The Discovery of the Asylum David J' Rothman

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The Discovery of the AsylumDavid J. Rothman

• May 17, 2001

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Colonial Society

• The colonists did not address crime as a critical
  social problem.
• They assumed that crime was based on sin and
  religious in nature.
• 1692 Salem witchcraft trials
• Prevention
• Family
• The church
• Community social relations
• Enforcement and policing of the law was done by
  local citizens

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Punishment in Colonial Society

• The nature of punishment varied from the stocks
  to fines to the gallows.
• Local jails and prisons were used, but they were
  not used to serve as a house of correction
• They did not believe that this type of punishment
  could correct the inmates problems.
• The prisons that they did have were run like a
  small family unit and in no way resemble the
  modern institution.

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The Challenge of Crime

• The change from colonial times to the new
  republic of states also necessitated a new system
  of social control.
• The mechanisms of social control became obsolete.
  The premises under which the colonial system had
  been based was no longer valid.
• inheritance v. ownership

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The Challenge of Crime

• Around the 1790s a rational system of punishment
  had been put into place.
• The system was based on swift, certain punishment
• Beccaria heavily influenced this movement.
• The more severe the law violation the longer
  the prison term
• By the 1820s the citizens had lost faith in the
  new system
• The started to examine criminality as a product
  of the environment.

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The Invention of the Penitentiary

• With the changes in understanding of the causes
  of delinquency, came a new form of prison.
• The goal of these prisons was to reform the
  criminal and to stabilize American society.
• The prison boom began in the 1820s
• New York and Pennsylvania were the first to build
  prisons.
• Separation, obedience, and labor