Tomorrow's Prison

Abstract

folk has more than usual significance in the development of penology. It was in the Wymondham jail in the county of Norfolk, in England, where the principles enunciated by the immortal John Howard were most effectively put into practice by Sir Thomas Beevor in i785separate cells were provided, classification of prisoners by types was inaugurated, hard labor with wages was supplied six days of the week; religious instruction and education were also an integral part of the program. Rarely was it found necessary for a prisoner to be disciplined, and almost none was placed in irons. This regime was heralded far and wide, even though it was in a county jail. On this side of the Atlantic the newly organized (in 1787) Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons issued a pamphlet2 calling attention to Beevor's progressive philosophy; and it can truly be said that his regime served as the inspiration for the progressive system of prison discipline inaugurated in the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia in 1790, which was the first penitentiary in the world. The second Norfolk is Norfolk Island, where in 184o Alexander Maconochie landed with his radical ideas of indefinite or indeterminate sentence. Maconochie found Norfolk Island a hell on earth. To this isolated spot, a thousand miles off the coast of Australia, were sent the vicious convicts of the penal colonies in the Australian area. Twice condemned, these wretches were called. All had given up hope of ever being released, since their time sentences were so severe that none could live them out. Maconochie was opposed to the time sentence and, as is well known to penologists, set up a series of progressive stages through which the most depraved convicts could pass to freedom if they had the will. Hard work, good behavior, and the will to succeed paid off in dividends almost from the start of a man's sentence. Thus, Norfolk Island is famous in the history of penology as the first practical application of the indeterminate sentence at the hands of Maconochie.