of both sexes wrote desperately, longingly, and mournfully about the plight of their families during their imprisonment. Their only hope was to appeal to the whims, sensibilities, or conscience of those men who positioned themselves as arbiters of justice and suffering. PSAMPP members received significant public recognition for their work. One commentator downplayed the fact that most were economically successfully and politically powerful, stating, “Nothing further need be said, respecting the members who come to their relief, but that they are men, engaged in the noblest office that can employ human nature, that of mitigating the miseries of their fellow creatures.”34 But it was precisely their status that empowered them to advocate the creation of the penitentiary and then to mediate the intimate family relationships of those trapped inside.35 Gendered representations of desire and dependency helped stabilize the heterosexual political economy by assuring reformers that men and women in prison understood and aspired to social and economic roles rooted in sexual difference.36
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Reformers embraced their role in recommending pardons partly because this process deflected attention from the expansion of punishment and its brutal consequences for immigrants and African Americans. Individual pardons provided a counter to concerns that the penal system was a substitute for slavery, an extension of the slave labor economy, or a tool to contain the poor masses. The opportunity to pardon strengthened the belief of benevolent reformers and abolitionists alike that human consideration—and even justice—might be possible for African Americans, immigrants, women, and all of those with no formal say in legal matters. Widespread use of the pardon in the first decade of the penitentiary reflects both optimism and pragmatism. PSAMPP’s first recommendation for pardon was for a black man convicted of arson. In 1787, Barrack Martin along with his wife, Tamar, were charged with arson. It was decided that there was no case against her (ignoramus), but he was convicted of arson and sentenced to death in 1787.37 Martin was said to “voluntarily and maliciously, on the 28th Feb. 1787, set[ting] fire to and burn[ing], in the township of Lower Dublin, one barn, one stable, and one out house, the property of a certain Susannah Morris, containing 10,000 lbs weight of hay.”38 The Supreme Executive Council ordered a pardon for Martin shortly after his conviction. PSAMPP members discovered that despite this order, he was still being held in prison in irons. They recommended him “to the care of the Acting Committee” on May 31, 1787. Two weeks later, the Acting Committee reported that his irons were removed, and they soon received verification of his pardon and noted the council was “ready for his liberation.”39 Martin’s pardon was inspired by the early zeal of humanitarian reformers.
And so the pardons flowed. Reformers and Inspectors would visit prisoners and make recommendations to the governor. Reform proponents argued that pardons were essential to the penitentiary system because they gave jailers and reformers a way to entice convicts to good behavior. Pardons were also “freely granted to make room for new-comers.”40 In 1795 and 1799, roughly half of the women sentenced received early releases. Pardons were more frequent and of greater length (about four months) during 1795 than in 1799, when the average dropped to one month. But politicians and reformers continued to clash over the use of pardons. Many Pennsylvania judges and politicians were convinced that certainty and proportionality of punishment were key to the system’s success. This idea was central to Cesare Beccaria’s theory of punishment, which had inspired an earlier generation of reformers. Judge Jacob Rush argued that pardons should never be granted in response to convict pleas of sorrow, guilt, or regret. Granting pardon to those who repented would “give license to men to break laws as they pleased,” while rendering the penal system and government weak, vulnerable, and ineffective.41 This view was widely adopted, as the percentage of pardons dropped dramatically in the early years of the nineteenth century. By 1807, only 11 percent of prisoners received pardons.
Debates over pardons never subsided. Occasionally they were granted on humanitarian grounds, such as the pregnancy of a woman, but otherwise were typically linked to evidence of reformation. The criteria for pardons were as follows: “The convicts who demean themselves best, and are most submissive to the rules and orders of the jail, are rewarded by a recommendation to the governor.”42 In 1820, Governor William Findlay refused to accept the Board’s recommendations and demanded more information in response to critics who claimed he pardoned too freely and was responsible for freeing a violent man.43 President of the Board of Inspectors Thomas Bradford, Jr., begged for the reinstatement of the pardon and continued to advocate the use of pardons as a tool of reform. As he explained in a letter to the governor, pardons were a key to making prisoners more orderly and hardworking: “The stimulus to industry and obedience was hope and hence pardons were frequent…. Hope of reward and fear of punishment in the cells were the powerful and efficient agents in maintaining the admirable discipline which then existed in the prisons.”44 Successive governors rejected the plea. Fewer than 6 percent of the women convicted in 1823 received such pardons.45 By 1830, the Board of Inspectors was begging the governor—then George Wolf—to reinstate the use of pardons on their recommendation. They devised a three-part classification system for determining an individual’s worthiness of pardon. The governor believed that too liberal a policy would disturb the peace of society and that the public deserved to know why a prisoner was pardoned.
Others felt racial and gender norms still figured largely into pardons and that the governor used his own subjective means to grant them. Both were true. Women could also earn a pardon by promising to resume dependency on their parents. Evidence of family ties could prove crucial in justifying a pardon and early release from prison. Artimissa Gardner was sentenced to three months in prison for running a disorderly house. She swore to visiting reformers not only that she was anxious “to pursue a virtuous course of life” but also that she wanted to return to her mother who lived near New York. PSAMPP inquired about the legitimacy of her claim, her own word not being enough, but the prospect of this outcome was always thought preferable to releasing a woman back to the streets.46 After Ann Setzimmous was imprisoned on charges of stealing fifty dollars from one person and something else from another, Inspectors had her released on the condition that she go home and live with her parents in the country.47 Young women resuming dependency on family were pardoned while older black men languished in prison. A group visiting Walnut Street Prison in 1827 commented on several older men of color who were unjustly held. The visitors hinted at a racist jury system that was only compounded by a pardoning system corrupted by money and connections.48
Isolation from Family
In its founding constitution, PSAMPP invoked the unification of the family of mankind as a central goal of their efforts, stating “By the aids of humanity, their undue and illegal sufferings may be prevented; the links, which should bind the whole family of mankind together under all circumstances, be preserved unbroken.”49 It was widely agreed by men of state and reform that a breakdown in domestic authority led to crime and mischief in the first place. Patriarchal authority had many faces and forms.50 Male heads of household, benevolent social reformers, and agents of the state would all exert control over the lives of poor women and men in different ways.51 When intimate patriarchy failed, they were happy to step in. Denied the opportunity to live with and labor on behalf of their own families, prisoners were forced to work as servants in a different house—the penitentiary.52 This grave violation of the family occurred simultaneously with the production of the nuclear family as “the family” in broader circles.53 Rather than being taught how to cultivate social relationships and familial relationships with their own kin, prisoners were forced to live in a distorted prison family organized around an overly simplified heterosexual political economy. Punishment stood against marriage and family, suggesting that the path of reformative incarceration was never really meant to lead to citizenship at all.
Penal authority was a double-edged sword when it came to women and marriage. On the one hand, unmarried women were disproportionately punished. On the other hand, penal authority also worked against the marriages of prisoners. The introduction of the penitentiary
