Pennsylvania System

Inspiration for Reform

The English settlers who came to the American colonies brought the English legal codes with them. Individuals convicted of crimes were sentenced to public corporal punishment, capital punishment, or banishment. However, partly as a response to their [Page 695]own experiences in England, where Quakers were persecuted and suffered harsh punishments, the Quakers of Pennsylvania believed that offenders should be treated differently. They thought that offenders could be reformed through contemplation and penance. In light of these views, several Quakers, who were also elite members of Philadelphia society, established the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisoners on May 8, 1787. There were 37 founding members, including Quakers such as Dr. Benjamin Rush and non-Quakers such as Benjamin Franklin.

The society began by working to appeal a Pennsylvania law stipulating public hard labor and petitioning the Executive Council of the Commonwealth to expose the poor conditions of the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia. Prior to the work of the society, all inmates, regardless of their sex, age, or crime, were held in severely crowded areas where sexual activity and the drinking of alcohol were commonplace. Those in the Philadelphia Prison Society believed that these conditions were inhumane and, moreover, would make offenders worse than they were before incarceration. Thus, following John Howard, they suggested that solitary confinement, hard labor, and an abstinence from liquor would be the best way to reform inmates. On April 5, 1790, the Pennsylvania legislature responded by passing an act stipulating that “hardened and atrocious offenders” should be subject to solitary confinement, and as a result, the Pennsylvania system of prison discipline would become a reality (Teeters & Shearer, 1957, p. 10).

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