Benevolent Repression

Social Control and the American Reformatory-Prison Movement

Alexander W. Pisciotta

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 1994
• ISBN:
  9780814767979
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

The opening, in 1876, of the Elmira Reformatory marked the birth of the American adult reformatory movement and the introduction of a new approach to crime and the treatment of criminals. Hailed as a reform panacea and the humane solution to America's ongoing crisis of crime and social disorder, Elmira sparked an ideological revolution. Repression and punishment were supposedly out. Academic and vocational education, military drill, indeterminate sentencing and parole—"benevolent reform"—were now considered instrumental to instilling in prisoners a respect for God, law, and capitalism.

Not so, says Al Pisciotta, in this highly original, startling, and revealing work. Drawing upon previously unexamined sources from over a half-dozen states and a decade of research, Pisciotta explodes the myth that Elmira and other institutions of "the new penology" represented a significant advance in the treatment of criminals and youthful offenders.

The much-touted programs failed to achieve their goals; instead, prisoners, under Superintendent Zebulon Brockway, considered the Father of American Corrections, were whipped with rubber hoses and two-foot leather straps, restricted to bread and water in dark dungeons during months of solitary confinement, and brutally subjected to a wide range of other draconian psychological and physical abuses intended to pound them into submission. Escapes, riots, violence, drugs, suicide, arson, and rape were the order of the day in these prisons, hardly conducive to the transformation of "dangerous criminal classes into Christian gentleman," as was claimed. Reflecting the racism and sexism in the social order in general, the new penology also legitimized the repression of the lower classes.

Highlighting the disparity between promise and practice in America's prisons, Pisciotta draws on seven inmate case histories to illustrate convincingly that the "March of Progress" was nothing more than a reversion to the ways of old. In short, the adult reformatory movement promised benevolent reform but delivered benevolent repression—a pattern that continues to this day.

A vital contribution to the history of crime, corrections, and criminal justice, this book will also have a major impact on our thinking about contemporary corrections and issues surrounding crime, punishment, and social control.

Chapter One

Making Christian Gentlemen: The Promise of Elmira, 1876–1899

The Elmira Reformatory led America’s search for methods of reform in the late-nineteenth century. This chapter provides an overview of the origin, development, and operation of this institution during its “golden age of reform.” The first section examines forces that led to the founding of the Elmira Reformatory in 1876, explains how the Elmira system evolved, and describes how the new penology was, in theory, supposed to rehabilitate inmates. The second demonstrates how the opening of Elmira and the introduction of prison science sparked a paradigmatic revolution which transformed America’s approach to thinking about crime and treating criminals. Finally, there is the career of America’s most important penologist—the father of the new penology, the Elmira system, and the adult reformatory movement—Zebulon Reed Brockway. Brockway was, in the eyes of many, the arm of the state, the hand of God, and a penological genius.

The kindly rhetoric of Elmira’s highly successful public relations and marketing campaign masked a repressive class control agenda. These findings support many of the central themes presented by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish and by David Garland in Punishment and Welfare. The Elmira Reformatory, much like the adult prisons and juvenile reformatories which preceded it, attempted to build “docile bodies” and “manage the souls of men.” The Elmira system was designed to instill youthful offenders with the habits of order, discipline, and self-control and to mold obedient citizen-workers. The “socialization” and “normalization” of offenders was aimed at controlling the lower classes and, on a practical and symbolic level, contributing to the development of an orderly society. America’s new medical model legitimized the social control of the dangerous classes and attempted to fit the lumpenproletariat into their “proper place” in the social, economic, and political order: namely, law-abiding and hard-working proletarians.

