[MUSIC] So we've talked about mass incarceration as the remedy for crime in the United States, and in fact, around the world increasingly. However, prison as punishment is, in fact, a recent invention. We could say that it is a modern invention. Even more, it is an invention of the United States and we'll talk about that today as we explore a little bit about the history of prison and the rise of the prison as a mechanism of punishment. If we look at the long dure of human history, as I indicated, prisons were not a part of the penal system. In fact, most punishments came in the form of bodily or corporal punishments. So there was flogging, beating, torture. In Europe, there was being drawn and quartered, being burned at the stake, very violent actions against the body was the principal way of punishing the criminal. Another mechanism that has been long-standing in human society is banishment, or exile. And you might remember from Socrates, that Socrates was given the choice of capital punishment, be killed, or banishment. And he chose to drink the hemlock, to commit suicide or be poisoned to death, rather than banishment. Why? Well interestingly, in the ancient world and in other parts of the world today banishment is a kind of social death. To be cut loose from all your friends and families is to be a person without an identity. It is a rather dramatic form of punishment, in fact. So banishment has been one form of punishment throughout human history. And as I said, execution and corporal punishment are others. There is some evidence of prisons in the ancient world. Egypt, 4,000 years ago had prisons, in which it would hold enemies from wars who were then put to work. So these were labor prisons, containment for people that would be doing hard labor. But they were almost never used against people of the state. So it would always be foreigners, prisoners of war who would be held in prisons in the ancient world. One of the things that's necessary for a prison and why you could have it in places like Egypt, in Greece, in the biblical account you had some prisoners in Assyria, in Babylonia was because in order to have a prison system you need a fairly strong administrative state. You need an empire or a strong nation state who can administer a prison system. Otherwise, punishments tend to be swift, tend to be bodily so that a community or a society can execute the punishment upon a person without having to have the whole system of incarceration that prisons represent. I do want to take a moment to note the distinction between prisons and jails. Jails developed in medieval Europe and in to the early modern period as containment for people who were charged with a crime. So one goes to jail while one is awaiting punishment or awaiting adjudication or trial. And that is still true today that jails hold people who are awaiting trials, so one could be innocent and held in a jail until one goes to trial. Upon conviction, one is sent to prison. So prison represents the punishment, jail nearly represents containment until one could be punished. And it is also true that in practice in the United States, jails are now also used for punishment for shorter sentences. So if someone has a sentence, usually it's under a year or in some states under two years they can sometimes do that sentence in the local jail. This is less expensive, but it's also sometimes easier for the inmate, because the jails are in the towns in which usually they live or at least where the crime committed. So they're more likely to be able to have visitors and see people. So there's the distinction between jails and prisons. But when we go back and we think about the rise of the modern prison, I want to stop and think for a minute and describe for you the medieval period. So in the medieval period in Europe there weren't really prisons, there weren't very many jails, but there were ecclesial jails or jails in monasteries. And these were cells in which wayward priests or religious heretics were held and over time also some laid people who had committed grievance or sins. And the purpose of the monastery as a place of containment, or confinement was penitence, that one would go there in order to express regret, to examine one's soul, to examine one's sin, and to think about what one had done, so that one could be restored to the community. And this notion of penance is comes from the Catholic tradition that when one commits a sin, one manages that sin through penance. And this continues today. And this is an important precursor to the eventual development of penitentiaries in the United States in the 18th century. But in general, there were no prisons or jails. Most penalties, most punishments were executed upon the body, and they were done rather quickly. The end of feudalism, however, brought a new social problem, and that was the emergence of a class of people, or a group of folks who were transient. These were displaced peoples. Perhaps, they had worked on the manor, they had been surfs working the land, and now with the end of feudalsim, they became mobile and they were displaced people. Many of them settling in urban centers, which were growing at the time, in the early modern period. And so you had this influx of displaced people into urban centers which created an emergence of the poor and homeless at much greater numbers, and also petty criminals. So we can think about Les Misérables as the story of Jean Valjean's crime, which was stealing, I believe, a loaf of bread in order to feed his family. He represented this new kind of criminal, an urban dweller who was displaced by the breakdown of feudalism and represented for the ruling class of the urban centers, a kind of disorder or potential chaos. In order to manage this new class of people, you have the emergence of what were called Bridewells, named after the first such house of containment. The Bridewell Palace which was turned into a hospital and prison or jail for wayward women, particularly, and children. But eventually, the Bridewells became workhouses or places of confinement for the poor, the homeless, and the petty criminal. So all of these were housed together. The criminal, the petty criminal, the homeless, and the poor in these houses of confinement where they would be expected to work long and hard. So this emergence of the Bridewell or workhouse is an important precursor to the modern incarceration system. And this happen in the early modern periods, 16th and 17th centuries. Another important moment, in the history of incarceration was the rise of mercantilism and colonialism. Around the same period, you have the age of exploration where Europeans were setting sail for distant lands. They were discovering or settling colonies in Africa, in Australia and in the New World in North America. As part of that colonial expansion, there was also the transport of criminals to penal colonies. The United States, what would become the United States, for example, 10,000 people were taken to Georgia which served as a penal colony. And once the United States became an independent country, the British started to take their criminals to Australia instead. So Australia became the primary destination for criminals. But in both these cases, we see that criminals were, in effect, exiled to the New World, to Australia, to North America, and there were also penal colonies in Africa, where they were expected to work long and hard. But it was, in effect, a way to remove criminals from their home country, from England, mostly for the United States. So this is another important idea that you have colonies where you take people away from where they grew up. And you separate them from their families, and in fact, put them in exile by sending them off. Now, not outside the city, but to a colony. [MUSIC]
