Auburn State Prison

Constructed in 1816, Auburn State Prison was the second prison, after Newgate (1797), to open in New York. By 1823, Auburn had established a disciplinary and administrative system based on silence, corporal punishment, and “congregate” (group) labor. In architecture and routine, Auburn became the model for prisons throughout the United States.

In the early nineteenth century, many Americans believed industrialization and dramatic demographic, [Page 85]economic, and political upheavals had “conspired” against the traditional controls of family, church, and community. These moral guardians were no longer adequate for controlling disorder. Crime was the product of social chaos; necessary to its eradication was a structured environment in which to separate deviants from the disorder of society and the contagion of one another. The solution of was to create the “penitentiary”—a new institution for “re-forming” offenders and, ultimately, restoring social stability.

Auburn originally used congregate cells, but in 1821, Warden William Brittin, borrowed the concept of solitary cells from the Quaker's penal system in Pennsylvania. Brittin designed a unique, five-tiered cell-block of two rows of single cells, placed back to back in the center of the building. Cells measured only four feet wide, seven and one-half feet long, and seven feet high; doors faced outer walls lined with grated windows that provided indirect light and air. This pattern of small, inside cellblocks was later adopted by most state prisons. While Pennsylvania's inmates conducted handicraft work in cells, Auburn prisoners worked in congregate workshops to offset imprisonment costs through private industry contracts. A hidden passageway with small openings surrounded the work area, allowing inspectors and visitors to surreptitiously monitor inmates.

Plan of the State Prison at Auburn, New York, showing cellblocks clustered at the center of the prison.

Auburn briefly (1821–1825) implemented a three-level classification system. Minor offenders labored in workshops daily and retired to separate cells at night; serious offenders alternated their days between solitary confinement and congregate work. The most hardened criminals were placed in solitary confinement without work. After numerous suicides, madness, and attempted escapes, the governor terminated the classification system and the experiment in solitary confinement.

Subsequently, all male inmates worked in congregate shops by day, returning to individual cells at night. (Females, first committed to Auburn in 1825, were relegated to an attic and excluded from regular work and exercise.) To ensure inmates did not corrupt one another, Brittin's successor Elma Lynds enforced a quasi-military routine of absolute silence, strict discipline, and economic productivity. In response to bells, head-shaven inmates dressed in striped clothing silently marched in lockstep formation to and from their cells for meals and work assignments. Letters were banned, and the chaplain was the only occasional visitor. Flogging and other forms of corporal punishment enforced the rules. Such regimentation was thought necessary to restrain the rebellious nature of the offenders.

Eventually, overcrowding made the silence system unenforceable, and Auburn's system of discipline deteriorated into corrupt and lax routines of harsh punishments. After the Civil War, the spirit of reform withered, and contract labor was no longer profitable. Despite the demise of the “ideal” system, Auburn remained the model for nearly a century, primarily because it was inexpensive to construct and maintain.

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