Prison and jail systems

SIGNIFICANCE: Prison and jail systems make up the corrections arm of the criminal justice system. For many offenders, arrival in these systems signals the last step in the criminal justice process.

In American society, confinement is used for punishing individuals who have broken the law. Corporal punishment (flogging, stocks and pillory, and so on) was replaced by confinement, or incarceration, because the latter was considered to be more humane. It is not exactly known when the use of confinement for punishment began, but this method became dominant in the United States near the end of the eighteenth century. There are two types of systems that incarcerate offenders: prison and jail systems. Although there are many differences, prison and jail systems often are distinguished based on the offenders’ length of sentences. Prisons, also known as correctional facilities or penitentiaries, are institutions that house offenders serving a sentence longer than one year. Jails are systems for temporary confinement and house individuals at different stages in the criminal justice process, including offenders serving sentences of less than one year.

Prison violence, prison health care, overcrowding, gang violence, prisoner rights, and prisoner suicide are some of the issues facing the management of modern prison and jail systems.

History of the Modern Prison

In ancient times, confinement was used to hold offenders until trial or until a sentence (usually some form of corporal punishment) was delivered. The beginning of the modern prison can be found in sixteenth-century Britain. Although corporal punishment or banishment was the preferred method of punishment, houses of correction were built in which offenders charged with minor crimes lived and had to work under guard supervision to repay the debt. Workhouses were similar but were used to house the poor, who also had to work under guard supervision. In addition, jails were developed to detain suspects until trial.

Criminal justice reformers in Britain incited the movement toward the use of prisons for punishment as alternatives to the brutality of corporal punishment. These reformers argued that the punishment should be proportional to the offense, or in other words, the punishment must fit the crime. Also, the reformers protested the appalling conditions in the jails and workhouses, as well as on prison ships, where prisoners awaiting banishment to Australia were forced to live in the hulks of ships that never left the dock. The demise of the use of corporal punishment was set in motion by the reformers, and prisons were built. However, the conditions in the early prisons were still deplorable because of rampant disease, filth, and overcrowding.

Prisons did not exist in Britain’s American colonies originally. Jails primarily were used to hold debtors or confine offenders until the trial or sentence of punishment. The early jails in the colonies were similar to their British counterparts as overcrowded depositories for disease. Replacing corporal punishment with confinement was an idea first postulated by William Penn, a Quaker. The founder of Pennsylvania argued that offenders should be punished by using confinement. Penn passed the Great Law of 1692, which abolished corporal punishment, except in the case of murder, and mandated the building of prisons. A visionary, Penn established prisons nearly a century earlier than Britain and the other US colonies. However, the Great Law was repealed one day after his death in 1718.

After the American Revolution

Corporal punishment continued to be the primary method of punishment through the American Revolution. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, developed as a guide for the newly independent states, included many protections for individuals suspected of crimes. The emphasis on protection from the abuses of government was influenced by the abuses the colonists had suffered under Britain’s rule. The concept of the penitentiary, based on the work of William Penn, was developed and implemented by the Quakers in Pennsylvania. These penitentiaries would allow the offenders the time and solitude to repent for the crimes, to pay penance through manual labor, and to reform. The first prison under this new system was the Walnut Street Jail, opened in Philadelphia in 1790. The Walnut Street Jail served as a model for the prisons built in Pennsylvania in the 1820s.

By 1830, Western Penitentiary was opened in Pittsburgh and Eastern Penitentiary in Philadelphia. These prisons followed the philosophy of the Quakers’ penitentiary and were referred to as the Pennsylvania system or the separate system. A similar system, minus the complete isolation of the inmates, was employed in the Auburn prison opened in New York in 1817. The slightly different system became known as the Auburn system, the New York system, or the congregate system. Both types of systems operated under the assumption that crime was a result of problems in the external environment.

Eventually, the Pennsylvania system was abandoned because of multiple factors, including the financial burden of operating a prison in which inmates were individually celled. The Auburn system became the model for the American penitentiary until after the Civil War. A large prison reform movement protesting the squalid prison conditions gained momentum after the war. In part because of the prison reform movement, a prison emphasizing rehabilitation was opened in Elmira, New York, during the late 1870s. The Elmira Reformatory adopted indeterminate sentencing practices whereby prison officials could determine how much of a sentence the inmate served by using reward systems for good behavior and work or educational achievements.

The Elmira model, or reformatory model, gained popularity, and by the 1920s nearly every state had adopted the system. The focus on rehabilitation continued, and new treatment programs continued to be implemented in American prisons until after World War II. By the 1950s, the number of prisoners was increasing, and the prison system experienced a wave of riots, thought to be caused by deplorable prison conditions. During the 1960s and 1970s, several landmark Supreme Court and federal court cases passed legislation that allowed certain prisoner rights and mandated improved prison conditions.

