Three Prisons Act 1891

History

Prior to 1789, there were few penal facilities of any kind in the new United States. In 1776, Congress mandated that prisoners charged with federal crimes could be confined in the few county or state facilities available. At the time, the only facility of any size was the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia, and it was there that the first federal prisoners were held. The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the U.S. Marshals Service, which was given responsibility for finding prison space for federal prisoners.

It was not until the late 1800s that the federal government became involved in corrections in any meaningful way. When the U.S. Department of Justice was created in 1871, the position of general agent was established, which eventually evolved into the superintendent of prisons, who was in charge of all federal prisoners. At the time, there were simply not enough federal offenders to justify the cost of constructing and maintaining separate federal prisons, and, in accordance with the Judiciary Act of 1789, the federal government paid fees to state and county institutions to house the small number of offenders convicted of violating federal laws.

The federal government had operated several Army stockades and Navy brigs to house military [Page 963]offenders, but there were no real federal prisons at this time. The U.S. government did, for a short time, operate a penitentiary in Washington, D.C., primarily for local convicts, but this had been long abandoned by the time of the Three Prisons Act. The U.S. Penitentiary for the District of Columbia had opened in 1831 in Washington, D.C., with 150 cells for men and 64 for women, along with workshops for making shoes and brooms. It closed in 1862, however, and the prisoners were transferred to various state prisons.

Gradually, the practice of incarcerating federal offenders in state prisons and local jails became increasingly problematic, in large part because of the growing population of federal offenders. Many state prisons were already crowded with their own prisoners, and they simply did not have enough space to keep taking in federal prisoners. In any case, conditions in many state prisons were so squalid that Congress and the Justice Department opposed sending any new federal inmates to them. Finally, in 1887, when the federal government ended convict leasing, it eliminated many of the economic incentives for state and local institutions to house federal inmates, and the institutions began to refuse to accept such inmates. As a result, the federal government had to come up with a new solution.

The Act Itself

The Three Prisons Act laid the foundation for a new federal prison system. In the act, Congress established three penitentiaries: