The transformation of carceral practices in Pennsylvania: from William Penn's Great Law to the Penitentiary House at Walnut Street Prison

Abstract

The article analyzes the transformation of carceral practices in Pennsylvania (1682–1790) in the context of changes in criminal laws: from the formal consolidation in the Code of Laws of 1682 of reformatories with hard labor to the organization in Philadelphia in 1790 of the first penitentiary house with a regime of solitary confinement.
 It is defined that before the states gained independence, correctional houses, if they functioned in some cities, then as institutions of forced labor and the purpose of correction was not before them. The Revolutionary War for Independence had a decisive impact on the reform of the penal system, which resulted in the adoption of the state constitution, which contained a prescription to revise the penal system. The Criminal Law of 1786 established the main punishment for serious crimes as imprisonment combined with hard labour, but the regime of imprisonment did not change in any way, and public hard labour was recognized as ineffective.
 It is established that the main actors in the further search for a model of serving a sentence of imprisonment in Pennsylvania were members of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. The main steps of the reformers in 1788-1790 were aimed at introducing legislative changes in the field of execution of punishments with an emphasis on solitary confinement based on the practical experience of reformatories in England and prison theory. As a result of the Society's initiatives, in 1790, An Act to reform the penal laws of the state was adopted, in which the main elements of the sentencing regime were hard labor and unremitted solitude in order to correct criminals and prevent new crimes. For this purpose, it was prescribed to build a separate building with single cells in the yard of Walnut Street Prison for the detention of dangerous criminals. The law established a mechanism for control and supervision of the prison, as well as regulated the regime principles of serving the sentence, which were largely borrowed from the experience of English workhouses.