The Domestication of Women

In the history of the American penitentiary, women are, for the most part, invisible. The early history of women’s prisons as well as theories about female criminality did not factor into the discussion. In comparison, there is a large amount of scholarship and literature on male prisons and prisoners of that same time. This paper is an attempt to fill that gap. With Women, Prison, & Crime, Women in Prison and Their Sister’s Keepers by Jocelyn Byrne, Cyndi Banks and Estelle Freedman, respectively, this paper attempts to outline the history of women’s prisons and the main theories about female prisoners from 1840-1930. In analyzing these two concepts in conjunction with the status of women in society at those particular times, a pattern emerges. Theories about female criminals, and the subsequent approaches created to control them, are a direct reflections of society’s belief that a woman’s place is in the domestic sphere. Thus, from 1815-1930, society only considered women criminal when they left that sphere and all reformatory efforts went towards their return.

The Inception: 1815-1830

Before the prison, was the scaffold. This public form of physical punishment came under question during the age of enlightenment in the American colonies. The enlightenment came with new ideas of what constituted humane treatment. In order to be more inline with these ideas, thinkers like Benjamin Rush, created the penitentiary as a replacement for the scaffold. Instead of strict punishment, the penitentiary would offer reform. This reformation took shape in two distinct models: Philadelphia and Auburn. In both models, prisoners were subject to discipline, labor and silence. The only difference is that in the Pennsylvania model the inmates ...

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...ledge and those theories questioned in 1830, new theories emerged and with them new forms of punishment. One theory insisted that some women were born criminal and thus could not be reformed. These women were hard masculine women committed hard masculine crimes and were sent to custodial prisons. The other insist that some women merely fell into a life of crime, innocent victims of circumstance, and with the right help they could made into proper women again. These women committed victimless crimes and were sent to reformatories. One thing that all these the theories have in common is either equating criminality to women who leave the home or equating reform to women returning to the home. As a result, the early days of the female penitentiary served as a way that society could silence or domesticate women whom they thought went against the norm.