Auburn System

History

Overcrowding at the Newgate Prison in New York led the legislature in 1816 to approve the building of a new state prison in Auburn. Originally, Auburn was designed as other prisons with congregate sleeping. However, concerns over a lack of discipline at Newgate led to the legislature authorizing a new punishment for the most violent inmates. As in the Pennsylvania system, these men would be locked up in solitary cells where they could not communicate with one another. Unlike the [Page 54]Pennsylvania system, where inmates worked at handiwork in their cells, individuals in solitary confinement at Auburn were not permitted to do anything at all. Within two years, however, prison officials became concerned about the high rates of insanity and suicide they were witnessing. The situation became so bad that the prisoners held in solitary were pardoned and released by the governor. Twelve of these men soon committed new crimes and were convicted and returned to the prison. Solitary confinement, it seemed, did not work. As a result, prison administrators began to reconsider how the institution should be run.

In 1831, a new warden of Auburn, Elam Lynds, and his deputy, John Cray, instituted an alternative system of management called the congregate system. The congregate or Auburn silent system of prison management was seen as a rival to the Pennsylvania or separate system even though it incorporated some of its strategies. Like the Pennsylvania system, for example, no communication between inmates was allowed at Auburn. However, while prisoners in the Pennsylvania system were kept completely separate from one another, in the Auburn system, men worked and ate together. They were simply not permitted to speak to one another or to communicate in other ways. Administrators of both systems believed that silence would not only prevent inmates from influencing one another, but it would also help reform them. It was believed that silence and hard work would make them think about the crimes they had committed and help them repent and turn to God.

To maintain the silence, harsh discipline was used in the Auburn system. Any infraction was punished immediately by flogging. Individuals who denied that they spoke would be flogged for lying. Still, guards had to be ever vigilant to keep prisoners from talking. At night, the guards would remove their shoes and tip toe up and down the cell-blocks listening for whispering among the inmates. In addition, John Cray, Warden Lynds's deputy, designed the “lockstep” as a way to allow the guards to better prevent talking and thus maintain discipline. The lockstep was a formation for marching inmates through the prison. Each inmate had to walk with a shuffling side step lined up one behind the other with his hand on the shoulder of the man in front of him and turned toward the guards with his eyes cast down. The lockstep march allowed the guard to enforce silence because he could see the face of each inmate. Inmates were monitored nearly constantly or so they may have thought. Officials even watched prisoners from a 2,000-foot passageway through peepholes behind the workshops at Auburn to be sure they worked hard and refrained from talking or other communication.

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