Crime in England 1815-1880 by Helen Johnston

Author:Helen Johnston [Johnston, Helen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781843929536
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2015-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

The separate system and the silent system – transforming the offender

Both the separate and the silent system were disciplinary regimes that had originated in America and were thought to offer new insights into how to reform prisoners’ behaviour. The separate system was used in the state of Pennsylvania and the silent system in the state of New York. Both focused on the individual prisoner and how to generate a change in their behaviour: while the former isolated prisoners in cells and saw religion as a potent and influential factor, the latter relied on associated labour but prevented all communication between inmates. The overriding objective of both systems was to prevent communication between or the moral ‘contamination’ of prisoners. These goals would reduce the corrupting influence that hardened or repeat offenders had on first-time or young criminals and allow for personal reflection on their own behaviour.

The separate system operated by keeping prisoners apart from on another at all times. Inmates were held in isolation in individual cells, where they would work, sleep and eat. They were permitted to leave their cells only for exercise – even then they would remain alone, often in a separate yard which prevented them seeing other prisoners – or to go to chapel, during which they would wear masks or caps covering their faces to prevent them recognising one another. Experiments in penal discipline had begun at the Walnut Street prison in Philadelphia in the late eighteenth century, but it was the Eastern Penitentiary, which opened in 1829, which implemented the separate system to its fullest. This was thought not only to deter the criminal but to also to offer the potential for moral reform.

As noted earlier, across the nineteenth century the influence of central government on local prisons was also growing. One significant way in which this was felt was through the introduction of prison inspectors as directed in the Prisons Act 1835. The Gaols Act 1823 had introduced a range of regulations which began the process to ensure more uniformity in prisons across the country. The Prisons Act 1835 extended this by instructing that all rules and regulations had to be approved by the Secretary of State and that inspectors would visit all prisons (see also Stockdale, 1983). The Act had followed a Select Committee on Prison Discipline which had reasserted the importance of hard labour, religious instruction and the separation of prisoners to prevent ‘moral’ contamination between inmates.

Two of the first prison inspectors for the Home District, William Crawford and Reverend Whitworth Russell, would prove to be quite influential in the development of prisons in England in the following decades. William Crawford went to the United States in the early 1830s to examine the operation of different regimes. In comparing the separate system and the silent system, he reported that:

the discipline of Auburn is of a physical, that of Philadelphia of a moral character. The whip inflicts immediate pain, but solitude inspires permanent terror. The former degrades while it humiliates; the latter subdues, but it does not debase.

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