Comparing The Chattel Slavery And The Colonial Penal System

213 Words1 Pages
It would be impossible to understand women’s imprisonment without looking back to its history. During the sixteenth century English jails were in awful conditions, there was no segregation of inmates. Men, women, children, the mentally ill, physically sick, the serious offenders and the petty offenders were all housed in the same place (Moynahan and Stuart, Pg. 4). Slavery and the Colonial Penal System were a period when America was being colonized; an era when not only the rules of religious and secular beliefs rule, but also of the rules of slavery. Blacks were being sold to slavery. By 1830 there were nearly two million blacks working to build America’s colonies. Chattel slavery was rooted in the Southern colonies; it was a profitable system