Walnut Street Prison Analysis

In 1829, the very first prison was formed in the United States. There are many conversations that have taken place on whether the judicial system should rethink the way that they attempt to rehabilitate prisoners. It is my belief that individuals that come out of incarceration can come out worse than before they went in. There are studies that have been done stating that two thirds of the released prisoners commit new crimes and are re-incarcerated. Although solitary confinement is a good punishment for prisoners for short periods of time, sometimes prisoners are left there for too long. Walnut Street Prison, otherwise known as Eastern State Prison, was strictly solitary confinement. The Quakers had a belief that if inmates were separated

The inmates, were left with, “only the light from heaven, the word of God (the Bible) and honest work (shoe-making, weaving, and the like) to lead to penitence.” The inmates were left like that for their entire sentence. When let out of their cells for varied purposes, they were instructed to wear hooded masks, and they were also forbidden to speak to the guards and the other inmates. At the time people did not know the importance of human interaction. Charles Dickens wrote in his travel journal, how he disagreed with the Quakers’ views on rehabilitation. (Eastern State

There were some prisoners there that were left in solitary confinement so long that they lost all recognition of what was right or wrong. They would be sent to D block for such long periods of times that they would go crazy. They would go into it for fighting with another inmate, and come out of D block being able to commit some of the most heinous crimes imaginable. In recent years doctors have studied the effects of long term isolation. They have concluded that it is physically harmful to the human psyche, and the prisoner is more likely to commit the same crime or crimes that were substantially worse in nature than the previously committed