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

with nothing but a Bible they could reflect on their actions and possibly never commit the same act again, if they were given enough solitary time to repent of their actions. There have been studies done showing that a majority of inmates in our prisons suffer from some form of mental disease or deficit.
The Quakers who designed the first prison in the United States believed that complete solitude with the Bible would give prisoners time to think about their actions and want to repent.

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

Penitentiary)
Charles Dickens visited Eastern State Prison in 1842. He agreed with the Quakers, that inmates needed to reflect on their actions and their crimes, but he wrote that neither he nor anyone else knew the side effects of such long term isolation on the human psyche. He believed that such long term isolation was worse torture than anyone could do to the human body and their mental state of mind.
Because Eastern State Prison was strictly solitary isolation, the prisoners were in danger of becoming insane, more apt to commit suicide, or to lose have the ability to function in society. From 1829 to 1890, most of the inmates went clinically and violently insane, and those that could handle the isolation were generally not reformed. The prisoners coming out solitary confinement and thrown back into society were more likely to commit more heinous and gruesome crimes.
In 1934, the government opened Alcatraz.

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

crimes.
In 1989, the very first super-max security prison was established in California, Pelican Bay. The inmates are required to spend 22 ½ hours out of the day in their jail cells. In the 1990's, there was an increase of super-max security prisons being built in the United States. In 2005, Daniel Mears found that there are 40 states that operate super-max prisons in their states. With all the history and the studies that have been done with long term isolation the United States continues to make the same mistakes as it did in 1800's.
Studies have shown that forty percent of the prison population has substandard education. They do not have high school diploma or a GED. The lack of education and the fact that prisoners have a record hanging over their heads, gives them less of a chance to come out of prison and find a feasible job, or become a functioning member of society. With these disadvantages and that they have been listening to harder criminals, it makes one think of the life they had, and/or the life that the other criminal had before they were incarcerated. They want that old lifestyle again; depending on if they believed that it was, in their opinion, good.
Inmates may get out of prison with the best intentions in the world. They say to themselves that they will get out of prison and live the straight and narrow life style. Once they do this, they find that living life outside of prison is not as easy or good as they thought it would be. Before they know it they are hanging around their old friends and acquaintances. With these actions, they start falling into their old life style of whatever it may be. Before they know it, they are committing the same crimes that were committed previously or worse than they had done before. There is an old saying that says, look at your five closest friends; you are a blend of the five people to whom you are closest. In retrospect, if you do not like who you are, or what you are doing, find new friends.
There have been numerous studies done on human isolation throughout the years. Even though there have been studies done on this, America continuously builds prisons in the same design as Eastern State Prison. I, personally, do not know how to punish the worst inmates. There has been no success proven on a better way to punish the inmates other than long-term isolation. This may come a little hardened, but these inmates in the Super-max prisons have already proven that they are not an asset to society; in fact it is more dangerous to keep them around. If one really thinks about it, we, as the United States, are paying for unremorseful, incorrigible criminals to live and laze around.