute to solitary confinement. Among punishment that was made to demoralize crime, it was often that the colonials used whipping post, gags and a device that was known as a ducking stool. It later was redesigned to be a chair with a pulley system that plunged one into a body of water (Meskell 840). When it was time to be punished, it was never in a secret matter, each person being tortured was humiliated in front of their whole colony. Punishments deterring of the offender included public penance, the stocks, the pillory and the scarlet letter. Each criminal punishment that was designed was meant to take away the criminals dignity away. As the late 1700s arrived, there was a population boom, increasing the amount of people to about 430,000 which resulted in more crime. Due to the increase of crime, the scarlet letter and pillory were not valid punishments anymore as they were better for smaller populations. While the population boom infected…show more content…
Meskell Stanford Law Review , Vol. 51, No. 4 (Apr., 1999), pp. 839-865 Published by: Stanford Law Review Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1229442
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