The Prison

Abstract

Like the asylum the modern prison dates from the end of the 18th century. Its birth is marked by the establishment of a string of pioneer prisons later to become models for emulation all over the Western world. In Europe the important event was the radical reorganization of the Maison de Force at Ghent in Belguim in 1775. It was not a new institution then, it had been founded in 1627 on the model of exemplary ‘houses of correction’ at Amsterdam, the Rasphuis and the Spinnhuis. As part of its reorganization it came to be housed in an octagonal building — an architectural form popularized by Bentham in his famous Panopticon project which later became a paradigm for the new prisons of the 19th century. The reorganized Maison de Force introduced a regime for internees combining work in common by day and solitary confinement at night. Further, it provided improved living conditions for internees (Grünhut, 1948: 22; Sellin, 1944: 103). The second important event was the revision of the Pennsylvania criminal code in 1786, to substitute imprisonment in place of corporal punishments for robbery, sodomy and burglary. Four years later the Pennsylvania legislature transformed the internal regime at Walnut Street jail in Philadelphia by introducing solitary confinement of internees — a technique which in its various forms became the central feature of the new prisons of the 19th century (Walker, 1980: 49).