Serving Time: A History of Punishment
For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is behind bars. For African-Americans, that figure is one in 15. In this hour, the History Guys ask whether we’ve always been so fond of the lock & key, and look at how our prison system has been structured in the past. Washington DC Corrections Director Devon Brown discusses the racial disparity, and historian Rebecca McLennan explains why 19th century prison labor was not only central to America’s penal system, but also to its economy. And we head out to the side of the highway to speak with some members of the local jail’s work gang.
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Show Highlights
- Chain Gang, Revisited — 20th Century History Guy Brian Balogh spends some time on the side of the highway with the work crew from Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. He asks whether prisoners see their work as public humiliation or reward for good behavior.
- A Debt to Society — Historian Rebecca McLennan explains why 19th century prison labor was not only central to America’s penal system, but also to its economy.
10 Responses
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The Chain Gang, Revisited | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “Serving Time: A History of Punishment.” You can listen to the entire episode here. [...]
Quote -- September 30, 2010 @ 7:01 pm -
A Debt to Society | BackStory With The American History Guys :
[...] The following audio clip is excerpted from the BackStory episode “Serving Time: A History of Punishment.” You can listen to the entire episode here. [...]
Quote -- September 30, 2010 @ 7:10 pm -
US History Survey Class: Coventry University 2011-2012 « Andrew Smith's Blog :
[...] Serving Time: A History of Punishment http://backstoryradio.org/serving-time-a-history-of-punishment/ [...]
Quote -- July 5, 2011 @ 9:59 am
NY Times article on US incarceration rates:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/28/us/28cnd-prison.html?hp
Some quotes from the article:
What do you think?
QuoteThanks for posting that NYT piece, VFHwebdev. I think you’ve correctly nailed the “nut grafs,” as we say in the biz, with those two quotes you pulled. Part of the reason we decided to do this show in the first place was that both sides of the debate seemed so fraught with unexamined assumptions, and it seemed like exactly the kind of subject that would benefit from a little historical perspective. For instance, has the prison population really tracked so precisely with the number of “serious crimes” committed throughout American history (I’m thinking here about the War on Drugs)? How has our notion of “serious crime” itself evolved? And — we tend to look at crime stats to gauge the system’s efficacy, but how have previous generations evaluated the success of our prisons? Was it always as simple as looking at the overall crime rate?
I realize I’ve only added to the list of questions — if you want answers, I guess you’ll have to tune in to the show! While you’re here, though, be sure to subscribe to our podcast over there on the right-hand side of this page. That way, the show will be delivered to you as soon as it airs…
QuoteI think its so interesting to consider the size of the population who have spent time in jail and prison, especially in the south and in minority communities across the country. Change has seemed to be a long-time coming in the way federal or state correctional institutions are operated, as well as the different types of “crime” and types of “criminals” who keep our prisons at full capacity.
I can’t really think of any other industrialized communities, where so many people (really men, in particular, I guess) have direct and indirect relationships with these institutions on a daily basis.
The closest thing I’ve considered, historically, is Charlottesville’s Vinegar Hill, where Irish and African-American peoples had established that kind of “wrong side of the tracks” outcast-type neighborhood and business district.
Nowadays public housing is almost routinely demolished and thus, of course, everyone must move to the new neighborhood and reacquaint themselves as being “from” there instead. Thinking about Birmingham Al in particular: urban “renewal” projects move more and more to suburban parts of the county, as opposed to the inner-city neighborhoods known for the 80′s crack epidemic and 90′s gang violence and what-not.
I wonder how we as people will evolve in order to re-establish a segment of this population as true “rehabilitated,” functional members of society, as well as how to help brothers and sisters doing years in the system right now. Or, if we will even! More jails and prisons have meant more jobs and business opportunities for many people, after all. Each American could stand a reading from Bomb the Suburbs by Billy Wimsatt, in my humble opinion.
