Prison Comparison
Kiesha Silvious
CJA/324 Introduction to Corrections
November 28, 2011
Jason Huskey

Prison Comparison
The penitentiary was more of an idea or a set of principles than a physical institution with shape and form. It was a concept rather than a building. What was the penitentiary supposed to be? Its purposes were both secular and spiritual. It was supposed to be a place of humane punishment as opposed to the physical punishments still prevalent in Western societies. It was supposed to be a certain punishment, the common punishment of all serious criminals, to replace the diverse penalties applied or often not applied by judges. It was supposed to be clean and healthy in contrast to the jail and to avoid the kind of contamination both of body and of spirit that took place in the existing lockups. This meant that criminals in custody ought to be separated from each other as much as possible, preferably in isolation. Finally, and perhaps foremost as a social purpose, it was supposed to practice corrective discipline to create habits of industry through the application of strictly enforced rules. Prisoners ought to work steadily at productive labor, not sit around idle as they often did in old jails and prisons (B. Foster, 2006).
In early prisons, convicts commonly produced goods the penitentiary sold directly to the public on the open market. This was called the public account or state account system, meaning the prison was the merchant with no middleman. Over time, except for the sale of agricultural commodities, such as truck vegetables and, occasionally, inmate-made crafts, this practice declined as other forms of prison labor developed (B. Foster, 2006).
Public account was the original model. Under the convict lease, a private contractor rented prisoners from the state, assuming responsibility for their care and control in return. This model prevailed in the post-Civil War South. The contract model and its variant, the piece price, allowed private businesses to contract with the prison, either for a certain number of workers or for the number of items the workers could produce. Businesses typically set up workshops on prison grounds and paid prisoners a wage much lower than free-world workers would have been paid. The state use model and its variant, the public works and ways system, had prisoners producing goods bought by government agencies or working on public projects, such as constructing roads and buildings (B. Foster, 2006).
World War II in December 1941 had several major effects on prisons. Prison populations declined as many young men in trouble including convicts who were paroled to work in war industries were allowed to choose between military duty and prison. Active military service provided strong social control over young men, the demographic most likely to commit crimes, and the new rules against prison labor were relaxed to put prisoners to work in the war effort (B. Foster, 2006).
The Prison Industries Branch of the War Production Board was established in December 1941 to manage the industrial and agricultural output of state and federal prisons. The chairman of the War Production Board said in late 1942 that only about 10 percent of convicts were working in prison industries, which were producing at about a third of their estimated potential. As state political officials got more involved and federal restrictions were modified, prison production increased. By 1943, industrial and agricultural production in state prisons was estimated at about $25 million each (B. Foster, 2006).
World War II was good for prison labor. The industrial and agricultural output of prisons increased steadily. Prisoners got the opportunity to show the public that they, too, wanted to help in the war effort, and prison morale was high. Many barriers that had separated prisoners from free people were relaxed during wartime, only to be put back in place once the war ended in 1945. For American prisons, World War II would prove to be only a rest stop on the road they had been traveling for a hundred years (B. Foster, 2006).
After the war, prisons faded from public view. Their populations went up again, industrial and agricultural production declined, and restrictions on interstate shipment of prison-made goods were restored. Prisons became institutions of idleness where growing numbers of prisoners were confined by penal officials who had nothing for them to do. Politicians who had advocated greater involvement of prisoners in the war effort turned a blind eye to prisons after the war. Prisoners, many of whom had exchanged military uniforms for prison gray, discovered that they were invisible once again.
Inside prisons, tensions built up that prison official had no way of relieving. Violence had been a problem in American prisons going back to the Colonial era. In the twentieth century, as prisoners were gradually allowed more freedom of movement, inmate attacks on guards and other prisoners increased, as did escape attempts. Prisons had much smaller guard forces than they have now, and escape attempts, often on a large scale, were commonplace and frequently successful. Guards and wardens were taken hostage, injured, or killed by prisoners armed with guns, knives, or homemade weapon (B. Foster, 2006).
Prison riots were infrequent until after World War II, when several circumstances relaxed controls over prisoners, idleness, inattention to grievances, and deteriorating buildings combined to create an atmosphere ripe for explosion (B. Foster, 2006).

References
B. Foster. (2006). Corrections: The Fundamentals. Retrieved from B. Foster, CJA/324 website.