Prison Association in 1845. Similar associations were formed in Maryland and Delaware in the next two decades.
In 1871 the Connecticut legislature formed a Prison Reform Commission to investigate the progress being made in prison reform. Appointed to that commission were Dr. G. W. Russell and Charles Dudley Warner (publisher of the Hartford Daily Courant) to represent Hartford and Probate Judge Francis Wayland (who had been the lieutenant governor of Connecticut in 1869) to represent New Haven. Their specific assignment was to examine the Wethersfield State Prison and similar institutions in other states “to see if there are any deficiencies in our way of treating criminals.”33
Prison reform was picking up speed.
PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE
The influences of European penology and scientific discovery were considerable in New England from the eighteenth century on. Insights and theories from both philosophy and science, conceived in the previous two centuries, were known and debated in the United States long before the CPA began its journey. The founders of the new American government mined the works of English, French, and Italian thinkers for ideas and rhetoric to formulate their foundational documents.
Three philosophers, the Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria (1738–94), the English social reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) and the Italian penologist Cesare Lombroso (1835–1909), among many others, were particularly influential in the phrasing of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. For example, the right to a public and speedy trial, to be judged by peers, to dismiss jurors for various reasons, to examine the witnesses, to not be subjected to coerced confessions, and to be informed of accused acts and who is making the accusations are all protections drawn from the works of classical criminology.34
Beccaria’s work, On Crimes and Punishment, published in 1764, speaks to many universal issues of his day. He was an early advocate of swift rather than delayed punishments to be most effective against crime. In his essay he declares the death penalty unnecessary and counterproductive and discusses better ways to deal with human behaviors such as suicide and dueling rather than codifying them as illegal. Word of his work spread rapidly in Europe and in America. In Connecticut the New Haven Register printed Beccaria’s book in its entirety over seven months in 1786.
Our interest is in Beccaria’s assertion of two principles that became part of the foundation of subsequent penology. The first is that the punishment of convicted criminals is justified only when it strengthens the social contract between members of society. The second is that reformatory penalties are more likely to be effective than punishments based on retribution or revenge. Penalties designed to be reformatory are less likely to further alienate criminals and make them worse. Rehabilitation rather than retribution would therefore serve the greatest good of the community. Both principles would appear in the prison reform movement of the 1870s in the United States.
In the nineteenth century, rational penology was given another thrust forward by the writings of Jeremy Bentham in England and Cesare Lombroso in Italy on the origins of crime. Bentham’s philosophy was based on the idea (called the utilitarian principle) that human beings are motivated primarily by the desire to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. Applying that principle to the control of crime, Bentham maintained that criminal justice should be implemented by laws that compel each citizen to respect the right of others under those laws. The punishment given to violators should be applied to the degree necessary to compel that respect. That concept was widely used by advocates of retributive punishments in all subsequent reform eras.
Bentham wrote extensively about prison reform. His creative architectural design for a prison was called the panopticon. The cell blocks, or wings of the panopticon, came off a central hub, allowing custodians of the prison population, stationed in the hub, to have a constant visual assessment of what was happening in each of the cell blocks.35
Cesare Lombroso’s early attempt to approach crime scientifically provoked the greatest amount of discussion in America. He based his theories on his experiences in Italian social and educational services, first as the director of a mental institution, then as a professor of psychiatry, and finally as a professor of criminal anthropology. He argued, based on his detailed study of the physiognomy of offenders, that criminals had consistent physical characteristics that could be cataloged and then used to trace convicted offenders or identify potential offenders. The fact that he claimed his system could spot criminals before they committed crimes was the most provocative and, ultimately, the weakest part of his method.
Lombroso further contended that criminals consisted of a class of people who were biologically atavistic, meaning that they displayed features of previous generations, sometimes far in the past. In the case of criminals, the features were genetic anomalies dating to a time before civilization. Lombroso, however, also advocated for reform of Italian prisons and for more constructive and reformative treatment of offenders. His views sparked great interest in heredity, the study of which was then in its infancy as a part of the relatively new science of anthropology.36
The prison reformers of the late nineteenth century made extensive use of the Lombroso catalogue of offender characteristics. Although eventually rejected on empirical evidence that it did not work and replaced by theories of environmental influence on offenders, the catalog concept became the forerunner of the more effective means of identifying offenders, such as fingerprint patterns, which proved to be unique to every person.37
The outstanding contribution to the philosophical and scientific culture of the late nineteenth century was undoubtedly the seminal work of Charles Darwin. His concept of evolution had both negative and positive impacts. Negatively, it led to social Darwinism—an assumption that Darwin’s ideas about natural selection could explain the obvious difference of social status, class, and race that existed in society. As biologist Stephen Jay Gould’s phrased it, “In Darwin’s theory, competition is the great regulator.”38
One extreme consequence within social Darwinism was a presumption that nonproductive and antisocial citizens were what they were by the process of natural selection. Since that was a biological consequence, none in those categories were merited the use of society’s resources to lift them to a better life, heal them of their illnesses, or reform their criminality. Social Darwinism flourished for over three-quarters of a century after Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in 1859 and continues to reappear as a covert assumption. But Richard Hofstadter’s definitive study of the movement, Social Darwinism in American Thought, demonstrates that Darwin’s discoveries were socially neutral and could be co-opted out of context for quite contradictory purposes.
On the positive side Darwin’s evolutionary theory enabled other religious leaders of the latter part of the nineteenth century to apply in a completely different way the ideas of evolution and progress. In New England the revised Calvinist teaching of Nathaniel William Taylor, that individuals could will their own salvation, was compatible with Darwin’s struggle for survival. The conviction of Horace Bushnell that people could change to meet the ever-changing demands of their environment merged easily with Darwin’s concept of evolution.39
As the century came to a close, a growing portion of Jewish and Christian thought also embraced the rationalist, more materialistic assumption that all acts had a natural, physical cause, including and perhaps especially crime and antisocial behavior. The scientific method as well as the research of Darwin had produced a new way of viewing social problems. After Darwin, criminality could no longer be seen as inevitable or permanent, at least for most offenders. There were environmental factors, as well as personal deficiencies, that could provide a basis for criminal activity.
A major portion of this group, many from Christian perspectives, gradually formed into a dissenting movement away from the competitive interpretation of social Darwinism. The values of humanitarianism were affirmed
