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Essays on history of prisons
Essays on history of prisons
History of the prison system
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When I arrived on shift we were advised during pass on that inmate Ellery, Danielle Jean (A-13367) was upset due to multiple inmates being showered out and placed in her cell (Cell 1). Her along with inmate Roskey, Skylar Lynne (A-14203) antagonized and bullied both inmate Knight and Robertson until they were at their breaking point. It got to the point where inmate Belanger tried to intervene and got in a heated argument with Roskey, which almost boiled over turning into a physical altercation between the two. Ever since inmate Roskey was placed with Ellery it created a cancer within the cell with the two feeding off of each other. As ordered by Sgt.
The women were often arrested on made up charges and were jailed when they refused to pay fines. They were sent to Occoquan Workhouse, a prison in Virginia (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women staged hunger strikes and “were forcibly fed in a tortuous method” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). The women were beaten and thrown into “cold, unsanitary, and rat-infested cells” (Carol, Myers, Lindman, n.d., National Woman 's Party, Picketing and Prison section, para 2). Eventually prison officials moved Alice to a sanitarium to get her declared insane but the news of her treatment, along with the other women, became public.
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.
Who had raised money by charging people to visit with the prisoners. But still that wasn't the only thing that she did to help make the Territorial Prison such an honorable prison. Throughout her years living at the prison she believed in lifting up the prisoners instead of putting them down. So she decided to change the way that prisoners were treated by treating them like any other person. One of the main ways this was done was by making sure they were more educated when they left the prison.
This is to say, the first example of confinement would be Lennie and George. These two tramps walked
A a few years down the road in 1841, Dix was asked to teach a Sunday school class to a group of women who were doing time in the East Cambridge Jail. Dix went into the jail one person, and came out a completely different one. Going further in the aforementioned Encyclopedia website, it was pointed out that after Dorothea taught the inmates, she was able to get a tour of the jail, which led her to discover the “dungeon cells” which held mentally insane people (para. 10). Horrified to see people of all ages and gender emaciated and half-naked, fettered to different objects, and sleeping on the dirty floors of their cells, Dix started her campaign to help immediately. After surveying every jail she could get into, Dorothea submitted her findings to the Massachusetts legislature (para 11).
Initially, they were trained for clerical, administrative, and support roles, but they eventually came to work as parachute riggers, laboratory assistants, drivers, and within the electrical and mechanical trades (Chenier, 2006). Prior to World War 2, women mostly did “Women Jobs”. They took care of the home, cooked, cleaned, and cared for the children. Women went from mostly working in their homes to enlisting and doing mechanical jobs. Although women were not treated the same
Angela Davis in her book, Are Prisons Obsolete?, argues for the overall abolishment of prisons. Amongst the significant claims that support Davis’ argument for abolition, the inadequacy of prison reforms stands out as the most compelling. Reform movements truthfully only seek to slightly improve prison conditions, however, reform protocols are eventually placed unevenly between women and men. Additionally, while some feminist women considered the crusade to implement separate prisons for women and men as progressive, this reform movement proved faulty as female convicts increasingly became sexually assaulted. Following the theme of ineffectiveness, the reform movement that advocated for a female approach to punishment only succeeded in strengthening
Women were expected to cook, take care of their children and maintain the household, but not much more. These standards created by societal boundaries caused women to feel insignificant, as if they had no say in anything. Thus, women wanted to be given equal rights that other individuals at the had. Doc A states, “we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States” (Cult of Domesticity, Doc.
Motherjones. Com says that In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, prison labor was largely regulated or prohibited, due in part to efforts by labor unions to prevent competition with low-paid inmates. However, while the trend was reversed again in the 1970s, the consolation remains that the wages and also the working conditions of the inmates are now much better. Regarding gender equality, while it is a fact that the women presently comprise almost half of the total unionised workforce in the United States, but it is also seen that the participation and representation of women in the initial years of labor movements was almost negligible.
No man could enter the red tent; within the tent women made any rules no one ruled over another. This was a time for them to appreciate their otherwise grueling
Prison Problems in the U.S. The United States have the biggest incarceration rate in the world. Our prisons are full of convicts, rapists, and murderers. One of our biggest problems are is that we don't have enough money too feed them and keep a roof over their heads. Another issue is the proportion of middle aged men in our country are either black or hispanic.
Transcendentalists were Americans that believed everyone should be treated equally, so they began six major reform movements. There were many Transcendentalist movements, but the six most important reforms were the prison movement, women’s rights, anti-slavery, temperance, insane and education movement. The prison reform movement was started by the Transcendentalists because they felt that the system was wrong unfair and cruel. All prisoners suffered the same consequences regardless of his or her crime.
A young woman pushed forward, said she had already been there. They had no clean water, she said, no oxygen, no medications, no electricity. “There is nothing there.” “That’s where you go,” the guard said”(p. 306). The women are treated as if their welfare is unimportant because women are thought of as a mere decoration to the society and are considered useless enough to not pay any attention to.
Women of color are the most targeted, prosecuted, and imprisoned women in the country and rapidly increasing their population within the prison systems. According to Nicholas Freudenberg, 11 out of every 1000 women will end up incarcerated in their lifetime, the average age being 35, while only five of them are white, 15 are Latinas, and 36 are black. These two groups alone make up 70 percent of women in prison, an astonishing rate compared to the low percentage comprise of within the entire female population in the country (1895). Most of their offenses are non-violent, but drug related, and often these women come from oppressive and violent backgrounds, where many of their struggles occurred directly within the home and from their own family.