to “freemen,” as Christian homeowners were called at the time. Only Connecticut (plus Rhode Island), of the original thirteen colonies, elected their governors rather than having them appointed by the representatives of the king and still had all the power of the king behind their appointments.
All colonies, it is true, elected their delegates to their versions of the general court and general assembly, as well as their town leaders. But the free election of their top leader, under the conditions granted him by the voters, gave to Connecticut an impetus to model democracy at all levels of government. It was out of this context that the Fundamental Orders were written, specifying that the citizens of Connecticut were freely associating themselves to be “one public state or commonwealth.”5 A second notable peculiarity was the stress laid by Rev. Thomas Hooker on the indispensable value of voluntary associations. In Bradley Chapin’s words, “In Connecticut he became the firm, articulate spokesman” of that concept.6
The Fundamental Orders were based on the vitality and potential of voluntary association. The idea spread throughout the expanding nation in the following decades. Connecticut, however, provided a prime example of people consciously and intentionally forming a government and subsequently other groups by free choice and voluntary consensus. Eventually, Connecticut’s delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention—Oliver Ellsworth, William S. Johnson, and Roger Sherman—played a key role in the writing and subsequent formation of the U.S. Constitution after the Revolution.
The first voluntary associations, therefore, were religious groups organizing to form a political government, along with religious groups, called churches, bonding around faith commitments without recourse to royal charter or a state church’s permission. In the nineteenth century there was an explosion of voluntary associations to pursue a multitude of social purposes. Eventually civic, financial, economic, reformatory, and other types of associations followed. The ongoing effect of such associations on the criminal justice system that evolved in Connecticut is a major theme traced through the following chapters.
MILESTONE 2: THE EMERGENCE OF CONNECTICUT’S JAILS
The jail emerged from the workhouse early in colonial history. Its role as a place not just for the alcoholic and the pauper fed a Puritan passion to control more serious immoral behavior by prompt and direct punishments. It was a passion rooted in the Anglican Christian tradition they had left behind and were seeking to make more effective in the Americas. Another motivating factor among the early colonists was the rational optimism of Enlightenment philosophies, which supported the radical idea that humanity is perfectible. It was an optimism that eventually made its peace with the Calvinist belief in original sin on the grounds that God’s grace could overturn even the most devilish human tendencies.7 This combination of reason with faith and scripture guided the Puritans as well as other immigrants in many parts of society. Establishing a just recompense for sinners was gradually fused with the idea of perfecting the human being, through punishment if necessary.
The logic of the workhouse, developed in England in the early nineteenth century, was equally persuasive in the Americas, but it posed several layers of dilemmas, which have never been fully resolved. If the workhouse disciplines were not systematically strict and harsh, the belief was strong that offenders would soon view it as an alternate way to avoid living on the streets. If the jail regimen were not even more stringent, what leverage would the workhouse master have over rebellious paupers? Finally, since the workhouse was supposed to be a very shameful experience, “what margin of shame was left for the jailbird?” Punitive conditions at every moment had to be imposed.8
The most powerful idea, however, governing the use of the workhouse, and the subsequent jail, was the association of punishment with hard labor. It was not a new idea. The Puritans had always held hard work up as way to praise the Creator, but its systematic application as an additional penalty to those arrested only gradually took hold in America. Connecticut passed legislation to construct a separate and deliberately punitive workhouse in 1727, and it was completed in 1730.
The Connecticut law was called “an act for restraining, correcting, suppressing, and punishing rogues, vagabonds, common beggars, and other lewd, idle, dissolute, profane and disorderly persons, and for setting them to work.” The long list of offenses included “subtil [sic] craft,” which apparently signified various unwelcome actions, such as gambling games, “jugling [sic], fiddlers, stubborn children and brawlers.” The master of the House of Correction had full power to put offenders to hard labor, use fetters or shackles, whip prisoners (not to exceed ten stripes), and withhold food whenever necessary to maintain good order.9
The combined workhouse and jail in Hartford served the whole Connecticut Colony for almost a century. The terms were interchangeable during that period. The facility was to be self-supporting, with the master of the workhouse getting one-third of the income from the labor done and the rest of the income going to the inmates or their families. Like many of the early colonial jails, the workhouse was linked to a tavern with the innkeeper as the master, to generate further income. The outcome in Connecticut was no more successful financially than workhouses had been in England. In both countries alcohol was readily available to the inmates, and drunkenness was frequent. Innkeepers, given such a position, considered inmates to be a captive clientele. The common use of alcohol made sense since the purity of the water could never be guaranteed. Eventually, by 1742, as jails became more common in the larger towns such as Hartford, the combination of tavern and workhouse was ended and inmates were confined in the official county jails.
Despite the presence of county commissioners, supervision was random and the jails continued to function as ultrasevere workhouses, with inmate labor unquestioned and unfettered by any restraints. The early belief in the reforming and redeeming power of prison labor was constantly undermined and diminished almost from its beginnings but especially in the later reform eras. Neglected and ignored by the public and the fragmented criminal justice system, jails were almost without exception characterized by a highly punitive and brutal pattern of treatment. There was little if any accountability as to what work was done, who was forced to do the work, or what limits should be set.
In 1935, on the sixtieth anniversary of the CPA, a member of the agency wrote a thorough report, The County Jail in Connecticut, for the agency’s committee on the jails. The writer’s name was Genevieve Kinne Bartlett, and she lost no time getting to the heart of the matter. She stated that the county jail had “failed in its two objectives of reforming the prisoner and of making a self-supporting institution.”10 They not only did not deter crime; they made criminals by mixing all kinds of offenders together without supervision and without help for the weak and defenseless. Such a condemnation of the jails was not new. It had been voiced before and would be voiced in all subsequent decades. In England, where the prototype of the modern jail originated under Henry II in the twelfth century, and in seventeenth-century America, where the early colonists tried to reinvent it, the jail has been an ambiguous response to crime and a nightmare to millions of offenders. Whether prisons or jails came first historically depends on the definition given to each. In terms of the original purpose, to simply hold offenders until some penalty could be administered, the difference between jails and prisons is primarily one of size (prisons larger, jails smaller) or length of confinement (prisons longer, jails shorter).
Connecticut’s story is typical and instructive. Jails took form after 1650 in most of the larger towns. They were essentially unregulated, but, unlike later prisons, jails were virtually hidden from public view. Consider the metaphor of a theater to distinguish the respective visibility of jails and prisons. Within that metaphor, the prison would occupy center stage in the auditorium. Its various reformations, from retribution to rehabilitation, would take turns in the spotlight, being celebrated and condemned. Huge audiences would be applauding or bemoaning the play and the players.
For over two centuries prisons have been the fortresses that separated the “bad” from the “good” and, ideally, made society safer. Within their
