-
Advances in Punishment, and Reduction of Such
Pennsylvania eliminated the death penalty for robbery and burglary. Began to focus on less trivial offences. This marked the time when capital punishment was starting to be looked down upon as a more primative method of enforcement. Although it is necessary to note that countries at this time did not have a system of law enforcement, police, other than the army. However, nearly all prisons were yet corrupt, with unfair treatment of the imprisoned and conditions for imprisonment. -
Juvenile Detention Centers
First juvenile detention center opened up in New York by the state assembly. Isaac T. Hopper was mainly to thank for this. He and his daughter traveled around New York and campaigned for the release of children from prisons into these Juvenile Centers. An advocate of correction, not punishment, Hopper was just one of his contemporary prison-reform activists. -
Police - Reformation
Sir Robert Peel created the moden concept of the police force - London Metropolitan Police Service. Many idealists/activists at this time began to spread the idea that prisons should not only punish, but reform. Reformatories, penitentiaries, and houses of correction were thus created. It was also the start of better treatment toward the mentally ill, a revolution brought upon in part by Dorothea Dix, as scholars began thought that said illness might have been caused by brain damage, not curses. -
Prison Husks
Prison husks were ships used to store prisoners awaiting transport. They ended up being used as prisons themselves as most European prisons were constantly overcapacitated. At one point, a good 2/3 of British criminals were enprisoned on these husks. Barely fed and given only the water from the polluted lakes the husks floated on, the accused were mistreated and abused. Used less and less for containment leading into the mid-19th century, the last of these ships were burned in Britiain in 1857. -
Enoch Cobb Wines and Theodore William Dwight
Wrote evaluations of flaws in the prison system. They stated that reforming the inmates must be a prison's primary concern. Dwight, especially, fought for the prisoner's cause, even going so far as to join the New York Prison Association and the Prison Congress at Stockholm. He and Wines fought for more freedom in the prisons of American and Canada, as well as the right of children to reform and institutionalization, as opposed to punishment.
