The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829–1913 by Ashley T. Rubin

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829–1913 by Ashley T. Rubin Erica Rhodes Hayden (bio) The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829–1913. By Ashley T. Rubin. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Pp. 356. Cloth, $59.99.) In 1829, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia opened as a premier institution of the Pennsylvania System, or separate system of punishment, [End Page 398] in which inmates silently inhabited separate cells. Other states used the Auburn System, or silent system, in which inmates worked in congregate and slept in separate cells. In The Deviant Prison, Ashley T. Rubin combines sociological theory and traditional historical research to delve into the inner workings of Eastern State to understand precisely why the prison clung to the Pennsylvania System of discipline. In doing so, Rubin argues that Eastern State was a "deviant prison" because the institution engaged in an "open and routine violation of increasingly solidified national norms about prison discipline" (xxxvii), making it both unique and criticized. Rubin contends that Eastern's use of and defense of the Pennsylvania System rested in the hands of the prison's administrators, who chose this path "because the system offered them something—the means to claim a unique status—that was not available under the Auburn System" (xlii). Rubin's argument about the importance of status to the prison's administrators centers on Philip Selznick's institutional theory, in which the people involved with an organization "develop their own sets of goals for themselves in relation to the organization and for the organization itself" (xlii), which often depart from the organization's original objectives. Rubin dubs this "personal institutionalization" and argues that it is why Eastern's administrators promoted the Pennsylvania System despite the consequences. It offered an "advantage of difference" (xlvi). Rubin carefully uses public annual reports of the institution and personal papers of the administrators, such as letters, warden logs, and administrators' journals, to prove how they defended the system, even manipulated it at times, in order to maintain the unique status for their institution and themselves. The Deviant Prison is exceptionally thorough in design and detail. The structure follows the rise and fall of the Pennsylvania System in three parts: establishing the conditions for Eastern's deviance and for the personal institutionalization of the administrators, exploring the advantage of being different through both public and private avenues, and examining the process of deinstitutionalization and the death of the Pennsylvania System. Chapters 1 and 2 provide solid historical context for the history and development of the two competing prison discipline systems. The author then dives deeply into the argument that the administration continued to promote a romanticized version of the Pennsylvania System, even if the daily practices departed from the stated goals. Rubin demonstrates cogently how Eastern's administrators held much power and autonomy to make decisions about how the prison was run, in part owing to lack of legal guidance, thus perpetuating the Pennsylvania System throughout the nineteenth century. During the reform fervor of the 1830s and 1840s, Rubin contends that Eastern became a deviant prison in two ways: as one [End Page 399] of the few to follow the Pennsylvania System, and because it was "heavily criticized" through a variety of "calumnious myths" that the administrators countered (101), consequently entrenching the Pennsylvania System further. Once the administration invested in the Pennsylvania System, there was little choice to backtrack. Part 2 explores a central portion of Rubin's overall argument through an analysis of the administrators' public and private defenses and manipulations of the system to keep it in place. For example, administrators used a variety of "naming trends" in annual reports to "protect the legitimacy of the Pennsylvania System" and to combat myths about solitary confinement (145). This, along with the fact that the administrators characterized their system as "humane, benevolent, mild, and kind," allowed them to "revel in their difference" (174). While recent historiographical trends on prisons and punishment have explored the inmate experience, particularly that of women, people of color, and juveniles, The Deviant Prison reverts to...