Origins of Elmira: Crime, Criminal Justice, and the Crisis in Corrections

The post-Civil War era was one of the most dynamic periods in American history. Unparalleled demographic, social, economic, and political changes shook the nation. The relative decline of agriculture and the rise of industrialization were the primary catalysts of change. The influx of millions of immigrants contributed to the growth of America’s industrial complex by supplying inexpensive labor. New production, distribution, consumption, and exchange networks formed, and the United States rapidly emerged as a world economic, political, and military power. But industrialization and urbanization resulted in increases, or at least perceived increases, in a variety of “city-related” problems: crime, delinquency, poverty, moral decay. America became, as historian Robert Wiebe puts it, a disorganized and distended society. Traditional American values—the rural, Protestant village-farmer lifestyle—crumbled. “America in the late nineteenth century,” concludes Wiebe, “was a society without a core.”¹

Post-Civil War New Yorkers were firmly convinced that crime, deviance, and social disorder were skyrocketing and that New York City was rapidly degenerating into a moral cesspool and den of iniquity. Edward Crapsey, a police reporter, expressed the sentiments of many fearful observers in his analysis of “the nether side of New York.” The city was rife with crime and delinquency. Seven thousand grog shops, five thousand prostitutes, three thousand professional criminals, and six hundred illegal lottery stores plagued the city. Reflecting prevailing sentiments, Crapsey attributed much of the increase in disorder to new immigrants. “The thrifty emigrants who came to us forehanded and determined to wring competence from the new republic, merely made New York their stepping stone to fortune,” explained Crapsey. “The dregs settled in the metropolis where they landed.”²

Charles Loring Brace—a Congregationalist minister, noted social reformer, and xenophobe—echoed these concerns. Poor immigrant stock, a lack of religious conviction, the rise of tenements, the breakdown of the family, alcohol, poverty, laziness, disease, and the inherent immorality of the lower classes were the causes of New York’s decline. “The ‘dangerous classes’,” cautioned Brace, “are mainly American-born but the children of Irish and German immigrants.” The new criminal classes were a potentially revolutionary force which had the potential to overthrow the nation’s economic and political institutions. Armageddon was at hand:

Let but law lift its hand from them for a season, or let the civilizing influence of American life fail to reach them, and if the opportunity offered we shall see an explosion from this class which might leave this city in ashes and blood.³

Pathological gangs received blame for much of the city’s crime. The Dead Rabbits, Plug Uglies, Forty Thieves, Gas House Gang, and Hell’s Kitchen Gang terrorized the city. These gangs, which allegedly had up to fifteen hundred members, were involved in robbery, theft, confidence games, prostitution, and even murder. Organized on ethnic, religious, racial, and political lines, they were the products of the city’s infamous slums: Satan’s Circus, Five Points District, Murderers’ Alley, Poverty Lane, Thieves Exchange, and The Morgue. Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, and mainstream American gangs fought to protect their “business interests” and “turf.” Members proudly displayed their “colors” and worked hard to cultivate their reputations. The Whyos required murder as a rite of initiation. The Reverend Brace and other respectable citizens had little doubt, especially following New York’s Dead Rabbit Riot of 1857 and the Draft Riot of 1863, that these lower-class gangs were a major source of crime and a potentially revolutionary force.⁴

Post-bellum New Yorkers were convinced that the state’s criminal justice system was incapable of dealing with these gangs and the rising tide of crime and social disorder. New York City’s police force was ineffective at detecting or preventing crime. It was common knowledge that policemen were unqualified, untrained, and corrupt. The court system was equally inefficient. Many judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys were involved in city and state politics. Following the Tammany Hall tradition, bribery became widespread; it was common knowledge that justice was for sale in New York’s courts. Crapsey’s experiences as a police reporter led him to conclude that “as producers of travesties upon law and justice, the police courts of New York are unequalled.”⁵