Thanks dudes! Check you later…
sylvie
QuoteSince the founding, “punishment” comes to the fore in public discourse about once each generation (yes, another constructed periodization) and quickly recedes to the rear as we become preoccupied with war, recession, etc. The Walnut Street Jail, founded by Quakers in Philadelphia of the 1790′s, was deemed a “humane” alternative to whipping, maiming and other atrocities. The spiritual impulse expanded the practices to spawn America’s first great social invention, the penitentiary, where the evil done “evil” doers can still be viewed as a Philadelphia museum, just after the tour bus stop at Independence Hall. Spiritual penitence gave way to social “reform” through work in the movement by that name in the 1830”s forward. The National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline in 1870 marked the starting point for such grand assemblages of luminaries over the ensuring decades: Wickersham Commission (1920′s), The President’s Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice (1960′s), and The National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice Standards and Goals (1970′s). Then, America entered the “dark ages” of social control with “three strikes and you’re out” metaphors; mandatory minimum sentences; “Fourth Branch” commissions that set sentencing guidelines Judges are required to follow; and, most deleteriously, the re-privatization of punishment with for-profit prisons. The context for this resurgence was the advent of the neo-cons under Reagan. (A personal note: I served in the Justice Department under these regimes and witnessed first hand their policy decisions in turning to the “dark side.” With twenty-five years working in the criminal justice field throughout the United States and with many powerful interest groups, I have read hundreds of articles like the one in NYT; but, the ears are plugged when you present legislative testimony, lobby a gubernatorial task force, or urge a business group to consider its social responsibilities.)
For 20th-century information, see the following:
QuoteDavid A. Booth
Reviewed work(s): Complete Reports, including the Mooney-Billings Report (1931) by Wickersham Commission
Polity, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Autumn, 1969), pp. 92-99 (review consists of 8 pages) Palgrave Macmillan Journal
Sylvie,
QuoteTHanks for listening to the show and your thoughtful comment (below). In terms of the return of rehabilitation you talk about, there is one thing that Americans do have going for them. We can be a remarkably forgiving nation. I think of the millions of Americans who have been “born again,” or the number of businesses people who failed in the nineteenth century, only to try again, and again. So despite or recent tendency to go overboard on the incarceration thing, there is an alternative tradition that is a little more promising. Twentieth-century Guy
Incarceration raises lots of interesting questions for me . One basic question is this: how do aspects of human nature thwart the social goals underlying incarceration. For example, human beings are social animals. Wherever placed, in whatever society, we are quick to form connections, hierarchies, commonalities, and bonds. Jail is no exception. So when we place the convicted in jail, we place them in an environment consists primarily of criminals. Those who stay for any considerable period, in turn, develop thick social bonds with their fellow criminals — bonds often solidified by a mutual disaffection for jail guards and society.
QuoteForcing these kinds of people into bonds with one another seems like bad policy, but what are the alternatives? Is there a way to accomplish the goals of incarceration, discourage networking of criminals, all without resorting to draconian measures?
This topic just couldn’t be more timely: the arrest by a white cop of the greatest living American scholar, “breaking into” his own home has everybody talking at the water-cooler about crime, punishment … and race. Myself, i don’t blame Crowley (the cop) for doing his job, and i thank God and the American system that he ran over there and stopped … what turned out to be a non-crime. But i also don’t blame Gates for his reaction. Even now, in 2009, there is, and i fear there always will be, a huge difference between being a white man and a black man in that situation. A white guy would just chuckle while showing the cop his I.D., would call his family member(s) who might have the spare key, and perhaps would invite the cop in to have a look around once he got the door open … all while not raising his blood pressure one iota, and just having a funny story to tell his pals the next day. While a black man, especially an older, Harvard professor, might easily find this the final straw in a lifetime of being mistaken for a criminal because he was black in a white neighborhood. Maybe here the point is not to blame either of these two people, but rather to talk about who we arrest for what, and why. Thanks for starting the conversation!
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