“Degenerate Criminals”

Abstract

Inspired by the breakthrough of the discipline of criminology and biological theories of degeneration, prison psychiatry became a flourishing field during the latter decades of the 19th century. This is reflected in the history of the Vridsløselille penitentiary in Denmark, which operated as a Pennsylvania-model institution with strict solitary confinement from 1859 to the early 1930s. Throughout the period, this prison experienced extensive problems with inmate mental health, and as the discipline of psychiatry developed, mental disorders were given new names and old diseases disappeared. Although prison authorities were willing to acknowledge the damaging effects of the isolation regimes being employed, a number of psychiatrists located the causes of mental disorders among biological dispositional traits rather than situational factors. In doing so, they downplayed the power of the prison context and offered biological “degeneration” among criminals as an alternative explanation.