Elaborate on the history and origins of corrections starting in Europe and ending in the early years of the United States. Pay particular attention to the Pennsylvania and Auburn correctional systems when discussing the history of corrections in the early United States.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Penal institutions have been around since the tenth century in England to hold pretrial detainees and those waiting for their sentence to be carried out. During the twelfth century, King Henry II of England constructed a series of jails to hold thieves and vagrants prior to the disposition of their sentence. The workhouse in Brideswell was built in 1557 to hold people convicted of relatively minor offenses who would work to pay off their debt to society or to hold more serious offenders pending their execution. After the American Revolution, the growing inmate population could no longer be transported to North America, forcing the English to house prisoners on abandoned ships anchored in harbors, also known as hulks. The first American jail was built in James City in the Virginia colony in the early seventeenth century. However, the modern American correctional concept has its origin in Pennsylvania under the leadership of William Penn. He revised the Pennsylvania criminal code to forbid torture and capricious use of mutilation and physical punishment. He also ordered a new type of institution be built that was similar to today's jails-county trustees or commissioners raised money to build and maintain jails, which were operated by a local sheriff. Pennsylvania took the radical step of establishing a prison that placed each inmate in a single cell for the duration of their sentence.