Models of American Prisons
Kevin Taylor
CJS/230
07/13/2011
Gary Napier

Models of American Prisons The prisons that we know today are a far cry from what they were originally. Originally, prisons were places where convicted criminals were sent to be in seclusion from the rest of the population. These criminals were supposed to be alone, so that they could think about the crimes that they committed. These criminals were expected to live in solitude, as well as work until they served their terms. As one can easily see, the prisons of today are not all like their predecessors. Prisons today house many criminals in the same areas, many of whom live together. These criminals also set by idly to serve out their time, many of whom deny their involvement in crime. As anyone can easily see, the modern prison is no longer run by ideal’s, the modern prison is run by the government.
Originally prisons were supposed to be run by a set of ideals that were spiritual and secular and the prisoner was to be separated from other prisoners in isolation where the prisoner was supposed to think about the crime that was committed and think of ways to better themselves and work and the chapter also states that prisoners ought to work steadily at productive labor not sit
Around idle as they often did in old jails and prisons. The principal goal of a penitentiary was for the offender to think about what they have done in isolation with no other prisoner contact.
Eastern State Penitentiary, built on the outskirts of Philadelphia in a farming area known as Cherry Hill, featured seven long cell blocks radiating like spokes from a central rotunda. The facade of the prison would resemble a Scottish castle from the late Middle Ages.
Auburn in western New York and at Sing
Sing thirty miles north of New York City, two new prisons, Auburn and Sing
Sing, were built to replace New York City’s New gate Prison.
The difference between the two models was the designs of the prisons the eastern state prison was built like a Scottish castle from the middle ages a thirty-foot-high wall would enclose the site, sealing the convicts in and sealing the world out. The drawback for this prison was that it was the most expensive prison.
The auburn prison housed prisoners in small cells 7 feet long by 3 and a half feet wide the cells were stacked atop one another in tiers and the prisoners had no outside exercise. The only drawback was the isolation experiment that was preformed where prisoner were kept isolated for a year several dies most were sick and one jumped to his death the rest were deranged. Pennsylvania model was closer to ideal. The
Environment was more penance inducing. T he prison was orderly, quiet, and controlled. The prisoners were managed individually rather than in the congregate. Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe, the Boston social reformer and abolitionist,
Published An Essay on Separate and Congregate Systems of Prison Discipline in
1846. He pointed out that the congregate system treated prisoners as masses,
Whereas the solitary system treated each convict as an individual, which he favored
But it was considerably more trouble to do it this way—to deal with one person at a time, in feeding them in their cells rather than in a group mess hall, or in ministering to other needs.

But in my view both models were flawed because of the simple fact the one prison cost too much and the other did not do the study right because if they had then the study would have been cut short because they would have seen that the prisoners were getting sick and dying and they would have seen the rest going out of their minds but I can say they were both good ideas but just needing a lot more planning. Before these studies were considered so that they could have made more detailed plans for their studies so that they could have made the best decisions possible.

Foster, B. (2006). Corrections: The fundamentals. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall.

References
This is a hanging indent. To keep the hanging indent format, simply delete this line of text using the backspace key, and replace the information with your reference entry.