By the post-Civil War period, confidence in New York’s correctional institutions—the pride of American penology in the first half of the nineteenth century—was badly shaken. The opening of the Auburn Prison (1817) and Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, 1826) marked the birth of the “congregate” or “silent system” of penal reform. The New York House of Refuge (New York City, 1825) was the nation’s first juvenile reformatory.⁶ But by the 1860s, the longstanding debate between proponents of New York’s “silent” system and Pennsylvania’s “separate” system—introduced at the Walnut Street Prison (Philadelphia, 1790), Western Penitentiary (Pittsburgh, 1826), and Eastern Penitentiary (Philadelphia, 1829)—had given way to a new realization: both systems might be ineffective.⁷ Faith in the New York House of Refuge also declined. Post-bellum child savers increasingly opened “cottage-style” juvenile reformatories. In 1867, Governor Reuben Fenton declared that prisons were grossly overcrowded and only in “fair condition of internal management and discipline.” In 1869, Governor John Hoffman declared that “the prison system of this state abounds in evils and errors.”⁸

The New York Prison Association responded to this crisis in corrections by appointing two respected members, Enoch Cobb Wines and Theodore Dwight, to conduct an investigation. Wines and Dwight inspected New York’s prisons, juvenile reformatories, county penitentiaries, and local jails. They also visited correctional institutions in seventeen states and Canada to develop a comparative perspective. Their Report on the Prisons and Reformatories of the United States and Canada (1867) was decidedly negative but offered recommendations to make New York’s penal system once again “a model for other States.” Rehabilitation, not punishment, should be the goal of each institution. The report called for reductions in sentence disparity, less emphasis on profit-oriented labor, and more emphasis on industrial education, academic education, religion, and post-release supervision. Wines and Dwight called for the opening of a new type of institution to separate hardened and novice offenders: an “adult reformatory.” This institution would aim to “teach and train the prisoner in such a manner that, on his discharge, he may be able to resist temptation and inclined to lead an upright, worthy life.”⁹

Governor Hoffman endorsed the Wines and Dwight report, and the legislature passed “An Act Authorizing the Appointment of Commissioners to Locate a State Penitentiary or Industrial Reformatory” in 1869. Five appointed commissioners selected a site and began planning the new “state penitentiary” or “industrial reformatory.” The commissioners purchased a 280-acre tract of land in Elmira and hired an architect, W. L. Woolett, to design the institution. Woolett’s plan called for a five hundred-cell facility on thirteen acres surrounded by a twenty-foot wall. Thirty acres were set aside for support buildings. The 1872 legislature approved the design and appropriated $500,000 for construction. Although Woolett was replaced in 1874, the original plan was followed. The construction of the new correctional institution made steady progress.¹⁰

At this stage, New York’s penal reformers had no inkling that they were on the verge of building a model correctional institution which would capture the attention of the world and reshape the American criminal justice system. The commissioners charged with the responsibility of designing the institution received little direction and were, as a result, in a quandary. Wines and Dwight had called for the opening of an “adult reformatory” and the introduction of a new “science of punishment”—but their report was short on specifics. The 1869 state legislature authorized the commissioners to construct either a “penitentiary” or an “industrial reformatory.” An 1870 legislative act provided some direction by restricting commitments to male first-time offenders between the ages of sixteen and thirty. This act also called for the new reformatory to provide “agricultural labor” and “mechanical industry.”¹¹ But crucial questions remained: How should the regimen of this experimental adult reformatory be structured? How were the commissioners to develop a “science of punishment”? How was this new class of offenders to be reformed?

Events outside New York State shaped the regimen of the incipient Elmira Reformatory. Given the pessimism of post-bellum penologists, it is understandable that debates about new approaches to treating criminals took place across the country and around the world. Cognizant of the malaise in penology, Enoch Wines convinced his colleagues at the New York Prison Association that organizing an international conference to discuss these issues might reveal enlightened approaches to reform. The first meeting of the National Congress on Penitentiary and Reformatory Discipline was the product of Wines’s efforts. Drawn in large part by the reported successes of European reformers such as Alexander Machonochie, Richard Whately, Frederick and Matthew Davenport Hill, Manuel Montesinos, and Walter Crofton, over 250 delegates from twenty-four states and a number of foreign countries traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1870.¹² A. J. Goshorn’s opening address set the tone of the congress:

