Brief Summary Confinement In John Howard's The State Of Prisons

INTRODUCTION

Prisons, or some form of prison or incarceration has a long history spanning as far back to ancient times as recorded history and written language can document. From the desmoterion of ancient Athens to this very point in history, prisons have undergone and continue to undergo various changes to serve a multitude of purposes. The development of modern prison systems in the United States began with the American Revolution and the publishing of John Howard’s The State of Prisons. John Howard’s work inspired the passing of the Penitentiary Act in 1779 which introduced solitary confinement as well as the notion of separate prisons for men and women—unfortunately, it took many more years to bring the idea to fruition due to constant

President Richard Nixon coined this term in the 1970’s when drug culture and abuse were declared to be public enemy number one. In the 50 plus years since the implementation of the War on Drugs, the prison population has become congested with low-level offenders. The 1980’s is the point of time in which the arrests for drug related crimes rose dramatically. The link between the War on Drugs and the rising prison population is not a newly discovered correlation. In 1989, a study published by James Austin and Aaron McVey in 1989 addressed all of the issues that the modern prison system faces today, such as overcrowding, aging prisoners, and the disproportionate number of minority inmates compared to their white cohorts (Austin and McVey, 1989). Seeing as how this study was published 9 years after the beginning of rising arrest rates, it appears that the issue was never taken seriously until it became a problem that could not be denied. What caused this massive shift in how crime and punishment were regarded? Pratt discussed the shifts in American viewpoints on the causes of crimes in the beginning of the 20th century and how those viewpoints influenced today’s policy and practice surrounding criminal

Political leaders and concerned citizens quickly lost faith in the correctional system and it was deemed that drastic changes must be implemented to save America from this detrimental “crisis” (Cullen and Gilbert, 1982). The conservative movement of the 1970s and the assertion claimed by Robert Martinson of “nothing works” (1974) ushered in three conservative agenda solutions of the purported crime problem that was facing America: (1) abolish indeterminate sentences, (2) eliminate parole programs and release, and (3) instill determinate sentences (Pratt, 2009). From this agenda, the idea that America could build its way out of a crime problem became popular with politicians and key policymakers and along with it, the “get tough” rhetoric was