Race, Crime and Law in Nineteenth Century America – Week 8 Flashcards
Europe in the 18th century:
Shift from physical punishments and punishment by death for crimes to “punishments of the soul” through confinement in prisons
Shift from punishment as a public exhibition to punishment in private
Shift from an inquisitorial form of courts where defendants were not represented by a lawyer to a more regularised court process based on code of laws
How does the US fit into this?
For whites in America, there was a similar shift at the end of the 18th century from physical punishments/capital punishment to the prison
For whites, punishment became less public
The system of courts in America also became more formalised
BUT the shift from physical punishments and public executions that occurred in Europe never occurred for people of colour in America during the 19th century
Incarceration in the US:
Today the US has 5% of the world population and has 25% of world prisoners
About $70 billion spent on corrections each year
Race and Incarceration in the US:
Approx. 318 million people in US in 2014 (according to census bureau estimate). In 2014, African Americans made up about 13% of the US population
African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
Drug Sentencing Disparities:
About 14 million whites and 2.6 million African Americans report using an illicit drug
AAs represent 12% of the total population of drug users, but 38% of those arrested for drug offences, and 59% of those in state prison for a drug offence
1785-1810s: First Period of Shift to Prisons in America
Previously, before American Revolution capital punishment one of main forms of punishment
Those not executed often faced corporal punishment: whipping, branding, time in stocks.
Jail largely only used for brief periods (awaiting execution, etc…) but not for punishment.
First experiments with long-term confinement after Revolutionary War
After Revolution, several states revised their laws so that capital punishment would be restricted only to offense of murder.
As searched for an alternative to capital punishment, states increasingly relied on their ancient jails
Jails became overcrowded.
New Model emerged: Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail
New Model emerged: Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail
How Walnut Street different from colonial jails:
Inmates were separated by gender, age, and criminality.
Inmates who broke the prison rules got solitary confinement.
Confinement intended to reform prisoners - given work
Walnut Street Jail became the model followed around U.S.
Walnut Street Jail Model:
- Jails became overcrowded
- Jails: more disease, violence, crime
- Walnut Street Model became associated with crime and social disorder
1820-1865: Second Period of Shifts to Prisons in U.S.
Reformers advocated for solitary confinement for all prisoners
ried this in New York at the Auburn State Prison (1821-1823):
– prisoners in solitary confinement cells.
- Cells small and dark
- Only reading material Bible
- Many inmates became physically or mentally ill, attempted mutilation or suicide.
New “Auburn System” at Auburn State Prison:
- Inmates in the solitary cells at night.
- During the day, inmates marched to factory-like rooms inside the prison to work
- Inmates not allowed to look at one another or talk to one another.
- Became the most popular model during this period – prisons across the U.S. looked like this.
1820-1865: Regional Differences
Northern prisons’ disproportionately incarcerated immigrants and African Americans.
Southern prisons were smaller and largely confined white prisoners. African-Americans accused of crimes were often punished at the hands of white slave-masters on a plantation.
1865-1910s – Third Period of Shift to Prisons in U.S.
Multiple models of prisons across the United States.
- Auburn-style prisons for hardened criminals
- Reformatories for young or first-time criminals
- Female-only prisons
- Distinctive southern prisons focused around chain gangs/convict labour.
How Can We Explain These Shifts in Punishment?
- Some scholars: Role of economic changes and changes in labour needs.
- Foucault - reflects a larger change in society toward disciplinary labour, in which the factory became a model for everything from education to medicine.
- Results of disappointments of American reformers in their initial reforms not working.
How did the Punishment of People of Color in U.S. Deviate from this Model?
American Legal System gave different rights to people identified as different races
Under law, slaves property of their owner
Slave codes – laws for people of colour (slave and free in South) to control them and prevent rebellion and escape
Pass system
Forbidden to learn to read or write in many states
Economic transactions limited
Any white person in community could turn slaves in
Punishments for Slaves in U.S. South
- Few slaves went to jail
- Lashes across back from masters for lesser crimes like theft of small items
- Death for rape or attempted rape on a white female, assaulting a white person “with intent to murder,” maiming a white person, burglary, arson, poisoning.
Dilemma for white elites: Should they also give trials to slaves?
On one hand, seeking to make slaves appear as different under the law
On the other hand, believed system of law being professionalized an important part of becoming a modern nation
Trials for Slaves?
Usually slaves had no access to the courts
Slaves sometimes tried by southern courts for capital crimes
Such trials protected whites’ property rights
Shift in Punishment for African Americans in South After Civil War
Whites’ economic interest in health and wellbeing of black southerners largely ended.
Justice system (courts) replaced system of plantation control
Brutal convict leasing system
Convict Leasing in South (late 1860s – early 1900s)
AAs arrested at far greater rates for lesser crimes
Held and then leased to private companies – used them to do work in return for money to state – whites economically benefit
Brutal conditions – some argue worse than slavery as no interest in keeping AAs alive
Only AA prisoners being leased out
Many leased convicts kept in mobile “cages” overnight rather than in prisons
Historian Douglass Blackmon on convict labor: “arrests surged on fell, not as acts of crime increased or receded, but in tandem to the varying needs of the buyers of labor.”
Nationwide issue:
In 1890, blacks comprised 12 percent of the national population and 25 percent of the prison population.
By 1910, black comprised 11 percent of the national population and 34 percent of the prison population.
Punishment in South Still Outside:
Convict Labor common sight
White on black Violence
Lynchings
How does punishment of people of color in U.S. fit with Foucault?
French abolished chain gang in 1836 – continued in U.S. with African Americans
Foucault said punishment went inside – it did not with African Americans
In Europe more regularized court process – in U.S. trappings of court system but results often pre-modern