With a rapidly increasing population and the disposition of the people to congregate in large cities, we have an alarming increase of crime, and legislation is obliged to be ever devising new remedies and imposing fresh penalties for the protection of society.¹³

With Goshorn’s exhortation in mind, delegates delivered thirty-four papers. The pinnacle of the conference was the adoption of the acclaimed Declaration of Principles (reprinted in the appendix below). These thirty-seven principles—written by Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes, Enoch Wines, Franklin Sanborn, and Zebulon Brockway—were grounded on the assumption that “the supreme aim of prison discipline is the reform of criminals, not the infliction of vindictive suffering” The Declaration of Principles called for individualized care based on “scientific treatment” and the “medical model.” To foster reform, delegates recommended indeterminate sentencing, a carefully calculated mark and classification system, intensive academic and vocational instruction, constructive labor, and humane disciplinary methods. Intensive post-release supervision (i.e. parole) would, in theory, extend rehabilitation into the community. Wines was delighted: here was a new, enlightened approach to treating criminals. Here was the new penology—the ideological foundation of the Elmira system—and the solution to the malaise in American and international corrections.¹⁴

By May 1876, the Elmira Reformatory was nearly ready to receive its first inmates. However, the institution still lacked a clear mission, little effort had been made to develop a regimen of reform, and a superintendent had not been appointed. These problems were summarily dealt with when, on 11 May 1876, the commissioners offered the position to one of the nation’s most respected penologists, Zebulon Brockway. Brockway did not hesitate; he accepted the superintendency on 12 May. New York was on the verge of introducing a revolutionary approach to the treatment of criminals. The American criminal justice system was on the verge of a paradigmatic revolution.

Building Elmira: The Economics of Penal Reform, 1876–1880

The opening of the doors of the Elmira Reformatory on 24 July 1876 to receive thirty inmates who were transferred from Auburn Prison marked the beginning of a new era in American penology. William Phinney, Charles Forward, and Charles Mann had the dubious honor of serving as Elmira’s first commitments. Phinney, Forward, and Mann were co-conspirators, convicted of grand larceny and sentenced to five years in the Auburn Prison. Similar to thousands of offenders who would follow them into Elmira over the next half century, these inmates were poor, unskilled, uneducated, unemployed, and exhibited bad personal habits (drinking, smoking, debauchery).¹⁵ They were products of New York’s dangerous classes—the new “floating population.”

However, Phinney, Forward, Mann, and their Auburn cohorts did not go to Elmira for rehabilitation. Elmira’s founding 1876 law did not call for indeterminate sentencing, parole, or other programs which would later become known as the Elmira system. The 1876 act appointed five “respectable citizens” to serve as the first board of managers, charged with the responsibility of hiring a superintendent, inspecting financial records, and making rules governing the operation of the reformatory. Most importantly, the law instructed the managers to finish building the institution, which was far from complete. Phinney, Forward, Mann, and the other Auburn inmates provided “the labor necessary for the construction of shops and the inclosures [sic] of the grounds upon which the reformatory is located, and for the completion of unfinished portions of the reformatory.”¹⁶ From 1876 to 1880, the Elmira Reformatory was, quite simply, a work camp.

A number of formidable tasks confronted Brockway; these needed to be addressed before prison science could even be contemplated. The central administration building, officers’ quarters, and most of the twenty-foot security wall were finished when the institution was opened. However, only 312 of the institution’s 504 cells were complete; there were locks on “some cells.” Brockway later stated that, “During the initial twenty-six months, from July 24, 1876, to October, 1878, it was not practicable to enter upon the projected reformatory plans.” The managers shared Brockway’s assessment:

It is probably not expected, at this stage of the reformatory, we should have entered actively upon the work of improving the prisoners, as is only possible when the reformatory is completed and new legislat...