A History of Incarceration

Incarceration is a confinement in a jail or prison. The act of imprisoning someone or the

state of being imprisoned, despite the drop in crime in past decade, rates of arrest and

incarceration have not gone down.

How did prison starts?

The prison start in Ancient Athens was known as the “desmoterion” (“a place of

chains”) The Romans were among the first to use prisons as a form of punishment,

rather than simply detention. A variety of existing structures were used to house

prisoners, such as mental cages, basements of building and, quarries. The history

imprisonment was not to punish them, but was means of keeping the perpetrator of a

crime detained until the actual punishment could be carried out. This was usually in

the form of corporal punishment that was intended to cause the guilty person pain,

such as being beaten with whip, of capital punishment which used a variety of methods

to claim the lives of condemned individuals. London is known as the birth place of

modern imprisonment. A philosopher named Jeremy Bentham was against the death

penalty and thus created a concept for a prison that would be used to hold prisoners

would remain for extended periods of time. His design was intended to ensure that the

people who are locked up would never know if they were being watched by guards or

not, which he felt world allow the prison to save money. Since inmates could not be

certain how many guards were present Bentham reasoned, fewer officers would need

to be hired to maintain the peace. In the end this prison was never built, but the

concept of using prisons as a form of long term punishment did catch on.

By the 19th century prisons were being built for the sole purpose of housing inmates

they were intended to deter people from community crimes. People who were found

guilty of various crimes would be sent to these penitentiaries and stripped of their

personal freedom. Inmates were often forced to do hard labor while they were
incarcerated and to live very harsh conditions. One of the goals of a prison sentence

became the rehabilitation on inmates many people felt that the fear of being locked up

would be enough deter an inmate from ever committing another crime, but other

theories held that policies should be introduced to help reform prisoners before they

were set free. These policies include mental examinations, educational programs and

sometimes even for more drastic measures such as electroshock therapy. An opposing

view point to the rehabilitative effects of imprisonment claims that being incarcerated

will actually cause people to become even more involved with a life of crime regardless

of these conflicting opinions on rehabilitation of criminals, imprisonment continues to be

one of the most common forms of punishment around the world.

In 1700s, English philanthropist began to focus on the reform of convicted criminals in

prisons, which they believed needed a chance to become morally pure in order to stop

or slow crime. Since at least 1740, some of this philosophers began thinking of solitary

confinement as a way to create and maintain spiritually clean people in prisons. As

English people immigrated to North America, so did these theories of penology. Some

of first structures built in America were jails, and by the 18 th century every English

North American country had a jail. These jails served as variety of functions such as a

holding place for debtors, prisoners-of-war, and political prisoners , these bound in the

penal transportation and slavery systems, and those excused of but not tried crimes.

Sentence for those constricted crimes were rarely longer that three months, and often

lasted only a day. Poor citizens were often imprisoned for longer that their richer

neighbors, as bails was rarely not accepted. One of the first prisons in America was

founded 1790by the Pennsylvanian Quakers. The Quakers wanted something that was

less cruel than dungeon prisons. They created a space where prisoners could read

scriptures and repent as a means of self-improvement. After the civil war and really

gaining momentum during the p[progressive Era of America, new concepts of prison

system, such as parole, indeterminate sentencing, and probation, were introduced.

These soon became mainstream practice in America. At this time there was an

increase in crime causing criminals to handle crime in a more retributive way. But as

the crime rate declined, they started to focus more on rehabilitation. In September, the

incarceration rate of United State of America was the highest in the world at 716 per

100,00 of the national population. While the United State Represent about $ 74 billion

in 2007 according to the U.S Bureau of Justice Statistics.

At the end of 2016 the Prison Policy Initiative a non-profit organization for

decarceration estimated that in the United State about 2,298,300 people were

incarcerated out of a population of 324.2 million. This means that 0.7٪ of the population

was behind bars. Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of

punishment and rehabilitation for the commission of felony and other offences. The

United States has the largest prison population in the world and highest per capita

incarceration rate.