In 1787, four years after the American Revolution,
America was a country of possibilities, and no city felt this excitement more than Philadelphia. Representatives like Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were gathering at Independence Hall to draft what would become the Constitution. That same year, at the home of Benjamin Franklin a few blocks away from Independence Hall, another group of civic-minded leaders gathered to discuss an entirely different issue: prison reform. The conditions at Walnut Street Jail, located directly behind Independence Hall, are appalling. Men and women, adults and children, thieves and murderers were imprisoned together in disease-ridden, filthy pens, where rapes and robberies were common. Guards made little effort to protect prisoners from harm. Instead, they sold alcohol to prisoners, up to 20 gallons a day. Food, heat and clothing all come at a cost. It was not uncommon for prisoners to die from cold or starvation. A group of concerned citizens calling themselves the Philadelphia Association for the Relief of Prison Suffering decided that this must not continue. Their proposals laid the foundation for prison reform not just in Pennsylvania but around the world.
From the beginning, Pennsylvania was determined to be different from the other colonies. Founder William Penn brought his Quaker values ??to the new colony, avoiding the harsh penal laws practiced in much of British North America, where death was the standard punishment for a range of crimes, including denial A "true god", kidnapping and ***. Instead, Penn relied on imprisonment with hard labor and fines as a treatment for most crimes, while the death penalty remained the only penalty for murder. But after Penn's death in 1718, conservative groups abolished his Quaker-based system and incorporated the harsh punishments prevalent elsewhere. Prisons are simply detention centers for prisoners as they await some form of corporal punishment or execution. It would be another seventy years before any attempt would be made to repeal this draconian criminal law.
Dr. Benjamin Rush was a prominent Philadelphia physician with an interest in politics. In 1776, he served on the Second Continental Congress and signed the Declaration of Independence. More than a decade later, he would lead the push for ratification of the federal constitution. He was an outspoken abolitionist who later earned the title "Father of American Psychiatry" for his pioneering observations on "mental illness." In 1768, as a budding physician training in London, Rush met Benjamin Franklin, then a member of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Franklin, a celebrity among Parisians, urged the curious 22-year-old to cross the English Channel and experience the Enlightenment ideas that filled France's living rooms. The next year, Rush did it. He mingled among scientists, philosophers, and literary men, listening to Europe's progressive theories on issues such as crime and punishment, which would eventually follow him to the United States. In 1787, in the company of Franklin and his American contemporaries,
Rush declared that radical change was needed not just at Walnut Street Prison but throughout the world. He was convinced that crime was a "moral disease" and recommended the establishment of a "confessional house" where prisoners could contemplate their crimes, experience spiritual remorse, and undergo rehabilitation. This approach came to be known as the Pennsylvania System and the Penitentiary Institution. The Philadelphia Society for the Alleviation of Prison Suffering, also known as the Pennsylvania Prison Society, agreed and set about persuading the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
The changes at Walnut Street Prison were that inmates were segregated by sex and crime, vocational workshops were set up to occupy prisoners' time, and many of the abuses were abolished, but that wasn't the only one