Discuss the colonial jails and prisons; highlight how they differed from English or European institutions.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The first jail in America was built in Jamestown, Virginia, soon after the colony’s founding in 1606 (Burns, 1975; Zupan, 1991). Massachusetts built a jail in Boston in 1635, and Maryland built a jail for the colony in 1662 (Roberts, 1997). The oldest standing jail in the United States was built in the late 1600s and is located in Barnstable, Massachusetts (Library of Congress, 2010). It was used by the sheriff to hold both males and females, along with his family, in upstairs, basement, and barn rooms. Both men and women were held in this and other jails like it, mostly before they were tried for both serious and minor offenses, as punishment for offenses, or to ensure they were present for their own execution. Such an arrangement as this—holding people in homes, inns, or other structures, that were not originally designated or constructed as “jails”—was not uncommon in early colonial towns (Goldfarb, 1975; Irwin, 1985; Kerle, 2003). As in England, inmates of these early and colonial jails were required to pay a “fee” for their upkeep (the same fee system that John Howard opposed). Those who were wealthier could more easily buy their way out of incarceration, or if that was not possible because of the nature of the offense, they could at least ensure that they had more luxurious accommodations (Zupan, 1991). Even when jailers were paid a certain amount to feed and clothe inmates, they might be disinclined to do so, being that what they saved by not taking care of their charges they were able to keep (Zupan, 1991). As a result, inmates of early American jails were sometimes malnourished or starving. Moreover, in the larger facilities they were crammed into unsanitary rooms, often without regard to separation by age, gender, or offense, conditions that also led to early death and disease. Though, Irwin (1985) does remark that generally Americans fared better in colonial jails than their English and European cousins did in their own, as the arrangements were less formal and restrictive in the American jails and were more like rooming houses. Relatedly, Goldfarb (1975) remarks, Jails that did exist in the 18th century were run on a household model with the jailer and his family residing on the premises. The inmates were free to dress as they liked, to walk around freely and to provide their own food, and other necessities. (p. 9). As White people migrated across the continent of North America, the early western jails were much like their earlier eastern and colonial cousins, with makeshift structures and cobbled together supervision serving as a means of holding the accused over for trial (Moynihan, 2002). In post–Civil War Midwestern cities, disconnected outlaw gangs (such as the Jesse James Gang) were responded to in a harsh manner. Some communities even built rotary jails, which were like human squirrel cages. Inside a secure building, these rotating steel cages, segmented into small “pie-shaped cells” were secured to the floor and could be spun at will by the sheriff (Goldfarb, 1975, p. 11). Of course, without prisons in existence per se (we will discuss the versions of such institutions that did exist shortly), most punishments for crimes constituted relatively short terms in jails, or public shaming (as in the stocks), or physical punishments such as flogging or the pillory, or banishment. Executions were also carried out, usually but not always for the most horrific of crimes such as murder or rape, though in colonial America, many more crimes qualified for this punishment (Zupan, 1991). As in Europe and England at this time, those who were poorer or enslaved were more likely to experience the harshest of punishments (Irwin, 1985; Zupan, 1991). Similar to Europe and England in this era, jails also held the mentally ill, along with debtors, drifters, transients, the inebriated, runaway slaves or servants, and the criminally involved (usually pretrial; Cornelius, 2007).