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Reconstruct The Penal System In The 1830's

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Asylums for the “Insane” In the 1830’s to 1840’s there was a pursuit by activists to reconstruct the penal system in the United States. These activists advocated for prison reform towards the treatment of incarcerated poor and mentally insane populations. During this time, prisons were used to contain criminals as well as certain Americans deemed undesirable members of society. The prison reform activist believe there should be some type of instructional rehabilitation offered to the prisoners instead of confinement. Their argument was based upon the theory that most criminal turned to a life of crime due to inadequate parental involvement and improper living conditions. The activists believed through proper care and instruction criminals could overcome their trouble childhoods and effectively eliminates their violent and depraved tendencies. Many activists felt that the inadequate resources available to the …show more content…

One such person was Mrs. Dorothea Dix. Mrs. Dix, a Massachusetts schoolteacher, visited a local jail to teach Sunday school services and was appalled at what she saw. The deplorable conditions that inmates were living in along with children who were locked away with adults caused Mrs. Dix to wonder if all jails were managed the same way. Mrs. Dix visited numerous other jails and found the living conditions just as bad. Local criminals and harden criminals were chained along with individuals who were mentally insane. Treatment for the mentally insane in those prisons was non-existent. These individuals were locked away and used as entertainment for the public. Mrs. Dix was inspired to push for prison reform on behalf of the mentally insane and the poor. She sent a letter to the Massachusetts State Legislature and argued that the construction of insane asylums for the mentally ill was not just a necessity but a right entitled to these

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Institutionalization in the 1800’s was Dorothea Dix was a mover and shaker, who together with a few others in her era was responsible for alleviating the plight of the mentally ill. In the 1800's she found them in jails, almshouses and underneath bridges. She then began her major lobby with legislators and authority figures across the land, to get hospitals built in what was then known as the "Moral Treatment Era. " Things did get better, with ups and downs, of course. She visited widely, in the Midwest state hospitals in Independence and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and Winnebago in Wisconsin ca.

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As a nurse and teacher at several prisons, Dorothea was able to have a first hand

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Much adversity arose against institutionalization due to the fact that many patients with chronic mental illness were often institutionalized for life. The 1970’s started a trend of cutting funding to many of these institutions (while some still exist). This was the start of the mass influx of mentally ill criminals into jails and prisons. One example of the effects of deinstitutionalization PBS presents is Keith Williams. With no psychiatric institutions, Williams was forced to into imprisonment.

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Many people went to jail for the pettiest things such as not paying their debt, yet were treated the same as a murder. Another major cause was the mentally ill who had done crimes, but were forced to live cruel living conditions in jail. In Dix’s life she went through

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Their are around 500,000 mentally ill people that are put away in prisons and jails. In the documentary “The New Asylums”,Ohio's state prison system reveals the issues that are ongoing with mentally ill inmates. The major problem we have today is that no one is taking care of the people of these people. Most mentally ill people live by themselves with no family or friends to take care of them and they are off their medications. The mentally ill come in to prison on non violent offenses such as disturbing the peace, trespassing, etc. After leaving mental hospitals they usually end up on the streets and become homeless.

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In the early 19th century, mental asylums were horrific; patients were tortured, chained to the walls, and abused. Reforms began with the revealing of these inhumane conditions in asylums, societal misconceptions about mental illness, and the lack of government control. The transformative reforms, such as the British Lunatics Act of 1845, led to changes in patients' experiences from horror houses and neglect to gradually improving care, empathy, and safety. Dorothea Dix played a pivotal role in advocating for reforms, emphasizing the efficiency of moral treatment and the supposed "curability" of mental diseases. There were many critical reforms in the treatment of mental illnesses in the United States and British asylums, driven by advocates

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During this time period, there was a large controversy over the purpose of prison – was it for punishment or atonement? After the war of 1812, there was a small campaign to put children who had committed crimes in juvenile detention centers rather than jails. However, that was not the biggest reform movement directed at the prison system at the time. Dorothea Dix and several others, including Francis Lieber and Samuel Gridley Howe, began to take action and revise the American Prison System. Their goal was simple: to transform prisons into ones that reformed rather than incarcerated their inmates (Faragher 440).