The 1970s sparked a shift in penal philosophy from an emphasis on rehabilitation to one on deterrence and incapacitation. Indeterminate sentencing was replaced with determinate sentencing systems in which the parole boards could no longer release an inmate before the sentence expired. The shift in philosophy was influenced by published research studies claiming that not one of the rehabilitation programs in place in US prisons actually reduced recidivism or crime rates.

The shift from rehabilitation to deterrence and incapacitation marked the “get tough on crime” era that began during the 1970s and continued through the end of the twentieth century. The increase in availability of crack cocaine in the 1980s ensured that a continual supply of drug offenders filtered into the prison system through sentencing reforms resulting from the so-called War on Drugs. These reforms included mandatory minimums for possession of certain amounts of drugs, “truth-in-sentencing” laws that forced offenders to serve the full sentence, and “three-strikes” laws that gave life sentences to inmates receiving convictions for a third felony. The impact on the prison system was profound, resulting in overcrowded conditions and millions of dollars toward new prison construction as more prisoners were incarcerated and for longer periods of time.

State Prison Systems

Currently, all fifty states operate prison systems. Operation and oversight of the state prisons falls under the state Department of Corrections. The two goals of prison systems are custody and treatment. The custody function serves to keep the inmate incarcerated so that inmates, staff, and society are safe. Vocational training, educational programs, and counseling and drug abuse programs fall under the treatment function and serve to help the inmate rehabilitate, thereby preventing future crimes. As a result of the “get tough on crime” era, custody is now the primary focus of the prison and is the prison guard’s primary responsibility.

The custody function is emphasized when designing a facility. Facility designs vary across states, with factors such as financial considerations and upkeep taken into consideration during the planning. The popular prison designs of the last two hundred years offer advantages and disadvantages depending upon the style. For example, the radial-design prison, similar to the Auburn prison in New York, contains cells and areas that radiate out from a central control hub. An advantage of this type of design is that it restricts the inmates’ movements, because all of the inmates must pass through the hub to travel to any other part of the facility. On the other hand, if inmates get control of the hub during a riot, then they have control of the entire facility.

In addition to prison design, the physical layout of the living units is important for administrators and staff. The linear cell design is the oldest, and many prisons still operate facilities marked by long hallways containing cells or dormitories. The cells are controlled from the end of the hallway, and officers must walk the length of the hallway to observe the insides of the cells directly. A modified version of this design was implemented in some prisons and includes clusters of individual cells that share a common living area. The more modern, “podular” design most closely resembles the modified linear design. Cells also are situated around a central living area, but the defining characteristic of the podular design is direct supervision. The prison guard works inside the pod and has direct contact with the inmates and can observe them at all times. This design has most recently been implemented in jails, known as “new generation” jails.

Inmate and Prison Classification

Upon entering prison, inmates are assessed for classification as a tool in the custody and control of inmates. The tests used for classification purposes determine the proper security level for the inmate. Classifications are made based on characteristics of inmates that may prove problematic (gang affiliation, status, race, and so on) or predictions of inmate behavior. Based on the classification, the inmate will be assigned to a maximum-, medium-, or minimum-security facility. Certain supermax prisons also exist for inmates deemed especially dangerous or at risk, but are not available in most prison systems.

The maximum-security facility, also known as the “Big House,” is a colossal structure with many physical security features, including towers manned by guards, high walls, and searchlights. Facilities such as this are reserved for the inmates considered to be the most dangerous or violent in the prison system. Some programming is available to inmates in maximum-security facilities; however, the main function is custodial. One of the most famous maximum-security prisons is the San Quentin prison in California.

A medium-security facility typically houses property offenders and other inmates considered less dangerous than those housed in maximum-security facilities. In some states, the maximum- and medium-security facilities are combined. Medium-security facilities lack most of the physical security measures present in the maximum-security facilities, and guarded towers are replaced with barbed-wire fences. In some medium-security facilities, inmates reside in dormitories that are similar to military barracks.

A minimum-security facility houses property and drug offenders who are considered the least dangerous offenders and are serving the shortest sentences. Also, inmates from higher-level facilities who are close to release may serve out the end of their sentences in minimum security to ease the transition from incarceration to freedom. Minimum-security facilities rely on electronic monitoring and locked doors to prevent escape, rather than barbed-wire fences. Inmates in minimum security have access to more programs and services and are allowed greater freedom of movement.

In addition, supermax (or maxi-max) prisons and boot camps gained popularity and continue to operate in the United States.