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Introduction Prior to the mid-1960 virtually all mental health treatment was provided on an inpatient basis in hospitals and institutions. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was established with its primary focus on deinstitutionalizing mentally ill patients, and shutting down asylums in favor of community mental health centers. It was a major policy shift in mental health treatment that allowed patients to go home and live independently while receiving treatment, (Pollack & Feldman, 2003). As a result of the Act, there was a shift of mentally ill persons in custodial care in state institutions to an increase of the mentally ill receiving prosecutions in criminal courts.

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The prison reformation is one reform that took place during the 1800s. At the time, the treatment of prisoners was horrific. They were treated as if they weren’t even human. Prisoners were tied and locked up in chains and put in cages like animals. Children were also locked up along with adults for small charges and crimes that they committed.

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She's the one who lives. The first step in reform was to separate prisoners by their specific needs and build more prisons across the nation. In an article by StMU Scholars discussing Prison and asylum reform, it states “Dix’s movement for the creation of asylums sparked the reforms of such institutions across the world, causing wholesale reevaluations of current institutions and the adoption of more appropriate facilities for the betterment and care of the mentally ill.” (Source D, pg#1). This shows that Doretha Dix’s influence to organize prisoners by their certain needs was an idea adopted and used throughout the country, creating the prison system later known as the “Auburn” and the “Pen Dix, as well as other notable reformers like Thomas Warton, saw crime spike in the 19th century as the country was growing with rapid immigration and knew that change needed to be made.

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Question: What was the typical structure of an asylum in the mid-19th century? To what extent and in what ways are these 19th-century reformers’ beliefs about the nature and treatment of mental illness reflected in the physical design and operational organization of these facilities? Answer:

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Before the emergence of asylums, the burdening of caring for and keeping mentally ill individuals at bay was a domestic responsibility, resting entirely on an individual’s loved ones and local parishes. One of the first recorded asylums in the world was London’s Bethlem Royal Hospital, which admitted its first mentally ill patients in the early thirteenth century. Early hospitals were initially funded “in equal parts by a colonial grant and subscription.” Up until the late eighteenth century, treatment of the mentally ill was grounded on often privately run institutions built on commercial enterprise; there was little to no regard for patients. For almost a century after its emergence as a medical specialty at the turn of the nineteenth century, the field of psychiatry was limited to severely disordered, disabled, criminals, and socially deviant individuals confined to asylums, hospitals and madhouses.

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The movement towards deinstitutionalization has shown a significant shift away from psychiatric hospitals to community health centers; with the result being better management of mental health conditions and more fulfillment for many patients. Though this process has at times been fraught with controversy and has not taken a linear path, overall, major improvements have been made in the way mental health is viewed and treated in the United States. Prior to the modern mental health system we all know today, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries believed that caring for the mentally ill should be left to the family, not society (Grob, 1994). Referred to as “distracted” or “lunatics,” there was a strong sense of burden associated with mental

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633 Words | 3 Pages

Prior to this, electric shock and lobotomies were the primary treatment of the mentally ill.[2] This new medicine, along with federal funding to community facilities and the belief by many that institutions were cruel and inhumane, fueled the release of the mentally ill into America’s communities. “In 1955, the number of those hospitalized grew to an all time high of 558,000 and they suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and severe depression. Many had organic brain diseases such as dementia and brain damage from trauma. ”[2] This number would begin to decline, leaving many without help and institutions forced to close their doors for lack of

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1134 Words | 5 Pages

“Placing the mentally ill in facilities allowed members of the general public to ignore the problem. They didn’t see anyone who had a mental illness roaming the streets, and if they placed a person in an institution like this, they may not have come back to visit.” (Mental Health Treatment). In most cases those placed in the institutions were left with no visits from the outside. The conditions in which they had to live were unfavorable, and often they were meant with unspeakable cruelty.

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