Federal Prison Systems

The first federal prison opened in Atlanta in 1902. Until then, federal prisoners had been housed in local jails or state prisons. The federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was established by President Herbert Hoover in 1930 to oversee the federal prison system. The federal prison system saw a surge in incarceration rates following the 1970s, mainly resulting from mandatory sentencing and federal antidrug policies. The federal system operates mostly minimum-security facilities because most violent crimes fall under state jurisdiction.

Unlike state prisons, the federal system operates four different types of facilities that are related to the five security levels in the federal system: high, medium, low, minimum, and administrative. The United States penitentiaries (USP) are classified as high-security level but are comparable to maximum-security prisons in the state system. The Metropolitan Correctional/Detention Centers (MCC/MDC) are all at the administrative level. The administrative-level prisons are the jails of the federal system and house offenders at every stage in the legal process. The security level varies based on one’s location in the center. The federal prison camps (FPC) and satellite camps are all minimum security and house the prisoners who represent the lowest risk, including white-collar criminals or other nonviolent offenders. Finally, the federal correctional institutions (FCI), ranging from low to high security, are similar to the state correctional facilities.

Privatized Prisons

Due to the surge in incarceration rates, some prisons and jails underwent privatization, which involves private companies in the building or operation of prisons and jails. Arguments for and against the privatization of prisons and jails abound, and although some private prisons have been closed down, private prisons are still being used by some states to house the overflow of inmates in the state system. Beginning late in the first decade of the twenty-first century and into the beginning of the second decade, however, the number of prisoners being held in private facilities was decreasing parallel to the overall decrease of the rate of incarceration in the United States. As prison systems, particularly those run by the states, continued to face issues with overcrowding and funding, legislation and policies were increasingly enacted to reduce prison populations. By 2023, only 8 percent of state and federal prisoners were being held in facilities privately operated under the jurisdiction of twenty-seven states and the BOP. Additionally, in August of that year, the Justice Department under then president Barack Obama's administration had announced a plan to phase out the BOP's use of privatized prisons.

Women’s Prisons

Until the reformatory era of the 1870s, prisons were not segregated by gender, and abuses were common. During the late nineteenth century, three states (Indiana, New York, and Massachusetts) opened separate prison facilities for women, which were also staffed by women. By 1975, thirty-four states had opened separate facilities for women. In the states that did not have a separate facility, women and men were segregated, or the state contracted with private companies or other states to house its women inmates. In 1925, the first federal prison for women opened in Alderson, West Virginia.

The early prisons for women followed the cottage system design, which embodied the rehabilitation philosophy of the late nineteenth century. The facilities were operated by women staff, and the inmates’ time of incarceration was spent learning domestic skills. When the popularity of reformatory prisons waned, a college campus design replaced the cottage system. Although these prisons offered vocational training programs, the programs were gender-specific. For example, the inmates learned job skills that would translate into secretarial positions upon release. One controversial experiment was New York's operation of a shock incarceration camp for female prisoners in the boot camp style.

Historically, women made up a small percentage of the incarcerated population. However, this number continued to rise, mainly due to the overall increase in incarceration—even for nonviolent offenders—due to the War on Drugs. Many states have only one facility for women, which houses inmates from every classification. In the modern prison, the vocational skill training often includes training considered to be traditionally male-oriented, such as firefighting. An administrative and medical issue in prisons for women is that of inmate pregnancies. Some women enter prison pregnant, and the institution must provide specialized care for these inmates. Some prisons have allowed infants to remain with the incarcerated mother for a brief period of time after the delivery.

Jail Systems

Jails are different from prisons in a number of ways. Typically, jails are operated by cities and counties, whereas prisons are run by the state Department of Corrections or the federal Bureau of Prisons. Jails house offenders at different stages of the criminal justice system, including pretrial detention, those serving misdemeanor sentences of less than one year, felony offenders awaiting sentencing or transfer to a state or federal facility, offenders with mental illness awaiting transfer to an institution, felony offenders serving more than one year when no beds are available in the state prisons, offenders awaiting release back into the community after serving the sentence, and individuals held for other reasons such as contempt of court.

Jails also differ in design. Most jails fall into one of the following categories: traditional, second generation, or new generation. Traditional jails are similar to the linear-design prisons, with the cells situated along hallways and intermittent supervision of inmates. Second-generation jails have cells situated around a central “day room,” where staff supervise inmates from a control booth. New-generation jails have a podular design and contain a separate living area, where staff supervise and interact with the inmates directly. New-generation jails have risen in popularity with a philosophy that direct supervision of the inmates allows for more control.

Bibliography

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